Authors: Hyrum Veach
Mentors: Amy Harris
Insitution: Brigham Young University
The agricultural laborers’ riots that occurred in England from 1830 to 1831, commonly called the Swing Riots, have been well-studied over the past fifty years. In recent years, historians have sought to better understand individual protests were rooted in local causes and social networks, however, there are still gaps in historians’ understanding of how these events related to urban protests going on around the same time. Through an in-depth exploration into the Norwich weavers’ riots in 1829 and the fires in Swanton Abbott, Norfolk in January 1831 this research attempts to show how the changing relationship between urban and rural communities could link urban and rural protest movements in multifaceted ways. Special attention is paid to the lives of some of these protests’ key participants (Richard Knockolds and the Davison brothers), including their backgrounds, motivations, and the ways their actions were memorialized both in the city and the country. When these two protests are situated in the context of urban-rural relations, it becomes clear that they were part of an active renegotiation of the relationship between city and country brought on because the pressures of industrialization were pushing the two together in ways that many found threatening. Each of the people involved had a different vision for what this relationship should look like, as well as a vested interest in ensuring this vision prevailed. By foregrounding how these participants approached the boundaries between urban and rural worlds, this research emphasizes the ways this boundary was a crucial point of contention in early industrial Britain.