Intergroup dynamics within the 1831 reform riots: towards a new social psycho-history

1831年10月，第二次改革法案在上议院遭到否决后，骚乱浪潮席卷了整个英格兰。这些“改革骚乱”始于东米德兰兹郡（德比郡、诺丁汉）的严重骚乱，随后是西部和西南部城镇的骚乱。这股浪潮在布里斯托达到顶峰，发生了世纪英国最严重的骚乱。持续了三天，人群烧毁了几个主要机构，并释放了四个监狱的囚犯。对布里斯托骚乱的历史分析导致了两种主要的叙述;第一种将事件描述为一个愚蠢的、非理性的、醉酒的“暴徒”的犯罪行为，第二种将其描述为一场改革抗议。然而，这两种说法都不能令人满意地解释抗议如何发展成如此大规模的集体暴力，也不能解释骚乱者的议程如何在三天内改变，这反映在他们选择的目标上。同样，“改革骚乱”在全国范围内的蔓延在很大程度上仍然无法解释。这些事件和布里斯托有什么关系？拟议中的研究为历史学家开辟了新天地，因为它将使用社会心理学的概念和原则进行，社会认同研究人员成功地解释了骚乱人群的行为限制;当局在此类骚乱动态中的作用;以及骚乱在不同地理位置传播的过程。共享社会身份允许群体作为一个整体行动，并通过群体规范的概念指定什么是适当的行为。由于社会身份是基于与其他群体的关系，当这些关系发生变化时，社会身份也会发生变化，包括群体规范和采取集体行动的能力。因此，这种社会认同方法有助于解释群体事件升级为冲突和混乱的蔓延;为什么有些群体加入了骚乱浪潮，而另一些则没有。迄今为止，社会认同的方法还没有被应用于现代后期（1750-1900年）的骚乱，这是本项目的目的之一。此外，我们将批判性地评估我们的研究和分析，以创建一个用户友好的程序，历史学家和其他应用社会身份的概念，以分析类似的近代动乱。研究涉及收集有关所有的改革相关的动乱在1831年10月的证据，以产生三角帐户的每一个事件。特别令人感兴趣的是群众和当局的行动。例如，参与者如何获得关于动乱浪潮中以前的动乱的信息，人群为什么、如何和在哪里聚集，领导层如何出现，以及选择了哪些行动目标。同样，我们感兴趣的是当局的行为，他们是否在事件发生之前就意识到了，他们在骚乱之前和骚乱期间是如何反应的，以及使用了什么样的胁迫（如果有的话）来处理骚乱。然后，研究将侧重于参与者的心态和感受。特别重要的将是解释人群成员动机的证据来源;他们如何对改革抗议的信息作出反应;他们对合法性的看法;以及他们如何理解自己和他们作为社会群体的“反对派”。所需的证据种类包括目击者对人群讨论、高呼或质问内容的描述，到回忆录，以及传单、海报和横幅等视觉和材料来源。结合这两种描述并分析使用社会身份概念将帮助我们了解抗议活动如何发展成为集体暴力以及它们如何在城市、地区和国家蔓延，在一个新的框架中，可以在未来应用于其他波动。

In October 1831 a wave of disturbances swept across England after the rejection of the Second Reform Bill in the House of Lords. These 'reform riots' began with serious disorder in the East Midlands (Derby, Nottingham) followed by unrest in towns in the West and Southwest. The wave culminated in Bristol with the most serious riot in nineteenth century Britain. Lasting three days, crowds destroyed several major institutions by fire and released prisoners from four jails. The riot was violently suppressed by military units with hundreds of people killed and wounded.Historical analysis of the Bristol riot has led to two principal narratives; the first characterises the event as the criminal actions of a mindless, irrational, drunken 'mob', and the second as a reform protest. However, neither of these accounts satisfactorily explains how the protest developed into collective violence on such a scale nor how the agenda of the rioters, reflected in their choice of targets, changed over three days. Equally, the spread of the 'reform riots' across the country remains largely unexplained. What were the relationships between these events and Bristol? The proposed research breaks new ground for historians in that it will be carried out using concepts and principles from social psychology, where social identity researchers have had success in explaining the limits of behaviour in rioting crowds; the role of authorities in the dynamics of such riots; and the process through which rioting spreads across different geographical locations. Sharing social identity allows a crowd to act as one and also specifies what counts as appropriate behaviour, through the notion of a group norm. Since social identities are based on relationships with other groups, when these relationships change so do social identities - including group norms and ability to take collective action. This social identity approach can therefore help explain the escalation of crowd events into conflict and the spread of disorder; why some groups join in with a wave of rioting but others do not. The social identity approach has not, hitherto, been applied to disturbances in the late-modern period (1750-1900), which is one aim of the present project. In addition, we will critically evaluate our research and analysis in order to create a user-friendly procedure for historians and others applying social identity concepts to analyse similar late-modern disturbances.The research involves collecting evidence about all of the reform related disturbances in October 1831 in order to produce triangulated accounts of each event. Of particular interest would be the actions of the crowds and the authorities. For example, how participants gained information about previous disturbances in the wave of unrest, why, how and where the crowd assembled, how leadership emerged and what targets were selected for action. Similarly, we are interested in how the authorities behaved, whether they were aware in advance of the event, how they reacted before and during the disturbance and what kind of coercion (if any) was used to deal with the disorder. The research will then focus on the mentalities and feelings of the participants. Of particular import will be sources of evidence that explicate the motivations of crowd members; how they reacted to information about reform protests; their perceptions of legitimacy; and how they understood themselves and their 'opposition' as social groups. The kinds of evidence required range from eye-witness accounts of what crowds were discussing, chanting or heckling, to memoirs, and visual and material sources such as hand-bills, posters and banners.Combining these two kinds of accounts and using social identity concepts analytically will help us understand how protests developed into collective violence and how they spread across cities, regions and the country, in a new framework that can be applied in the future to other waves of disturbances.