Casualties of History: "Held Down by Force"

In this episode we discuss Chapter 15, "Demagogues and Martyrs." The period immediately after peace in 1815 saw both a rapid rise in militancy and intense repression, such that an increasingly agitated and radicalized population had no organizational capacity to express its militancy. This gave rise to personalized leadership around individual demagogues and to an oscillation between insurrectionary and constitutionalist approaches. We also discuss the Peterloo massacre, which is narrated in this chapter, and Mike Leigh's recent film Peterloo on the subject.