Tag Archive for: Penelope J Corfield

MONTHLY BLOG 156, Tracking Social Media: It’s High Time for Effective Regulation

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If citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2023)


Yes, there are a range of good reasons for authorial anonymity. These are fully acknowledged in my MONTHLY BLOG/155 (November 2023).1

Yet … humans are tricky creatures. That trickiness, of course, helps to explain why authors so often seek anonymity in the first place. They may need to be protected in order to speak out against ruthless or corrupt employers.

Nonetheless, humans can also use secrecy, not just to protect themselves from harm, but also to harm others. Anonymous authors can lie, as well as speak truth to power. Indeed, some authors, writing anonymously, discover that the normal social restraints are subtly loosened. They find within themselves hitherto unsuspected levels of venom and hostility.

The result is that anonymous foul-speaking, trouble-stirring trolls have become a contemporary social curse, especially on social media. Trolling onslaughts can include cases of cyber-bullying; threats to the recipients and their families; stalking; and sexual harassment. All such behaviours are crimes. Yet they are masked by secrecy – and quasi-justified by claims of ‘free speech’.

Lawyers will, of course, point out that – these days – human rights are all embedded in frameworks of law. Free speech is an invaluable thing. No question. But it is not utterly untrammelled. There are laws world-wide which attempt to control written defamation (libel) and its spoken equivalent (slander).2 In effect, the legal framework tries to balances the right to freedom of speech with the right to protection from defamation, harassment, bullying and other criminal abuses.

However, today, the plurality of publication outlets, via the explosion of social media, has made those laws very hard to enforce. So what follows?

Historical practice is relevant here. When print publications began to multiply across sixteenth-century Europe, a de facto case law emerged. It became accepted that publishers are legally responsible for materials that appear under their imprimatur. Hence they tried to avoid publishing works that could be construed as defamatory, obscene, blasphemous, inciting criminal behaviour, breaching someone else’s copyright, or otherwise illegal.3   Quite a list!

As part of that responsibility, it has also become established that published works should show the name of the publisher, plus the location and date of the publication.4 Thus, while authors can remain anonymous (or can write under a pseudonym), their print publishers are ‘on the record’.

Similarly, a printed newspaper has the right to protect its sources. Some information is derived from sources who do not want to be named. But the newspaper owners and their editorial teams take legal responsibility for whatever is published. (Hence they generally double check their sources wherever possible). It means that ideas and arguments – and statements about individuals and causes – are not just bandied around in a legal void.5

When it comes to the internet, however, the explosion of social media – and the ease with which everyone has access – has dramatically changed the playing-field. The evolving legal framework was trying to balance an individual’s right to free speech with the parallel right to reasonable protection. There is also a collective social interest at stake. It is highly important that people have reliable access to the stock of knowledge and are not being misled by ‘fake news’ or ‘fake information’.

Research shows that using social media regularly can have both positive and negative effects on individuals.6 One adverse impact is a sense of personal impunity through anonymity. That has the effect of weakening normal social- and self-controls. People – and groups – indulge in over-the-top hatreds and invective. And so a dangerous ‘hate culture’ is born.

Furthermore, an unregulated social media ‘free-for-all’ is dangerous not only for the venom and/or errors of expressed opinions but also for the extreme velocity with which everything is circulated – unchecked.  So people are at risk of being fed on a daily diet of false-information and fake facts, which seem to be beyond checking and correction. Put at its most extreme, the entire corpus of careful and verified knowledge, which has been patiently accumulated and tested by humans over successive generations, may be at risk.

What is to be done? There must be an internationally agreed legal framework for regulating the internet (and for the ‘dark web’), just as there are legal frameworks for print culture. Easy to say! Hard to achieve! But the bedrock must be that web-publishers take responsibility not for every detail but for the broad reliability and non-criminality of the material which they broadcast. And each social transmission should include (ideally) the name of the sending account; (invariably) the name of the transmission agency (equivalent to the print publisher); and (invariably) the date/time of transmission.

Individual contributors, meanwhile, should be encouraged to take full ownership of their own views. In normal circumstances, they should fly under their own colours, with full name and identification.

But, as already agreed, at times there are good reasons for remaining anonymous. In such circumstances, someone else must step up and take responsibility. Every communication must have a known publisher, who can be tracked and held accountable.

To repeat: humans are tricky creatures. They have so many good qualities – and the reverse. What they have learned, painfully and slowly, is that their societies operate successfully only within frameworks of laws and regulation. Sure, there are disputes all the way about how such frameworks are operated in practice. No system will be perfect.  But that’s not the point.

Crucially, the big and ultra-serious point is that, without properly enforced regulation, today’s social media will strangle the life and knowledge out of all day-to-day human associations. The question is therefore not whether social media need a proper framework of regulation – but, rather, how the deed is to be done. There’s no call for censorship. But there is an urgent need for regulation.

Unsurprisingly, today there is much debate on this hot topic.7 There are many helpful suggestions out there. So it’s now time for a big public debate – followed by decisive action! Collectively, humanity is today facing many testing problems. It’s time to apply our collective ingenuity and creativity to resolve them. We must have transparency within social media systems, at specified levels and in specified ways. We must curb the circulation of fakery, misinformation, hatreds, and criminality.

Humanity is born ingenious. And it must use that ingenuity to keep the best of our inventions and to curb the excesses. It’s a global battle that we need to win. After all, if we fail, then we have nothing to lose but our brains.

ENDNOTES:

1 PJC, ‘The Anonymous Author: Seeking Justified Privacy or Avoiding Responsible Transparency?’ BLOG/ 155 (Nov. 2023) on www.penelopejcorfield.com/monthly-blogs.

2 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation (viewed 28 Nov. 2023).

3 For the UK, see e.g. J. Kirsch, Kirsch’s Handbook of Publishing Law: For Authors, Publishers, Editors and Agents (Acrobat Books, 1995).

4 G. Cole, ‘The Historical Development of the Title Page’, Journal of Library History, Vol.6, no 4 (1971), pp. 303-16.

5 In England, the current legal situation is governed by the 2013 Defamation Act, supplemented by the common law.

6 Pew Research Centre (USA), ‘The Future of Free Speech, Trolls, Anonymity and Fake News Online’ (29 March 2017), in https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/03/29/the-future-of-free-speech-trolls-anonymity-and-fake-news-online (viewed 29 Nov. 2023).

7 See thoughtful discussions, from a variety of perspectives, in J. Naughton, ‘Has the Internet Become a Failed State?’, The Observer, 27 Nov. 2016; A. Macrina and T. Cooper, Anonymity: Library Futures (Chicago, 2019); D. Ghosh, ‘Are We Entering a New Era of Social Media Regulation?’ Harvard Business Review (Jan. 2021): https://hbr.org/2021/01/are-we-entering-a-new-era-of-social-media-regulation (viewed 29 Nov. 2023); J. Susskind, ‘We Can Regulate Social Media without Censorship – Here’s How’, Time Magazine, 22 July 2022); M. MacCarthy, ‘Transparency is Essential for Effective Social Media Regulation’, Brookings Institution Washington – Commentary (Nov. 2022): https://www.brookings.edu/article/transparency-is-essential-for-effective-social-media-regulation/ (viewed 29 Nov. 2023).

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MONTHLY BLOG 155, The anonymous author, seeking justified privacy or avoiding responsible transparency?

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Last month I meditated on the need for fair and intelligent framework regulation for all manner of human activities. We are an ingenious but tricky species. Our best qualities and finest inventions can be used for dire purposes; or can generate malign results in the long run, even if no-one has actually willed such an outcome. Hence the need for clear and intelligent regulation.1

Such thoughts also raise questions about the pros and cons of anonymous writing. It can today be such a scourge. For example, on social media, vituperative hate messages are often sent to families of murdered children. Parents are accused of negligence in leaving their child at risk – or charged with outright complicity in the death. All from anonymous writers who have fierce anger to express, and not even minimal concern for the recipients’ feelings.

Logically, of course, it may even be that – however rarely – such accusations are correct. Children are sometimes murdered by family members. But pointing a finger anonymously, in an outpouring of anger and blame, does not help to identify a malefactor. It makes innocent parents feel worse. And (at a guess) it is likely to make guilty ones even more determined to hide their guilt.

The only ones pleased by such anonymous accusations are presumably the accusers themselves. They can feel, self-righteously, that they have seen the truth; denounced the guilty; and purged themselves of their own distress and anger at the brutal death of a child. Hence, in a world of ever-extending mass literacy, all can have a voice and vent their innermost primal feelings.

But is such a justification good enough? Do not primal feelings also need to operate within a broad (if flexible) set of rules?

So let’s review the case for anonymity. Firstly, it can be an essential shield for the powerless, when seeking to take action against the powerful.2 Whistle-blowers in the workplace, who do not wish to lose their jobs, but who do wish to reveal wrong-doing, often use the cloak of anonymity. Indeed, some organisations today positively recommend having a known channel for such communications to be made secretly and safely; and there are companies that either offer to set up a secure internal hotline or to provide one themselves.3

Similarly, would-be rebellious citizens living under powerful tyrannies may choose to act anonymously against their oppressors. If rebels oppose publicly, they often end up dead or in prison. If they act covertly, they live to continue the fight another day.

Historically, too, there are well-documented cases of anonymous protest. Desperately poor agricultural labourers in early nineteenth-century Britain sent barely literate unsigned letters to local landowners and magistrates, voicing grievances and threatening violence unless remedial action was taken.4 Hence, while anonymous letters are often considered to be written with a ‘poison pen’5 – like anonymous messages on social media today – they can be used to issue challenges to apparently impregnable powers-that-be.

Throughout, however, it’s wise to remember the trickiness of humans. Not all anonymous accusations against powerful – or even tyrannical leaders – are automatically accurate. While anonymity may, be justifiable in specific circumstances, it cannot confer infallibility.

Then there’s a different set of reasons. A considerable number of modest authors want public attention to focus entirely upon their writings, not upon themselves.6 They may be shy, private people. Some too may be acutely anxious.7 They all want to communicate but they want their output to stand or fall upon its own merits.

Moreover, numerous women writers, in the early days of the novel, rightly did not want to be patronised or side-lined because of their sex. As a result, a number first published anonymously, as did Jane Austen – though she did admit to being ‘A Lady’. Others used male pseudonyms. In the mid-1840s, the three Brontë sisters famously first published as Acton [Anne], Currer [Charlotte] and Ellis [Emily] Bell. At least they kept their original initials in full. Marian or Maryanne Evans, who published as George Eliot, had other concerns in mind – saluting her unofficial partner George Lewes by using his first name. The options are endless. It suffices that the ‘pen-name’ is the alter ego, standing forth in the public eye.8

In all cases, anonymous or pseudonymous novelists preserve the capacity to go quietly about their lives – observing the follies and foibles of their fellow humans – without being pestered or pursued by readers. Remaining unknown also safeguards authors from public embarrassment in the event of failure.

Presumably some combination of these motivations inspired numerous male authors to follow the same route. Samuel Leghorne Clemens later flowered as the celebrated American author, Mark Twain. One Marie-Henri Beyle later turned himself into the magisterial French author, Stendhal.  The insightful British author, George Orwell, was named by his parents as Eric Arthur Blair – with a first name that he was particularly keen to discard, thinking it too ‘priggish’.

Today, moreover, the successful crime thrillers by the female Spanish author, Carmen Mola, turn out to be authored by not one man but by three, working together anonymously.9 So an element of fun and play may also lie behind the use of pseudonyms. And no doubt an element of private laughter may follow, when the public is successfully hoaxed.

Yet … what about the principle of transparency? What about ‘owning’ one’s actions? Taking responsibility? Standing up to be counted? Playing fair with the public? Preventing false attributions and fake identities? Thoughts on these further burning questions, which haunt the history of publishing and communication, will be the subject of my next BLOG/156 in December 2023.

ENDNOTES:

1 See PJC BLOG/154 ‘In Praise of (Judicious) Regulation’ (Oct. 2023).

2 K. Kenny, Whistleblowing: Toward a New Theory (Cambridge, Mass., 2019); J.R. Arnold, Whistleblowers, Leakers and their Networks: From Snowden to Samizdat (Lanham, Md, 2020); T. Bazzichelli (ed.), Whistleblowing for Change: Exposing Systems of Power and Injustice (Bielefeld, 2021).

3 See e.g. https://www.northwhistle.com or https://www.safecall.co.uk/en/why-safecall.

4 E.P. Thompson, ‘The Crime of Anonymity’, in E.P. Thompson and others, Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (New York; 1975), pp. 255-308, with sampler of anonymous letters, pp. 309-41. [It’s good to acknowledge here the help in this research given to EPT by his old friend, the local historian E.E. Dodd].

5 E. Cockayne, Penning Poison: A History of Anonymous Letters (Oxford, 2023).

6 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Works_published_anonymously (viewed 27 Oct. 2023).

7 For meditations on the psychology of anonymity, see E.M. Forster [Edward Morgan], Anonymity: An Enquiry (London, 1925); J. Schecter, Anonymity (London, 2011).

8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Works_published_under_a_pseudonym (viewed 27 Oct. 2023).

9 They are Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez, and Antonio Mercero, three Spanish script-writers: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Mola (viewed 27 Oct. 2023).

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MONTHLY BLOG 154, IN PRAISE OF (JUDICIOUS) REGULATION

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Image 1:
© Flaticon 2023

Humans are wondrously inventive. It’s the cultural trademark of the species. Simultaneously, however, humans are also reflective creatures. They eventually realise – with greater or less reluctance – that their inventions and innovations need good framework regulations to operate successfully. Unless the impact of significant change remains fully monitored, there is always a risk that creative inventions may help in one direction but may simultaneously cause unintended collateral damage in another.

Think of the motor car.  Freedom on four wheels – for those who have their hands on the wheel.  Immensely exciting. Yet … there are other people on the roads. Initially, in towns, the exciting new motor cars were each preceded by a walker, carrying a flag. Hardly the romance of the open road.

It quickly became apparent that the new vehicles could kill and main. In August 1896, for example, one Mrs Bridget Driscoll from Croydon received fatal injuries when she was struck by a slow-moving car which was giving demonstration rides at Crystal Palace, London (UK).1 And the drivers were themselves at risk. A wall plaque at Harrow-on-the-Hill records that fact, under the blunt heading ‘TAKE HEED’. It marks the location of the first recorded car accident in Britain (in 1899) that was fatal to the driver.2

Now, over one hundred and twenty years later, there are billions of motorised vehicles in all corners of the globe. And there are ample regulations and ‘rules of the road’.

In many (though not all) streets, pedestrian walkways are demarcated from driving areas. There are rules about which side of the road drivers should use. There are markings to designate traffic lanes. There are parking regulations; and, in places, local road taxes. There are traffic lights to regulate traffic flows at major junctions. At key places, there are also special pedestrian crossings. There are speed limits (if not always honoured). In many countries, too, there are rules about the wearing of seat belts. Further regulations require drivers to pass an official test, before being licensed to drive. (Beginners in Britain have to display the letter L for ‘Learner’ on their cars). All vehicles meanwhile need to be tested annually for road-worthiness; and to be fully insured against accidents.

Collectively, the aim is to obviate dangerous driving and to safeguard all road users. In Britain, the emergent ‘rules of the road’ were codified in 1931 as The Highway Code. It applies to all individuals using the roads, whether on foot, on horseback, or on wheels.3 Other countries produced their own versions. And in 1968, these variegated rules were codified into an international standard. Known as the Vienna Convention of Road Traffic, it is designed to facilitate international road traffic.4 Not all countries have ratified the treaty which confirmed its regulations. But the long-term pressures, arising from increasing cross-border traffic, make it unlikely that individual countries will be able to stand aloof from the international consensus.

At every stage in the evolution of these regulations, there have been arguments – often heated ones. Rival calls for ‘freedom’ and for ‘communal safeguards’ have been issued, often with intense passion. Currently, the same arguments are being canvassed with reference to urgent campaigns to reduce noxious carbon emissions, especially in large and heavily trafficked cities. As yet, there is no consensus; but it is not hard to predict that the unfolding climate crisis will hand eventual victory to the regulators – and, hopefully soon at that!

All these outcomes are far from the stately steps of the first flag-bearers, who walked in front of the first motor cars. But the undeniable need for community standards was apparent from the start. Imagine today’s 1.49 billion motor vehicles at large, without any regulation whatsoever. There would be total global grid-lock. And the first to call for properly enforced rules of the road would be the global billions of drivers.

So what follows? Mass human living depends upon proper regulation of all manner of things. From the safe building of houses, schools, bridges, and roads; to the safe storage of nuclear waste; to the efficient removal and treatment of human bodily waste.

Rather than arguing abstractly about the pros and cons of ‘freedom’ versus ‘regulation’, it’s much more productive to consider instead the key principles that should underpin judicious and appropriate community regulation.

Here then are five key principles:

(1) It’s essential that the need for regulations should be clearly explained and understood by a good majority of the adults within any community.

(2) It’s also vital that regulations are set and supervised by disinterested parties, whose identity is known and on the record. Self-regulation quickly becomes slack and ineffectual’; and can degenerate into criminal negligence.

(3) It’s also important that regulation is undertaken intelligently with a good sense of the overall objectives, so that rules are clearly comprehensible and manageable. Rules that appear to constitute nothing more than nit-picking and obstructive ‘red tape’ are liable to be held in contempt and evaded.

(4) It’s equally essential that the reporting of regulatory scrutiny and assessment is undertaken with scrupulous fairness – and the outcomes conveyed to interested parties with empathy and care. It may be that criminal prosecutions will follow in some specific circumstances; but regulation and assessment is a social and communal art, not primarily a legal process.

(5) Regulators always need reasonable security and independence in their role, so that they cannot be influenced in a partisan manner – or dismissed on a whim. Yet, simultaneously, they themselves should be regularly reviewed and their authority regularly renewed. Thus it should always be known to whom regulators are answerable: whether to local, national or international authorities.

Lastly, is there a better term for ‘regulation’? It can seem, at best, to be merely petty. Or, at worst, to be intrusive and meddling. After all, most people have broken minor rules on one occasion or another. Drivers sometimes exceed the specified speed limit. Pedestrians at times cross roads when the pedestrian lights signal ‘WAIT’. Even the most law-abiding citizens can be occasional rule-breakers on a minor scale. But that’s not really the point.

The key need is for a known framework of collective standards, which are set, monitored, and updated communally. In that way, human creativity and invention can flourish, without back-firing. Community standards with mass endorsement can obviate chaos. These tasks require debate, negotiation, clear-eyed realism, goodwill – and optimism. All excellent qualities! Onwards! 

ENDNOTES:

1 Guinness World Records: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-person-killed-by-a-car (viewed 20 Sept. 2023).

2 H. Turner, ‘The Story of Britain’s First Fatal Car Crash’ (2016): in https://harrowonline.org/2016/04/13/the-story-of-britains-first-fatal-car-crash-harrow-1899/ (viewed 20 Sept. 2023).

3 A preliminary booklet was introduced in 1921, following discussions between the police and the Automobile Association (founded 1905). In 1931, the rules were standardised as the Highway Code, and issued by the government: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Highway_Code (viewed 20 Sept. 2023).

4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_Road_Traffic (viewed 20 Sept. 2023).

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MONTHLY BLOG 153, ACKNOWLEDGING THE PASSING OF TIME

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Image 1:
Fall of Icarus (c.1588),
engraving by Hendrick Goltzius after Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem.
Source: Wikimedia Commons – De val van Icarus.jpg

This personal BLOG is very short but very determined. It expresses my commitment to expand my daily exercise routine. Currently, I walk at least a mile and swim for half an hour daily, pushing myself to exercise all limbs with all-out effort. It’s very enjoyable. On the way to the pool, I sometimes yawn and am often bleary-eyed. On the way back, however, I sing cheerfully, feeling at one with the world.

It’s certainly good to keep fit and well. But I now realise that more is required. As people get older, they need to keep supple and, above all, to strengthen their leg muscles.

Alas, one of the greatest age-related dangers is falling over; or, worst of all, falling down long flights of stairs. People break limbs. And falls often indicate a lack of whole-person mental as well as physical balance. They stem from confusion, which is then worsened as a result. Bad and sad news all round. Often such falls, especially when repeated at short intervals, are indications of the approaching end. Ultimately, gravity cannot be denied. It drags us all down.

The antidote is therefore not just to keep well but to keep supple and to strengthen legs. I have blogged before about how I don’t self-identify as an old person.1 Inside, I feel that I am 25 years old. Have done for years. Don’t intend to change. And I am highly delighted when I meet similar veterans who feel much younger than their nominal years.

Nonetheless, time passes; and the body conveys its own messages. I am actually now over 30 years old. So herewith my next good resolution: to become more supple; to exercise specifically all my leg muscles (calves, thighs, buttocks); and to do so daily. My wise partner, having kindly read the text to check for spelling errors and typos, notes that ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’. At which, I laugh. Let’s see ….

ENDNOTES:

1 PJC BLOG/121 (Jan. 2021) ‘Being Assessed as a Whole Person’. Also available on PJC website: https://www.penelopejcorfield.com/ Pdf/ 58.

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MONTHLY BLOG 151, Reflections upon Roaming in Rome, after a Return Visit to The City

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Reflected Images of Classical Rome –
in the Classical Forum (2023)

Rome is a matchless city for reflective walkers.1 Ok – best to choose a time of year when the heat is not too intense. And essential not to be in a hurry. But for those who like to stroll, to take in the views, and to reflect upon the workings of time, Rome is matchless.

Superb buildings of all eras are juxtaposed. Some are grand and justly famous. Other beautiful edifices remain relatively unknown, although elsewhere they would be celebrated tourist attractions in their own right. Everywhere there are new vistas to admire; new angles to explore.

Some areas are very crowded – try the zippy evening atmosphere of Trastevere, situated just across the river from the old centre – but there are also high places that offer peaceful panoramas of the cityscape as a whole.

Famously, the city was built upon the ‘seven hills’ of Rome, clustered together in a big bend of the River Tiber. In reality, however, there are more than seven vantage points, as other hills form an irregular wider ring around the centre. My personal favourite is the Gianicolo Hill (the Roman Janiculum). It is situated behind Trastevere, to the west of the old centre. It is not too crowded with visitors. And the views from the top are stunning – try checking the scene from the hilltop piazza with a huge bronze equestrian statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi.

Monuments in Rome are both secular and religious, offering reminders of its past role as an imperial capital – and its continuing role as the headquarters of an international faith, Indeed, the Vatican City was granted jurisdictional autonomy in 1870, when the previous Paper Sates were absorbed into the newly united Kingdom of Italy. Walkers through the Roman streets are thus reminded everywhere of the power that spiritual beliefs can generate.

And, to underline the point, Rome is awash with churches. My personal favourite is the Santa Maria d’Aracoeli. It is one of the oldest Christian churches in the city – and it was pointedly sited on top of the Capitoline Hill, at the physical heart of the Roman Empire. Moreover, the Romanesque edifice features columns that were scavenged from nearby imperial ruins. It was here in 1764, whilst listening to monks chanting in this church, and simultaneously gazing at the surrounding ruins of the once-mighty imperial capital, that the English historian Edward Gibbon first conceived his plan of writing an in-depth analysis of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776).2

Yet the twists and turns of fortune remain unending. Between 1885 and 1935, successive Italian governments supported a further massive new construction adjacent to the same Capitoline Hill. It is named the Monument to Victor Emmanuel II (the first king of united Italy) – also known as the Vittoriano – and sometimes – irreverently – as the ‘wedding cake’. This eye-catching edifice, with its grand flights of stairs, colonnades, and statues, dominates the site and skyline as a secular neo-classical tribute to celebrate Italian Unification. The king himself is not buried here. Instead, the building contains the tomb of Italy’s ‘unknown soldier’.

But what has happened to the old church? It is still there but not easily visible. It’s set back, tucked up and behind the west flank of the Vittoriano. Walkers have to go round the Vittoriano to find a long flight of steps and then climb up to visit the unadvertised church in its historic glory. So historians can now ponder the fluctuating fortunes of townscapes and monuments, as well as those of empires, kingdoms, and religions.

Lastly, walkers in Rome must keep their eyes open. The pavements are irregular and often narrow. They may give way to uneven steps. Stone pathways can be slippery. Tourist crowds can jostle. Traffic is unpredictable. Yet everywhere there are fountains by which to linger – and bars selling fine Italian ice-cream. My favourite place for an evening drink is the Piazza Navona. Its Baroque splendour is superimposed upon the unchanged layout of the sporting stadium built for the Roman Emperor Domitian. Another great monument to time and change! ‘Eternal’ Rome survives by constant updating: not to stay the same; nor to shed the past; but to stay both historic and alive.

ENDNOTES:

1 See the classic account by Stendhal (1783-1842), Promenades dans Rome (Paris, 1829), available in English as A Roman Journal, ed. and transl. by H. Chevalier (London, 1959). And for a contemporary guide, see J. Fort and R. Piercey, Rome Walks (London, 2011).

2 For E. Gibbon (1737-94), author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 6 volumes (1776-88), see C. Roberts, Edward Gibbon and the Shape of History (Oxford, 2014); plus K. O’Brien and B. Young (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Edward Gibbon (Cambridge, 2018).

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MONTHLY BLOG 150, Tribute to the Gracious International City of Geneva – Historic Home of Three Hegemonc Radical Thinkers – and, Additionally, Thronged with Sparrows

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Image1 Male House Sparrow in Fine Voice (2023)

Image1 Male House Sparrow
in Fine Voice (2023)

Reflections upon Geneva, prompted by a recent visit (late May 2023): Geneva is a gracious city, situated at the point where the River Rhône rushes headlong out of Lake Geneva en route for its journey to the Mediterranean. The city is full of trees, and the trees are full of sparrows. Their non-stop cheeping, from dawn to dusk, provides an engagingly cheery urban sound-track. It’s almost enough to make visitors forget the eye-wateringly high prices for everything.1 (So costly is this city that many thousands of its work-force live in nearby France and commute to Geneva daily).

Having ruefully noted that point, there is much to celebrate in a city famed for many things – one being its role as the home of three rebellious and controversial Francophone thinkers, whose ideas remain influential to this day.

One was John Calvin (1509-64), born in northern France. In his lifetime, he had a tumultuous relationship with the city. Yet their names are indelibly linked.2 Geneva was the heartland of the radical Protestant movement, known as Calvinism or Presbyterianism. And the Geneva Bible (translated into brisk English in 1560 by William Whittingham and other Calvinist scholars) had major impact across the English-speaking world. In keeping with the Calvinist lack of flamboyance, there are no great physical monuments to Calvin in today’s multi-cultural Geneva.3 Nonetheless, religious legacies are potent. Hence, in the words of one friend who lives locally, ‘In Geneva today, Calvin is everywhere’. Hard to prove – or to disprove. Yet Geneva is undeniably a ‘serious’ city..

Very different in character and intellect was a second great French thinker who moved to Geneva. He was François-Marie Arouet, known universally by his pen-name Voltaire (1694-1778). Born in Paris, he was a prolific controversialist, philosopher, historian, and all-round man of letters. As a fierce advocate for civil liberties and pungent critic of religious intolerance, Voltaire was not an easy ‘subject’ for absolute monarchs to stomach.

So when, in 1754, he was banned by Louis XV of France, Voltaire moved across the border into republican Geneva. There he purchased a fine city mansion, Les Délices. And, since his relationship with the city government was not always easy, Voltaire also established a grand country abode just outside Geneva at Ferney. From this dual base, he flourished as a celebrity intellectual.4 And that international role is celebrated today by the city of Geneva, which maintains the Institut et Musée Voltaire. And this body is housed in the mansion Les Délices itself.5 So visitors can enjoy its impressive library and memorabilia at the very spot where the great thinker planted his banner of intellectual independence. Voltaire chose Geneva and the city today reciprocates the choice.

The third radical thinker, meanwhile, was Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), the Genevan-born son of a ‘middling-sort’ watch-maker. The young Rousseau had a troubled childhood and, later, spent long periods away from the city. Nonetheless, he often signed his writings as a ‘Citizen of Geneva’. And he won fame as an original educationalist and democratic theorist.6 Among other things, he held that all religions were equally valid if they taught people to live morally as good citizens – a view that outraged Calvinist and Catholic ministers alike – and caused Rousseau’s books to be banned in his native Geneva. At that point, Voltaire offered Rousseau his chateau at Ferney as a refuge (their own intellectual disagreements notwithstanding). But the reply was negative.

Instead, Rousseau embraced a wandering life, in which he often fell out with former friends. He saw himself as a ‘solitary walker’, though his reputation and influence continued to grow. Indeed, in 1794 – sixteen years after his death – Rousseau’s remains were re-interred in the Pantheon at Paris. Revolutionary France thus saluted him posthumously as a prophet of democracy. Geneva meanwhile has a fine statue to Rousseau (installed 1835) on an islet in Lake Geneva. Some city streets are also named after his most famous works. And the Musée Rousseau et Littérature (located in his birth-place in the old city) offers an immersive tour.7 Geneva has long welcomed back its wandering son.

None of these three original thinkers, however, had an easy relationship with the city authorities. All three were too independent to be easily assimilated – and too strong-minded to be intimidated. Collectively, they indicated the power of untrammelled communication: Calvin teaching from the pulpit; Voltaire and Rousseau via print – that modern free-range pulpit – which they used with great versatility.

Geneva’s open society and governance greatly aided all three. The city was then – as it remains – an international communications hub, not subject to close censorship by an autocratic ruler nor to close identification with any one great power. It was a logical venue, later on, for the global headquarters of the new League of Nations (1920-46). Today Geneva continues to flourish, hosting many international enterprises and simultaneously safeguarding its great history but without fussing or fawning. And the cheery sparrows chirp ceaselessly …

ENDNOTES: 

1 But one very helpful feature for visitors, who are booked into approved Genevan hotels, is the free Transport Card, issued by the City of Geneva, which is valid on all buses, trams, and shuttle-boats within the city canton.

2 See R.M. Kingdom, Reforming Geneva: Discipline, Faith and Anger in Calvin’s Geneva (Geneva, 2012); K. Maag, Lifting Hearts to the Lord: Worship with John Calvin in Sixteenth-Century Geneva (Grand Rapids, Mich., 2016).

3 But a statue of Calvin does feature on the ‘Reformation Wall’ (Monument International de la Réformation), located in the grounds of Geneva University. It was constructed in 1906, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Calvin’s birth and the 350th anniversary of the University’s foundation by Calvin: see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformation_Wall.

4 For context, see R. Pearson, Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom (New York, 2005); and I. Davidson, Voltaire: A Life (London 2010).

5 F. Borda d’Agua and F. Jacob, A Short History of Les Délices: From the Property of St Jean to the Institut et Musée Voltaire (Geneva, 2013).

6 H. Rosenblatt, Rousseau and Geneva: From the First Discourse to the Social Contract, 1749-62 (Cambridge, 1997); L. Damrosch, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (Boston, Mass., 2005); L.D. Cooper, Dreaming of Justice, Waking to Wisdom: Rousseau’s Philosophic Life (Chicago, 2023).

7 See https://www.geneve.com/en/attractions/maison-rousseau-et-litterature-mrl.

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MONTHLY BLOG 149, Tracking Down The Fugitive History of the Body Louse

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Image1 Human Body Louse
© Fine Art America 2023

Eighteenth-century Britons knew all about body lice. But – the subject was rarely mentioned. It was not just polite company that avoided any reference; but people in the wider society too. Body lice – those tiny human parasites – were well known as itchy, infernal nuisances. But they were also seen as shameful, which kept people silent on the subject.

One polite eighteenth-century euphemism for a scurrying louse was a ‘little brown gentleman’. Plainer terms that have evolved over time include ‘bugs’; and ‘crabs’ (for public lice); or catchy alliterations like ‘crotch crickets’ and ‘labia lobsters’.1

In fact, body lice commonly lurk in clothing and bedding, where they lay their eggs; and they crawl on human skin chiefly to feast upon human blood. However, lice not only leave a legacy of intense itching, which can in some people generate allergic reactions of deep lethargy and fatigue, but body lice are also carriers of numerous unpleasant fevers, including typhus.2
Scotland’s great bard, Robert Burns, was highly unusual in writing a poem To a Louse (1786).3 Yet he was entirely conventional in heaping abuse on the offending creature, which he glimpsed on a lady’s bonnet, at church.

Ye ugly, creepin’, blastit wonner [wonder],
Detested, shunn’d, by saunt an’ sinner!

And Burns’ poem concluded wryly that the lady’s fine apparel and glossy self-presentation in church was completely negated by the sight of the small creeping louse. Causing him to exclaim, famously:

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!

Unfortunately for social historians, however, it’s rare to find documentation about how people actually coped with the nuisance of body lice. It was one of those things that was collectively known, but hardly ever put down in writing.

An oblique account does survive in the autobiography of Elizabeth Ham, a Somerset yeoman’s daughter, who later became a governess and author. She recollected a painful episode from her childhood in the 1780s. After scratching herself repeatedly, she instantly sent home, where she was abruptly isolated for several ‘comfortless’ days. She was treated with sulphur, while all her clothes and bedding were burned. It all amounted to a ‘purgatory for purification’, she wrote wryly.4 And, interestingly, while this domestic upheaval was clearly designed to rout an infestation of body lice, Ham herself did not name the offending creatures. Thus her short account – one of very few – remained cautious, almost superstitious, in its unwillingness to mention lice specifically.

That social shame is interesting in itself, for historians. But it makes it difficult to track variations in the day-to-day prevalence of body lice, as well as to understand variations in human responses (if any).

Genetic studies suggest that the body louse – pediculus humanus corporis – may have originated even before homo sapiens had evolved as a distinct branch of the Great Apes. Yet, once humans had become numerous – and especially once they invented clothing for regular use – there was immediately a happy partnership (from the louse viewpoint).5 Thereafter, the two species have co-evolved together – and co-migrated together all over the globe – the success of the body louse being limited only by regular counter-attacks by humans.

Historians are deeply grateful for such scientific insights, especially in the absence of other records. It is likely that the prevalence of body lice was widespread throughout history, being greater in those societies that did not encourage regular bathing, and much lesser in those that did. Furthermore, with the industrial production of soap – and the mass manufacture of readily washable cotton clothing from the later eighteenth century onwards – the assumption became more commonplace, that people should not normally be afflicted by these parasites. In those circumstances, people became more willing to allow strangers close to them – for example, when shaking hands.6

Yet, as Elizabeth Ham and her family discovered, there were sufficient numbers of lice, lurking in bedding and clothing, that infestation was always a possibility. In which case, the family swung immediately into action to counter-attack. They were shocked at the news – but they knew what to do – although, in Ham’s case, the family seem to have prioritised draconian action rather than reassurance for the disconcerted child.

So today lice infestation remains a known problem, with known remedies. The topic remains one that is shrouded in semi-secrecy. But, equally, some general propositions are clear. Body lice are commonly found in places where humans live in poverty and in crowded, insanitary conditions, without the chance to wash and/or to change their clothing regularly. Furthermore, heightened outbreaks can spread rapidly in times of crisis, such as in hastily assembled refugee camps, or among people surviving precariously in the aftermath of natural disasters, when normal sanitation is disrupted.

Biology has established a long-standing association between body lice and humans. It is a ‘natural’ relationship. However, it is clear that humans don’t love every manifestation of untrammelled nature.7 They don’t reciprocate the body louse’s deep and instinctive attachment. Will humans one day eliminate entirely their clinging but unloved friends? It is a logical possibility. Humans can live happily without body lice, whilst they depend entirely upon their human ‘hosts’. (Adult lice cannot live for more than 2-3 days without ingesting human blood). So the louse is vulnerable. But its final demise is, alas, not yet imminent.

1 Another variant parasite is the head louse which infests human scalps and has eggs known as ‘nits’. For distinctions between the various forms of lice that infest humans, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_louse.

2 As first noted in the classic study by H. Zinsser, Rats, Lice and History (Boston, 1935), pp. 167-70.

3 R. Burns, The Collected Poems, with Introduction by T. Burke (Ware, Herts., 2008), pp. 138-9.

4 E. Gillett (ed.), Elizabeth Ham by Herself, 1783-1820 (London, 1945), p. 33.

5 R. Kittler, M. Kayser and M. Stoneking, ‘Molecular Evolution of Pediculus Humanus and the Origin of Clothing’, Current Biology, 19:13 (2003), pp. 1414-17: doi: 10.1016/s0960-9822(03)00507-4.

6 See current research in progress.

7 A personal disclosure: in my student days, when travelling the world cheaply and staying in doss-houses, I woke one morning to find myself itching unbearably. I then attributed the condition to ‘bed bugs’. Eventually, the itching ceased after much washing and sea-bathing, followed by moving to new accommodation. However, I can record that I have been personally attacked (once!) by body lice – and, gentle readers, it was not fun.

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MONTHLY BLOG 148, Tracking down Eighteenth-Century Optimists and Pessimists in order to write The Georgians

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If citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2023) 

Image 1 Laughter, being detail from Hogarth’s Laughing Audience (1733);
and Image 2 Tears, being early C19 cartoon in Getty Images 1179326076

This BLOG is also published on Yale University Press website:

https://yalebooksblog.co.uk/2023/03/23/eighteenth-century-optimists-and-pessimists/

Many people have asked, since the publication of my book on The Georgians1 , why I note on the dust-cover that I am an optimist. There is a reason (apart from the fact that it’s true). But to explain, I need to take a step back. So please bear with me while I tell you first about how I decided to introduce my cast of eighteenth-century Britons.

While studying this fascinating and formative period of history, I long pondered how to start my book. In fact, I begin by defining my operative dates and my choice of book title. Then I quickly outline where the Georgian Britons lived – and in what numbers. But what then? I did not want to proceed with well-known stories about great men or great battles or great inventions – though all those things do come into the analysis at suitable points.

So I decided to provide a cultural overview of what people in the eighteenth century thought of their own era. Obviously, the surviving evidence came chiefly from the literate, who were able to record their views – although I also take note of popular songs and sayings. But I searched widely among the less well known and the completely unknown, as well as among the famous. It was the equivalent of tapping into Georgian journalism, both reflecting and trying to influence contemporary attitudes.

And the method that I used was to collect all the eighteenth-century statements that I could find, which took the form of a dictum: ‘It is an age of xxx’ (a common formulation) or a ‘century of xxx’. All these commentaries had to be made in the moment and of the moment. I was not interested (for this purpose) in people’s retrospective verdicts. But I wanted to know what they thought at the time – without any fore-knowledge of the outcome.

It took me years to amass a collection; but there was great fun in the search, as I looked into eighteenth-century novels, plays, poems, letters, diaries, guide-books, journalism, sermons, songs, sayings, and so forth. Usually, the quest was carried on alongside my ‘normal’ research. And it had the very good effect that I always kept my eyes open and was never bored.

Eventually, I had amassed over 700 ‘ages’, from contemporary observers from the mid-seventeenth century up until the present day (2023). Several hundred of them came from Georgian Britons. I then set myself, without any pre-set assumptions, to review and classify them.

A fairly sizable group defined the times in terms of material goods. And that category became more and more notable in the course of the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thus it’s no surprise to find people writing about ‘a telegraph age’ (1868); ‘the age of television’ (1958); ‘the computer age’ (1963); ‘the age of electronic messages (1990); and so forth. (Note that these claims indicate when innovations were noted, not literally their first invention).

Were there equivalents in the eighteenth century? Yes, there were. Thus an onlooker defined the era in 1736 ‘an age of Equipage’2 – the smart term for a coach and a team of horses; or in 1756 as ‘this age of Vauxhalls and Ranelaghs’,3 referring to the new vogue for attending public pleasure gardens.

But much the largest category throughout the collection was the one I classified as ‘mood’. Some of the most frequently repeated claims were those expressing doubt: as in ‘an age of uncertainty’; ‘an age of anxiety’; ‘worrying times’. One British commentator in 1800 was completely woeful: ‘Never was the world in so calamitous or so perilous a state as at this moment’.4 (Hard not to laugh; but it was written in all seriousness).

Other onlookers, meanwhile, were full of hope, detecting ‘light’; ‘improvement’; even ‘an age in which knowledge is rapidly approaching towards perfection’. (The last quotation came from the philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1776, when in euphoric vein).5

Reviewing the gamut of ‘mood music’, it was clear that there was a systematic division between optimism and pessimism. Furthermore, while pessimists always remained vocal, the cultural predominance in Georgian Britain was increasingly tilting in favour of optimism. Eighteenth-century identifications of ‘progress’ in particular fields were becoming welded into the nineteenth-century cliché: ‘an age of progress’. One popular song, circulating in 1830, was full of excited anticipation about the march of inventions. It imagined that people could peep into the future, and the chorus urged:6

Open your eyes, and gaze with surprise
On the wonders, the wonders to come!

Details of these contrasting attitudes are explored in Georgian Britain, ch. 3 ‘Voices of Gloom’ (pp. 41-55); and ch. 4 ‘Voices of Optimism’ (pp. 56-70). The classification refers to viewpoints – not necessarily to individuals throughout a lifetime. Some people’s moods veered frequently. Yet these powerful and rival attitudes vividly introduced the adventurous times through which Britons were living – during an unprecedented era of exploration, spreading literacy, applied inventions, parliamentary rule, popular riots, religious pluralism, sexual frankness and experimentation, colonial acquisition, urban and commercial growth, rising global power – and participation in the contentious trade in enslaved Africans. (For more on all these themes, see within The Georgians).

Finally, having outed countless optimists and pessimists (and a few waverers in between),7 I thought that I should out myself as well. In fact, I am not a Panglossian – unlike the character in Voltaire’s Candide (1759), who believes that ‘All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’. Yet I am psychologically with the growing Georgian mainstream. Let’s innovate for improvement; but, if generating errors (plenty of those in the ei ghteenth century, as the book explains), then let’s speedily reform. And, above all, let’s live with hope. A great motto in itself – and a crucial one for authors!

1 See P.J. Corfield, The Georgians: The Deeds & Misdeeds of Eighteenth-Century Britain (Yale UP, 2022; paperback 2023); and for associated website, entitled Georgian Witnesses, see: www.thegeorgiansdeedsandmisdeeds.com

2 Anon. [E. Jones], Luxury, Pride and Vanity, the Bane of the British Nation (London, 1736), p. 7.

3 J. Buncle [T. Amory], The Life of John Buncle, Esq: Containing Various Observations and Reflections … (London, 1756), Vol. I, p. 460.

4 J. Bowles, Reflections on the Political and Moral State of Society … (London, 1800), p. 128.

5 J. Bentham, A Fragment on Government (London, 1776): preface, opening sentence.

6 Song by W.H. Freeman, Three Hundred Years to Come (c.1835): see https://musescore.com/song/three_hundred_years_to_come_a_comic_song-2326061. One cheerful forecast was that future earthlings would be able to hitch a lift on a passing balloon to attend a party on the moon … Well, not yet!

7 For the debates, see variously T. Harries, The Rule of Optimism (London, 2022); E.C. Gordon, Human Enhancement and Well-Being: The Case for Optimism (London, 2022); but compare with R. Scruton, The Uses of Pessimism and the Dangers of False Hope (London, 2010); and M. van der Lugt, Dark Matters: Pessimism and the Problem of Suffering (Princeton, NJ., 2021).

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MONTHLY BLOG 147, A Great Painted Tribute to an Eighteenth-Century Cultural Ambassador between Global East & West

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Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Omai

Image 1: Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Omai (c.1776)
This cultural ambassador to Britain from the other side of the world
is shown in ‘exotic’ robes and with bare feet –
but his pose is open and friendly,
and his gaze (said to be a good likeness) is candid

As British sailors and explorers increasingly travelled the world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,1 so the public back home clamoured to read all about it. Fictional fantasias like Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) became instant best-sellers. And factual accounts were eagerly consulted too.

In 1703, London society was enthused by the presence of a strange traveller, purporting to have arrived from Formosa (today’s Taiwan).2 He had exotic habits; and recounted tall tales about life in the orient. His Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa (1704) had a huge success – and was quickly translated into German and French. The book included details of the Formosan language; and provided a Formosan translation of the Lord’s Prayer.

Alas, however, it was all invented nonsense. The author turned out to be a mendacious Frenchman, named George Psalmanazar (c.1679-1763). His imposture was soon discovered; and his fame collapsed. Oddly, however, the man himself did not disappear, shamefaced. He continued to live in London as a jobbing writer, and later repented his Formosan hoax. Psalmanazar’s brief surge to fame had, however, undeniably shown that there was great public curiosity to learn about the wider world.

Another exotic visitor reached Britain in the 1770s. But this youthful Polynesian newcomer was the real thing. Omai (c.1751-c.1779), also known as Mai in his own language, was a cultural ambassador, bearing witness to his own people’s distinctive way-of-life.3 In personality, he was gracious, charming and amusing. And he was also willing to learn, managing after a while to speak good English, with his own accent.

Omai had arrived in 1774, on one of the ships returning from Captain Cook’s second voyage of discovery in the Pacific; and was greeted with immense excitement. He socialised with many luminaries, including King George III, Dr Samuel ‘Dictionary’ Johnson, the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, and the novelist Fanny Burney. All who met Omai could observe differences of race, language, culture and clothing – as well as their shared humanity.4

The eminent artist Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) painted Omai as a princely visitor, majestic yet with his feet well and truly on the ground. He was no threat; no monster; no fiction.

Eventually, Omai returned to the island of Tahiti with Captain Cook (1728-79), when the great explorer made his third voyage to the Pacific – a voyage that took Cook on to discoveries, misunderstandings, quarrels and his own death in Hawaii.5 Reflecting upon the impact of the Tahitian traveller, the playwright John O’Keefe sought to dramatise the case for peaceful co-existence. In the pantomime, Omai, the heir to the throne of Tahiti, is due to marry Londina, the daughter of Britannia. Yet they struggle against many obstacles. The play helped to gild the reputations of both Cook and Omai. However, by the time that Omai: Or, a Trip Round the World was first performed in 1785, the real-life hero had died young in Tahiti.

Given that global encounters throughout the eighteenth century were very often marred by misunderstandings and conflicts, Omai’s peaceful embassy was a model for the constructive exchange of global knowledge. He did not do amazing things. Nor did he write his memoirs (shame!). Instead, he was a living cultural ambassador, whose message is as relevant today as it was then.

Today there is a campaign to save the Portrait of Omai for the nation.6 If successful, the painting will be sent on tour in Britain and possibly also at some future date to Tahiti, to continue the mutual cultural exchange that the real man himself undertook. Would Omai, Captain Cook, and Joshua Reynolds (to name but three eminent Georgians) have approved? They certainly would. They valued shared global knowledge; and so must we.

Images 2 and 3: Details from separate portraits of Omai and of James Cook,
here with their heads put together as if conversing,
as they undoubtedly did in real life.

ENDNOTES:

1 P.J. Corfield, The Georgians: The Deeds and Misdeeds of Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, 2022), pp. 20-40.

2 M. Keevak, The Pretended Asian: George Psalmanazar’s Eighteenth-Century Formosan Hoax (Detroit, Michigan, 2004).

3 G. Rendle-Short (ed.), Cook and Omai: The Cult of the South Seas (Canberra, 2001); R.M. Connaughton, Omai: The Prince who Never Was (London, 2005).

4 L.H. Zerne, ‘“Having a Lesson of Attention from Omai”: Frances Burney, Omai the Tahitian, and Eighteenth-Century British Constructions of Racial Difference’, Burney Journal, 10 (2010), pp.  87-104.

5 G. Williams, The Death of Captain Cook: A Hero Made and Unmade (London, 2008); N. Thomas, Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook (London, 2018).

6 J. Gapper, ‘Joshua Reynolds’ “Painting of Omai” is a National Treasure. Why Are We Struggling to Save It’? Financial Times, 23 Feb. 2023 https://www.ft.com/content/bfa30b2c-b1bc-446a-89ad-03b558f37ba5 (consulted 24-4-2023). For information on the appeal, see artfund.org/donate.

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MONTHLY BLOG 146, Towards Democracy: The Significance of Britain’s Eighteenth-Century Electorate

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[Also PJC/website/Pdf70]

Image 1: The Vote of a Poor Man Equalled
the Vote of an Aristocrat’s Younger Son or that of a Wealthy Merchant  
Hogarth’s 1755 image of a wounded and impoverished old soldier,
reaching the head of the queue to cast his vote (in the days of open polling),
was intended satirically.
But it demonstrates that some eighteenth-century voters in Britain were
men from well outside the social elite –
a factor of long-term significance in Britain’s long march towards democracy.
Detail from William Hogarth’s The Humours of an Election, III:
The Polling (1758 engraving of 1755 oil-painting)

Note: This essay appears as a feature ‘Towards Democracy’
in the Newcastle University website for the Project on
Eighteenth-Century Political Participation & Electoral Culture:
see https://ecppec.ncl.ac.uk/features/

Democracy is not a flawless form of government. Nor do all democracies survive for all time. Nonetheless, representative democracies uphold the ideal notion of a rational politics, in which all citizens have an equal vote – all exercise their judgment in choosing representatives, who in turn vote to run the country on behalf of their fellow citizens – and all calmly accept the outcome of a majority vote.1

Such a system was a complete anathema to eighteenth-century believers in absolute monarchy. ‘Democracy’ would equate to rule by the unlettered, irrational, property-less masses. And the result would simply be chaos. Rule by one individual, considered to be divinely instituted, was the countervailing opposite, promoting order, balance, and due protection for property rights.

Transitions from autocracy to democracy have, historically, been very variegated. There are known examples of great revolutions (as in France in 1789), which sought democracy but ended in dictatorship, at least in the short term. And there have been plenty of uprisings in the name of democracy which have briefly flourished but as quickly failed.2

The British case was different. Its progression to democracy was a classic example of slow evolutionary change. Just as successive British monarchs have, after the 1649 execution of Charles I on a charge of High Treason, lost formal governing powers and transitioned into ceremonial figureheads,3 so a countervailing slow trend was leading towards increased popular participation in government, eventually leading to democracy. Changes did not come at a steady pace; but in fits and starts. But, over the long term, they did come – and did so without anything as drastic as a full-scale popular revolution.

There was no gradualist master-plan. But, de facto, Britain took a stepped approach to democracy. In the nineteenth century, the franchise was extended in stages to all adult males (1832; 1867; 1884); while in the later nineteenth century, female rate-payers were allowed to vote in municipal elections after legislation in 1869, before adult women, both rich and poor, gained the parliamentary franchise in two stages in the twentieth century (1918; 1928).4

One key factor that helped to prepare the terrain for democracy was Britain’s eighteenth-century experience of orderly voting in public elections, undertaken by large numbers of adult male voters. It amounted to a constitutionalist tradition which was pre-democratic but which, at the same time, inculcated some core principles later incorporated into democratic politics.

Certainly, there are numerous caveats to be made. The eighteenth-century electoral franchise was not systematic. It varied between the counties and the parliamentary boroughs; and between one of those boroughs and another.5

Furthermore, far from all Britain’s expanding towns had the right to return MPs to Parliament, while – before parliamentary reform in 1832 – some tiny places did. By that date, it had become a glaring anomaly that great centres like Manchester and Birmingham had no direct parliamentary representation. Yet, before 1832, seven Wiltshire electors in the decayed settlement of Old Sarum voted to elect two MPs. In practice, most of the so-called ‘pocket boroughs’ were controlled by the local great landowner, who chose a candidate and bribed or ‘treated’ the electors to get their support. Reformers were scathing. And they renamed these seats as ‘rotten boroughs’ – a hostile term that stuck.6

Nonetheless, throughout the eighteenth century, a number of big cities – notably London, Westminster, Norwich, Bristol, and Newcastle upon Tyne – did have very sizeable electorates. They were far too numerous and sturdily independent to be controlled by rich noble patrons.

And as these thousands of electors voted regularly, they gained electoral experience and proved – to themselves and to the wider world – that men of ‘lower’ status and wealth could participate responsibly in political life. What’s more, in some places (though again, not in all) elections were also held to fill municipal and parochial posts, such as those of beadles, constables, inquest-men and scavengers.

As a result, electors in the open constituencies had the regular experience of deciding to vote – or not to vote – and, if voting, then deciding for whom to vote. For instance, in the London metropolitan region with its many parliamentary constituencies, it is estimated that, between 1700 and 1850, about one third of a million men went to the polls on different occasions, casting between them, including multiple votes in multi-member seats, more than one million votes.7 To repeat: some electors abstained. Others voted rarely; or without deep thought (as can happen today). Yet all lived in a civic culture of regular elections and political debate, where many manifestly did care – and voted to prove it.

Viewed over the long term, eighteenth-century Britain’s lively electoral experiences had three big consequences. Firstly, they established the principle and practice that, among the enfranchised electorate, all voters are equal at the polls. They could and did try to influence one another before any votes were cast. Wealthy men might pay for political leaflets or ‘treat’ voters in the local hostelries. Poor men might demonstrate aggressively; or organise to maximise their support. All these things happened. Yet, at the polls, each vote counted the same. And the victory went to the majority.

Consequently, voting in the large constituencies was a shared experience across the social classes. Queues at polls included politicians and aristocrats (other than titled heads of noble families, who sat in the House of Lords); bankers and plutocrats; professional men and publicans; builders and brokers; plus multitudes of shopkeepers and artisans; and a not insignificant number of labourers, porters, and servants.8 Such cheek-by-jowl voting did not in itself uproot the underlying socio-economic distribution of power and wealth. Yet it marked an egalitarian principle. When polling, all electors are equal: an instructive lesson, in a profoundly unequal society, for all to imbibe.

Secondly, the eighteenth-century’s many elections encouraged the flowering of public political campaigning. Of course, a lot of politicking continued privately, behind the scenes. And publicly, as already noted, it might happen that political calm prevailed in the ‘pocket’ boroughs, whilst ‘election fever’ was rampaging elsewhere.  Nonetheless, in a period when literacy levels were steadily rising – and the output of the press, including satirical squibs as well as serious tracts, was richly diversifying – political awareness was spreading, not only among the electors but also across the wider society.

Image 2: The Excitement of Public Political Campaigns
Detail from Robert Dighton’s depiction of Londoners at the pollsin the Westminster constituency (1788):showing a lively cross-class crowd of electors and onlookers,including an elegant young upper-class gentleman (R)and a plain but not poor citizen (Centre) who is being deftly pick-pocketed –
plus others carrying banners, a woman selling election literature, and a crying child.
Not all were thinking deeply about how to cast their votes
but the hubbub spread the public awareness that ‘the people’ had an electoral role to play. indication of popular participation in politics

This era accordingly saw the advent of systematic electoral campaigning; with organised nation-wide parties (subject to change and flux, as happens today), with rival political slogans and manifestoes; with rival speeches at the hustings; with support from rival newspapers; with teams of canvassers; with ward organisers; with celebrity endorsements; with election songs;  down to the details of rival party colours, sported not only by candidates and canvassers but also by the partisan crowds who gathered to witness the excitements during close contests. Elections thus triggered wider political debates and a sense of civic awareness. The fun of mock elections in part parodied these processes, whilst simultaneously testifying to a popular awareness of their role.

A third consequence, finally, was to establish the expectation that political disputes be settled by constitutional means, rather than by fighting. True, there were many riots and some rebellions in eighteenth-century Britain.9 Yet a counter-vailing constitutionalist tradition was becoming strongly entrenched. Parliament in this era was establishing its core rules and procedures; and its institutional prestige was rising. Equally, too, the electoral system, which voted MPs into office, was gaining in status. Thus election results, after contests in many big constituencies, were often taken to represent ‘public opinion’.10

Incidentally, it’s worth noting that elections were not organised from the centre, by royal courtiers or ministers; but locally, by county and municipal officials. They called the contests; and acted as returning officers. And, if the outcome of a parliamentary election was disputed, the case was referred for adjudication not to royal officials but to Parliament. Voters were thus outriders for the prestige of the legislative body. Hence the growing number of reformers, who, from the 1770s onwards, campaigned to widen the franchise, did so not to undercut the powers of Parliament but to improve them – by improving its electoral base.

In effect, therefore, political reformers from the 1770s onwards were trying to redirect an existing constitutionalist tradition into a democratic direction. And they cited the eighteenth-century’s experience to reassure the doubters. It was true that popular passions at times overran good order. There were numerous election affrays; and a few significant election riots. Yet those were very much the exception. Many elections were quiet and routine – and some were not contested at all, producing a result without any political heat or disputation.

Indeed, that routine functioning marked instead the triumph of constitutionalism. It could encompass concord and it certainly did not depend upon violence and bloodshed. Instead, political reformers stressed that those outside the political elite were capable of taking a sustained and constructive political role. Thus the Whig peer (and historian) Lord Macaulay in December 1831 supported reform, in a famous set of speeches, by stressing the responsible behaviour of the London electors. No extremists there. Instead, the London seats had over many years become ‘famed for the meritorious quality of their MPs and their constituents’ readiness to support that merit’.11

Image 3: A Serious Politician Sustained by his Westminster Electorate  
Charles James Fox (1749-1806) was the controversial Whig reformer who made his name as unofficial Leader of the Opposition to the conservative-minded government of William Pitt.
Fox is satirised here as an overweight, unkempt Demosthenes (the classical Greek orator)
but the image also caught the power of Fox’s oratory as a ‘man of the people’
which won him vital constitutional support from the Westminster electorate.

Full democracy was not a mainstream possibility in eighteenth-century Britain. The national political tradition was one of oligarchic constitutionalism, with before 1832 a highly unsystematic constitution to boot.

Yet, within that lack of system, there was scope for significant new developments. The rules and practices of routine electoral politics were being collectively constructed. Elections were becoming normalised. And the power to vote was accepted as a ‘right’ of every qualified elector. In fact, in the large open constituencies, many comparatively poor electors would not have qualified for the vote under the new middle-class rate-paying franchise introduced in 1832. But, significantly, the reform legislation did not disenfranchise any of those existing electors. They kept their ‘right’ to vote throughout their lifetimes.

Determined political reformers, moreover, wanted more participation, not less. They proposed to extend the franchise to all adult males. A few visionaries talked also of votes for women.

Pathways of historical change were often long and winding. And they are rarely pre-destined. Nonetheless, the electors in eighteenth-century Britain were the historic precursors of Britain’s democratic electors in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. There was a voting tradition long before there was full democracy. These eighteenth-century electors also influenced Britain’s North American colonists, who framed the constitution of the new USA post-1783.12 The republican system was built upon regular elections plus an extensive adult male franchise (to which, later, adult male ex-slaves and, later still, all adult women were added – albeit not without epic struggles).

Britain’s eighteenth-century electoral culture was thus mightily influential. It was imperfect and unsystematic. Yet, in practice, it established: the equality of votes; the arts of public campaigning; and the seriousness of electoral politics. It was a vital history, not of democracy; but of proto-democracy.

ENDNOTES:

1 B. Crick, Democracy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2002); J-W. Müller, Democracy Rules (2021).

2 Among a huge literature, see C. Welzel, ‘Theories of Democratization’, in C.W. Haerpfer and others (eds), Democratization (Oxford, 2009; 2019), pp. 74-91; and M.K. Miller, Shocks to the System: Coups, Elections and War on the Road to Democratization (Princeton, NJ, 2021).

3 B. Hubbard, The Changing Power of the British Monarchy (Oxford, 2018); F. Prochaska, Royal Bounty: The Making of a Welfare Monarchy (New Haven, 1995).

4 For context, see M.N. Duffy, The Emancipation of Women (Oxford, 1967).

5   See F. O’Gorman, Voters, Patrons and Parties: The Unreformed Electoral System of Hanoverian England, 1734-1832 (Oxford, 1989).

6 R. Mason, The Struggle for Democracy: Parliamentary Reform, from the Rotten Boroughs to Today (Stroud, 2015).

7 Documented by Edmund M. Green, Penelope J. Corfield and Charles Harvey, Elections in Metropolitan London, 1700-1850: Vol. 1 Arguments and Evidence; Vol. 2, Metropolitan Polls (Bristol, 2013); and evidence within the London Metropolitan Database.

8 All these occupations, plus many more, appear in the London Metropolitan Database.

9 See e.g. I. Gilmour, Riot, Risings and Revolution: Governance and Violence in Eighteenth-Century England (1992).

10 See summary in P.J. Corfield, The Georgians: The Deeds and Misdeeds of Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, 2022), pp.  180-85.

11 T.B. Macaulay, Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Corrected by Himself (1886), p. 34.

12 See variously R.R. Beeman, Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (New York, 2009); M. Lienesch, New Order of the Ages: Time, the Constitution, and the Making of Modern American Political Thought (Princeton, NJ., 1988; 2016); and ‘A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns, 1788-1825’: https://elections.lib.tufts.edu.

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