After the end of the War of Austrian Succession in 1748, thousands of unemployed and sometimes unemployable soldiers and seamen found themselves on the streets of London ready to roister the town and steal when necessary. In this fascinating book Nicholas Rogers explores the moral panic associated with this rapid demobilization. Through interlocking stories of duels, highway robberies, smuggling, riots, binge drinking, and even two earthquakes, Rogers captures the anxieties of a half-decade and assesses the social reforms contemporaries framed and imagined to deal with the crisis. He argues that in addressing these events, contemporaries not only endorsed the traditional sanction of public executions, but wrestled with the problem of expanding the parameters of government to include practices and institutions we now regard as commonplace: censuses, the regularization of marriage through uniform methods of registration, penitentiaries and police forces.

Nicholas Rogers' book gives the reader a detailed and illuminating insight into the world and ways of the press gang. The press gang, and its forcible recruitment of sailors to man the Royal Navy in times of war, acquired notoriety for depriving men of their liberty and carrying them away to a harsh life at sea, sometimes for years at a time. Nicholas Rogers explains exactly how the press gang worked, whom it was aimed at and how successful it was in achieving its ends. He also shows the limits to its operations and the press gang's need for cooperation from local authorities, who were by no means prepared to support it. Written by an expert in the social history of eighteenth-century Britain, it is both well-researched and highly readable.

Crowds have long been part of the historical landscape. Professor Nicholas Rogers examines the changing role and character of crowds in Georgian politics through an investigation of some of the major crowd interventions in the period 1714-1821. He shows how the topsy-turvy interventions of the Jacobite era gave way to the more disciplined parades of Hanoverian England, a transition shaped by the effects of war, revolution, and the expansion of the state and the market. These changes unsettled the existing relationship between crowds and authority, raising issues of citizenship, class, and gender which fostered the emergence of a radical mass platform. On this platform, radical men (and, more ambiguously, women) staked out new demands for political power and recognition. In this original and fascinating study, Professor Rogers shows us that Hanoverian crowds were more than dissonant voices on the margins; they were an integral part of eighteenth-century politics.

Captures the substance and scale of popular politics and protest in Bristol over the course of the long eighteenth century. Bristol from Below captures the substance and scale of popular politics and protest in Bristol over the course of the long eighteenth century. It charts the lives of ordinary Bristolians in the making of their city and devotes particular attention to their relationship with the mercantile elites who dominated the city's governing institutions. While not ignoring the contribution of the middling sort to the cultural and political life of the city, the book focusses upon the interaction between authority and plebeian sentiment as a way of analysing the complexities of popular interventions in politics and society. It casts new light on the social dynamics of Bristol's 'goldenage' and how it is remembered in today's city. It also addresses the general themes of class, authority, custom and law that have long engaged eighteenth-century historians. Bristol From Below will have a broad appeal to scholars and students of eighteenth-century social, economic and political history as well as to urban and regional historians and to those interested in the time when Bristol was England's 'Second City'. STEVE POOLE is Professor of History and Heritage at the University of the West of England, Bristol. NICHOLAS ROGERS is Distinguished Research Professor in History at York University, Toronto.

Far from the romanticised image of the swashbuckling genre of maritime history, the eighteenth-century Caribbean was a 'marchlands' in which violence was a way of life and where solidarities were transitory and highly volatile. This book paints a picture of the eighteenth-century British Caribbean as a frontier zone in which war, international rivalry, disease and slavery are paramount themes. It explores the lure of the region as a vaunted site of potential wealth and derring-do, the fragility of tropical campaigns, the nature of slave insurrection, and the efforts of indigenous peoples (here, the Miskito of the Mosquito Coast and the Black Caribs of St Vincent) to carve out some autonomy from the British and Bourbon powers. It also explores the mutiny of a slave-ship and its unsuccessful raiding ventures in order to show how the dominant European powers sought to contain piracy in an expanding plantation complex. The book emphasizes the contrarieties of struggle, the difficulties preventing subaltern groups, whether slaves, free blacks, indigenous peoples or soldiers and sailors, from forging broader alliances, and the importance of tropical disease in shaping military outcomes. It warns against romanticizing resistance in the eighteenth-century Caribbean, showing that it was instead a 'marchlands' in which violence was a way of life and where solidarities were transitory and highly volatile.

Roger Avery's adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' dark and controversial novel about a group of amoral, and wealthy, East Coast college students. Sean (James Van der Beek) lusts after the unapproachable Lauren (Shannyn Sossaman); Lauren is seeing Victor (Kip Pardue), a handsome and egotistical ladies' man; Victor is also secretly seeing Lauren's room-mate Lara (Jessica Biel); Lauren's ex, Paul (Ian Somerhalder), has become smitten by Sean; and affable Rupert (Clifton Collins Jr) has become the campus drug dealer, readily supplying his classmates with cocaine. Soon their lives move into a more serious gear as Sean finds himself dealing drugs in order to pay debts and encouraging Paul to become one of his customers.

This collection of essays examines the different forms of unfree labour that contributed to the development of the Atlantic world and, by extension, the debates and protests that emerged concerning labour servitude and the abolition of slavery in the West.

Between 1500 and 1900, the various parts of the Atlantic world became increasingly integrated into an expanding capitalist economy. This collection of essays examines the different forms of unfree labour that contributed to the development of this world and, by extension, the debates and protests that emerged concerning labour servitude and the abolition of slavery in the West. Comparative in perspective, the essays focus on particular regions (Africa, Britain, the Caribbean and Amerindia) and on specific types of labour (slavery, pawnship, impressment, tribute, indentured and contract labour) in ways that transcend traditional areas of specialization. Together they offer new insight into the patterns and intensity of labour servitude in the West and into the relationships between core and peripheral areas of the first capital world economy.

Boasting a rich, complex history in Celtic and Christian ritual, Halloween has evolved from ethnic celebration to a blend of street festival, fright night, and vast commercial enterprise. In this colorful history, Nicholas Rogers takes a lively, entertaining look at the cultural origins and development of one of the most popular holidays of the year.

Whigs and Cities is the first major study of the urban politics of the early Hanoverian era. The book challenges the view that the political nation was of minimal significance, highlighting the critical contribution of the larger towns to the agitations which beset Walpole and swept Pitt to power. At the same time the book is attentive to the different rhythms and trajectories of urban politics and seeks to show, through a study of Bristol, Norwich, and the metropolis, the relative strength of the opposition sentiment and its social configurations, the persistence of local antagonisms, and the interplay of economic interest and political clientage. It ends with a discussion of crowds and political festivals which sheds new light on the grass-roots dynamics of urban political culture.

The period from 1688-1820 was marked throughout with riots and rebellions, seditions and strikes, as the lower classes rebelled against the state bias towards the interests of higher social groups.

This book draws together the implications of recent work on demography, labour, and law. By focusing on the experience of the eighty percent of the population who made up England's `lower orders', Douglas Hay and Nicholas Rogers accord new significances to food shortages, changes in poor relief, use of the criminal law, and the shifts in social power caused by industrialization which would bring about the birth of working-class radicalism.