Années de crises : le massacre de Peterloo en Grande-Bretagne et dans le monde

The massacre at St Peter’s Field in Manchester on 16th August 1819, when a peaceful meeting for democratic reform, attended by men, women and children from the surrounding Lancashire villages, was suppressed by force, was a significant event in the history of British popular radicalism. It precipitated the decline of the ‘mass platform’ movement which had grown after the end of the Napoleonic Wars and galvanized the last acts of an ultra-radical revolutionary fringe in its last throes by 1820. ‘Peterloo’, as it became known, also had repercussions and echoes in a wider European, colonial and international framework, crystalising, as it did, questions of freedom, oppression and representation. This volume in English and French brings together a collection of new and diverse approaches to this period, and broadly seeks to understand some of the wider implications of Peterloo and its aftermath, as well as question anew its domestic significance over the course of 1819 and 1820.