Book: Spectres of John Ball
Chapter: ‘Peaceably If We May, Forcibly If We Must’: Ball among the Chartists
Blurb:
This chapter looks at how Ball (often Southey’s) and the rebels of 1381 were a point of reference in Chartist discourse and propaganda in the mid-nineteenth century. This also includes a discussion of the development of an English identity grounded in politics, economic behaviour, culture, etc., rather than a biologically racialised Victorian English identity.