The Essence of ‘the People’: Citizenship, Class Accommodation and the Construction of Political Identities in Britain, c. 1640–1850
‘The people’ is an ever present feature of modern politics. This essay offers a historico-sociological assessment of that political identity as fundamental for bourgeois hegemony. English populism is crucially important because the meaning of ‘the people’ was shaped during the English Revolution to allow the bourgeoisie to challenge the old ruling class while achieving hegemony over the masses. This 17th-century populism is the original model on which the basic structure of populist mobilization (the undifferentiated ‘people’ against the ‘elite’) has been patterned subsequently; and, in the 19th century, it thoroughly shaped the political outlook of the first proletariat in the first industrial nation, thus setting an example of immense historical relevance.