Captain Swing

by E. J. Hobsbawm & George Rude

Two of the world's great Marxist historians present a classic social history of the Great English Agricultural Uprising of 1830. For generation upon generation, the English farm laborer lived in poverty and degradation. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, however, new forces came into play--and when capitalism swept from the cities into the countryside, tensions reached the breaking point. From 1830 on, a series of revolts, known as the "Swing," shook England to its core. Here is the background of that upheaval, from its rise to its fall, and the people who tried to change their world. A masterpiece of British history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, British Literature, 19th Century, World History, Politics, European History

380 pages, Paperback

First published February 6, 1969

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Oh Captain Swing, he'll come in the night
To set all your buildings and crops alight
And smash your machines with all his might
That dastardly Captain Swing!”
“You are to notice that if you doant put away your thrashing machine against Monday next you shall have a "SWING".”
“Sir, This is to acquaint you that if your threshing machines are not destroyed by you directly we shall commence our labours. Signed on behalf of the whole... Swing.”
Published in 1969 this is an analysis and examination of the Captain Swing riots in 1830. It’s written by Eric Hobsbawm and George Rude; eminent Marxist historians. This is heavily based on detailed evidence with a detailed appendix. They explain their purpose:
“we are now able to ask new questions about [the riots]: about their causes and motives, about their mode of social and political behaviour, the social composition of those who took part in them, their significance and their consequences […]. The task of this book is therefore the difficult one, which nowadays – and rightly – tempts many social historians, of reconstructing the mental world of an anonymous and undocumented body of people in order to understand their movements, themselves only sketchily documented”
They detailed who the rioters were in each area and details of convictions and punishments. The riots took place primarily in the south and east of England, as far north as Lincolnshire and west to Wiltshire. The riots focussed on the breaking of threshing machines (which were perceived as causing unemployment) and the low level of wages Hobsbawm and Rude consider the origins of the riots including food shortages, low wages, enclosure (in some areas) and the ongoing recession following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. They also explain the role of the Speenhamland system, which was a method of poor relief introduced in 1795, which turned into a poverty trap.
This is a detailed piece of work and although historiography has developed since then, it still stands the test of time. The research is meticulous. There is also an illuminating section on what happened to those of the rioters who were transported to Australia.
There are lots of quotes. Some of them quite revealing. This one from the Duke of Wellington, the then Prime Minister sums up some of the attitudes of the aristocracy:
“I induced the magistrates to put themselves on horseback, each at the head of his own servants and retainers, grooms, huntsmen, game keepers, armed with horsewhips, pistols, fowling pieces and what they could get and to attack, in concert, if necessary, or singly, those mobs, disperse them, and take and put in confinement those who could not escape. This was done in a spirited manner, in many instances, and it is astonishing how soon the country was tranquillised, and that in the best way, by the activity and spirit of gentlemen"
This is dense and detailed but does highlight agricultural uprisings that are largely forgotten.

[Richard Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent survey of the causes and effects of the discontent in rural England in 1830. It describes the typical repression used by the ruling classes whenever property was threatened - of some 2000 cases heard, some 252 were sentenced to death although 19 were eventually executed, the rest were transported to Australia (about 230 of a total of 505) sent off to do no more damage to the interests of property.

Declaration of bias.

My great great grandfather was one of the number sentenced to death and subsequently transported for life - the authorities refused to support his wife and family joining him.

[tara bomp · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Duke of Wellington later boasted of having hunted down Hampshire rioters like game or cattle:

I induced the magistrates to put themselves on horseback, each at the head of his own servants and retainers, grooms, huntsmen, game keepers, armed with horsewhips, pistols, fowling pieces and what they could get and to attack, in concert, if necessary, or singly, those mobs, disperse them, and take and put in confinement those who could not escape. This was done in a spirited manner, in many instances, and it is astonishing how soon the country was tranquillised, and that in the best way, by the activity and spirit of gentlemen"

Lord Melbourne said:

"[Threshing] machines are as much entitled to the Protection of the Law as any other Description of Property and... the course which has been taken of prescribing or recommending the Discontinuance of them is, in fact, to connive at, or rather to assist in the Establishment of a Tyranny of the most oppressive Character"

paints a really clear and depressing picture of the sufferings of the agricultural labourer by 1830 through a combination of higher prices, enclosed common land, a drive to rationalise and economise on the part of the farmers, the stripping of customary rights, the moving of wages onto a weekly, daily or even hourly payment.

talks about how many of the rebels still believed in higher authority and thought that the king and parliament might be on their side against their problems and local gentry. their demands were generally for restoration of rights and never went as radical as demands for land. they also made use of traditional rituals and were often part revel, including requests for the rich to give money which was twisted into "extortion" by prosecutors.

it's funny also how there was a desperate search for agitators to explain the revolt rather than looking at the actual awful conditions experienced which made people rise up independently

the poor law which subsidised wages is shown as contributing by making employers pay next to nothing and forcing labourers into only having whatever subsistence wages the gentry thought best, which was usually tiny.

Probably the big thing about this book is it's very focused on using statistics and describing specific incidents - it's not a "narrative" history. It's divided into
- a section describing the economic and social conditions of labourers in the years leading up to 1830 along with a potted history
- a section that describes the spread of the riots in each region and each incident that happened on what date
- an analysis of what factors correlated with riots, what social classes were on which side, who was responsible for things like arsons, machine breakings and the threatening Swing letters
- a section detailing what sort of repression was involved, the punishments meted out, what happened to those transported to Australia, and what the aftermath was

One of the interesting things is how often farmers stood tentatively on the side of the farm labourers, trying to turn their demands into attacks on rents/taxes/tithes, sometimes directly supporting attacks on the clergy in their homes. It's also mentioned that many farmers were happy for the general smashing of machines - threshing machines were expensive with a small increase in profitability and made the poor rates more expensive for everyone because of the reduction in labour yet it was hard to stop their use because 1 single farmer might gain an advantage from it, so stopping any voluntary agreement. It's very Marx-like. The generalised smashing of the machines provided a neat solution.

There is a LOT of data given and attempted analysis of it, although the analysis feels pretty limited? They admit in the introduction that they couldn't do as much as they wanted, if only for manpower reasons because there's so much to sift through for even parts of counties, and it was written in 1969 so obviously there was far less access to data analysis tools etc. It'd be very interesting to read something that also was aimed at an audience like this one that took the data much further. The data is definitely interesting, just harder to make something of when there's so much of it and not necessarily always in the most useful form.

Still, there's enough narrative to make sense of it all - there's no attempt to like "liven it up" but the details of the specific events mentioned are often really interesting and fascinating and give it depth/character because these are often named people with some details about their lives. Reading details of people from Kintbury confronting the local grandees is inspiring - one of the leaders says

You and the gentleman have been living upon all the good things for the last ten years. We have suffered enough, and now is our time, and we will now have it. You only speak to us now because you are afraid and intimidated

The section on Australia provides some interesting detail about how the transportation system worked, although it's a bit too heavy on just dates and numbers for me. The conclusion is interesting - suggesting that the rebellions pushed forward the reform act through the fear by the ruling classes that a link up between the countryside and towns could cause a revolution. The labourers were also very effective at stopping the use of machines, destroying more than the Luddies and stopping their use for decades. They conclude that the rioters were far more powerful than most have given them credit for, just hamstrung by their own inhibitions and lack of better organisation. They make a convincing argument for looking again at the countryside in history as a source of discontent and rebellious activity when it has too often been ignored for just the towns - with history drawing a complete veil over country life for the average person.

One thing I'll complain about - they say that some people have seen it as accelerating "the decline of their class into that slow moving, ox like, passive and demoralized mass, a sort of native southern Negro community, which was all that so many of their Victorian superiors saw in the English villages". Even though it's partially describing other people's views, it still talks about race in what is to me a pretty crappy way and it glosses over the long history of slave revolts in the USA, which is crappy/racist and also a shame in a book looking at another group of people often presented as passive.

Still, overall it's a great book about an interesting and little-talked about topic that deserves more attention. Apologies for any incoherence

[Martin Empson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Later works on the Captain Swing events have criticised Hobsbawm and Rude's book for statistical imperfections and neglecting the gender question. But while it has its imperfections it is a solid history that builds on the work of the Hammonds and puts events in a much wider context. If later works are improvements, they've only done so by standing on the shoulders of this giant of social history.

[Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

A scholarly look at the Gordian riots, this is both in depth and full of intense detail. It makes for quite heavy reading so should be read in chunks, but there's no denying the breadth and depth of research which have gone into this book's production. A thorough investigation and exploration of a little-known event in history.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the late Fall 1830, agricultural laborers organically and sporadically rose up all across Southern and Eastern England to riot against low wages. They burnt crops and barns. But primary among their stated aims was the destruction and disuse of Threshing Machines. At the end of the harvest and all during winter, laborers were kept employed threshing the straw from the grain. They used to do this by beating it. The machine could do it with far less labor and finish the job long before winter ended.

As part of the lore, some laborers would send anonymous letters signed "Captain Swing" to the farmers telling them to cease the use of their machines and raise wages or they will be visited by arson and destruction.

This book, originally published in the 1960's, is a dense catalogue of the events. To read it, one needs to plow through it. You will be rewarded with a rich harvest.

"We don't want to do any mischief, but we want that poor children when they go to bed should have a belly full of tatoes instead of crying with a half belly full," wrote Henry Hunt, one of the riot leaders.

This is a key turning point in the history of labor. The industrial revolution had begun 50 years earlier, but had failed to benefit the agricultural laborer. The threshing machine was invented in Scotland (home of the Scottish enlightenment, such as James Watt steam engine), and gradually made its way down South. With the invention of the lighter, mobile threshing machine, more and more farmers adopted it.

The Swing Riots were located in farming communities, not in the industrialized manufacturing town centers. Manufacturing wages were higher than the farm workers' wages.

Initially, like all domestic violent unrest, everyone blamed the Irish or the French. Those who actually paid attention realized they were all discontented local laborers. In the end, hundreds were transported to Australia where they lived upright lives. A small handful were executed. Some achieved wage raises, but nothing permanent. The wages for the farm laborers did not start rising until 1850.

We would have to wait until the 1870's to see unions organized. The problem is an economy of subsistence wages always has too many eager starving workers. You can't go on strikes, when there is a reserve army of the unemployed ready to fill the ranks. By 1850, the labor market had finally began to tighten, and by 1870, labor had enough bargaining power to start organizing.

The thresher machines remained mostly in disuse for the next 20 years, as well.

While I'm against Ludditism and this particular Captain Swing variant. Machines and increased labor productivity are the essential key to long run economic growth and universal prosperity. The lessoned learned from the Swing riots are the need to distribute the gains from technological progress. Folks, rightly, will not stand to starve, while others are being enriched. I worry we have forgotten those lessons, today.

[Rhuff · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best explorations of the rural “Swing” riots of pre-Victorian England. Veteran socialist scholars Rude and Hobsbawm explore the social and economic straits of the English country laborer, in many respects no different from black US cottonpickers despite their color. Unlike US fieldhands and sharecroppers displaced by mechanical pickers in the 1950s, their English village counterparts fought back to protect their livelihoods, precarious as they might be, as better than eviction and starvation.

One of the more interesting insights here is that, counter-intuitively, many of their farmer employers supported the breaking of “thrashing” machines – especially the smaller majority. These small farmers were being forced to mechanize to stay abreast of larger landowners, who were turning technology to competitive advantage. Returning to hand labor put everyone back on a more equal footing. Imagine respect for human labor and dignity over the machine – unthinkable in our progressive age!

Of course, there were repercussions for terrorism. The British penal system had, like Gitmo, its own island penal colony in Australia – two of them, to break and dispose pf convicted dissidents. But this did not stop agitation, town and country alike, throughout the 19th century. In the sweep of history, the riots of the anonymous “Captain Swing” and his troops were but a dustpan: but one that choked the right lungs at the right time and, like “General Ludd,” left their marks on the seats of power.

[David Warner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a classical Marxist interpretation of the rural rebellion of labourers and farmers that swept across southern England in the autumn and early winter of 1830, written by two respected historians of modern popular movements and protests. As such, the approach is overtly socio-economic and class-based, with an undervaluing of ideological and political motives and individual agency, as one would expect from strictly authodox Marxists, however it remains the most comprehensive exploration of the Swing Riots, as both local phenomena and regional and national movements. It therefore provides an important introduction to this too-long neglected social rebellion, and, as it expertly embeds the events of 1830 within the background context of post-1815 rural history, is to be highly recommended as the best primer in its field, with the caveats that it is of its historiographical time, in its analysis can be somewhat doctrinaire, and has been superceded since its publication, if not in content and scholarship, by more pluralistic analyses of modern social history and popular movements.

[Henry BADNEWS · Rating 5 out of 5]

When i get old, i want to be Eric Hobsbawm

If you are familiar with more accessible Hobsbawm stuff like the "Eras trilogy" or his "History of the XX century", maybe you will feel "Captain Swing" unnecesary and far from the framework of an all-around study. For enthusiasts or completionists only.

But if you are keen on "Primitive Rebels" or "Industry and empire" and you feel eager to dig deeper in the early industrial revolution from a social-history prism, you will ENJOY this monographic analysis. Don't let the title mislead you. This is not a cronicle about the Robin Hoodesque legendary character. You will get the full picture of Ludism and his look-alike rebellions.This is British Social History at his best, drinking from the same well of EP Thompson magnus opus.

[Chance Tolman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hobsbawm always delivers.

[Simon Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

SWINGERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!

In "Captain Swing" Marxist historians George Rude and Eric Hobsbawm collaborated on a detailed examination of the Swing Riots that swept through the rural districts of southern and eastern England in late 1830 through to early 1831. The rioters were motivated by their miserable living conditions during the protracted post-Napoleonic War slump, the introduction of threshing machines which curtailed their opportunities for winter work in agricultural areas, and the oppressive nature of overseers of the poor that went hand in hand with a gradual diminishing of the levels of outdoor relief from the relatively generous norms that applied after the Speenhamland decision of 1795.

The book is divided into four parts. "Before Swing" sets the scene with an examination of the historical context within which Swing occurred in relation to the development of agriculture in England, how the rural poor were dealt with, an appreciation of the world of the early 19th century village, before ending with a detailed look at developments in what was one of the most miserable periods for ordinary people in English history, the period after the Napoleonic Wars ended.

"The Rising" is a forensic account of the rising in the different regions that were affected by Swing, and ends with a general summary of the distribution of rioting, and the different character that the riots took in different areas. "The Anatomy of Swing" is a more detailed look at the patterns of revolt, those who were the victims of Swing (primarily farmers in some areas, the receivers of tithes in others, factory owners in a few areas) and who were their allies (often artisan workers, farmers - who supported Swing rioters when they thought they could be used to batter down their onerous tithe payments in return for an increase in wages).

Finally the authors look into the aftermath of the riots, the legal process as it took effect in the early swing areas of the south-eastern, and where in some cases the magistrates dispensed justice with relative leniency, to the rest of the country where a special commission dealt with rioters more brutally: in the end some 500 were transported to Australia and 19 hanged. The rioters themselves hadn't taken a single life and never intended too: property was their target, but judging by the number of executions and the number of those whose families and communities were torn apart by transportation the English ruling class judged the protection of property to be more important than life. Ironically (or par for the course) many of those transported ended up in Tasmania where the colonial policy vis-a-vis the aboriginals was functionally genocidal. The accounts of the life experience of those transported and who left their mark in official records, or other written matter behind them are fascinating.

I greatly enjoyed "Captain Swing" - more so than many of the books Hobsbawm wrote by himself so for me the collaboration with George Rude was a productive one, and though on occasions, particularly the numerous lists of villages through which the Swing riots spread given in the second part, it can be a little tedious, overall it delivers a fascinating and forensic re-creation of what was perhaps the last widespread peasants revolt in England.

Other books in a similar vein that are worth reading include E.P.Thompsons magisterial "The Making of the English Working Class"; Christopher Hills look at the lower orders in revolt during the revolutionary period (1640's and 50's) "The World Turned Upside Down" and his collection of essays on the 18th century "Liberty Against the Law" and Peter Linebaughs "The London Hanged".

[Johanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Its ok but dated and rather one-sided - my least favourite Hobsbawm