Moral Economy and Popular Protest: Crowds, Conflict and Authority

This book developed from a conference held in 1992 to mark the 'coming of age' of E.P.Thompson's seminal concept of 'the moral economy'. The collection provides a critical evaluation of the original concept and of its application to a wide and diverse field of scholarship, drawing together specialists from social and labour history, legal history, social, anthropology and historical geography who examine the developing utilisation of the concept of 'the moral economy' in different historical and societal contexts.

ADRIAN RANDALL is Professor of English Social History at the University of Birmingham where from 1991 to 1997 he was Head of the School of Social Sciences. He is the author of Before the Luddites and, with Andrew Charlesworth, editor and co-author of Markets, Market Culture and Popular Protest in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland. With Andrew Charlesworth, Dave Gilbert, Humphrey Southall and Chris Wrigley, he is the author of the Atlas of Industrial Protest in Britain 17650-1984 and he has written extensively on labour, technology and social protest in 18th and 19th century England.

ANDREW CHARLESWORTH is Reader in Human Geography at Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education. Before taking up that post, he taught at the University of Liverpool. He was principal author of the Atlas of Rural Protest in Britain, and has written extensively on social protest in Britain between 1500 and 1900. With David Gilbert, Adrian Randall, Humphrey Southall and Chris Wrigley, he is author of the Atlas of Industrial Protest in Britain, 1750-1984. More recently he has begun to publish on the landscapes of the Holocaust.