Georgian Elections: the Basics

An introduction to what happened at a typical eighteenth-century English election [15-minute read] Elections were a key component of a continual cycle of renewing and maintaining relationships between politicians and their constituents in the eighteenth century. The years between elections provided opportunities for politicians and political families to generate goodwill with their local communities through […]

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Slavery, Abolition & Black Voters

Slavery and abolition could be contentious platform issues in 18th-century England [15-minute read] Understandings of Slavery In eighteenth-century political discourse, ‘slavery’ was a potent but often imprecise term, used across the century to describe many kinds of personal, political or religious oppression rather than specifically the ownership of people as property, as we now generally […]

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Electorates and Turnout

An introduction to how many people could, and did, vote in the eighteenth century [5-minute read] The ‘electorate’ is the group of individuals who were entitled to vote in an election. This is different from the number of people who actually cast their votes at a poll, a group which we might call the ‘voterate’. […]

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Controverted Elections

Disputed results were common, often taking months of legal wrangling to resolve [10-minute read] The majority of eighteenth-century elections went uncontested, which is to say that an agreement had been reached in the constituency not to put up rival candidates, allowing the nominated candidates to be returned unopposed. However, when an opposition did materialise, and […]

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Canvassing

The canvass aimed to get the vote out, but also linked candidates to communities [25-minute read] Canvassing was, according to David Eastwood, ‘the critical electoral institution of later-Hanoverian England’, or, as Frank O’Gorman has argued, the ‘critical point of contact’ between the electoral system and the voters prior to Reform.[1] Canvasses were organized by local […]

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Poll Books: a History

Edmund Green gives the definitive guide to their varieties, formats and contexts [40-minute read] Voting is a means of aggregating individual preferences into collective decisions, and through which the authority to enforce those decisions is legitimated.[1] The point of voting is to have one’s vote counted. This makes the study of historical voting unusual, in […]

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Violence and Riot

Disorder was endemic in 18th-century elections, among voters and non-voters alike [15-minute read] Georgian elections were often noisy, contentious, and sometimes even violent civic occasions. Voters and non-voters alike were active, engaged participants, sometimes using whatever they could get their hands on to express their pleasure or displeasure. Liberal treats of alcohol made violence and […]

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Election Balls

Find out how dancing was used to mobilize voters and their families. [5-minute read] In eighteenth-century elections, candidates were not just assessed on their speeches and campaign promises, they were also measured by the way they carried themselves, whether on the hustings or in the ballroom. While dancing may seem like an activity designed solely […]

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Mock Elections

One of the most curious and ludic phenomena of 18th-century popular politics [5-minute read] June 1768. Fifes, French horns, drums, and marrow bones can be heard in the streets of Wandsworth, now in south-west London but then still largely rural. A crowd has gathered, lining the high street in the tiny village of Garratt. Men […]

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