Stadt, Land und suburbaner Raum als Orte des Widerstands: Das britische Empire im 18. Jahrhundert

Critically examining the social-historical assumption that urban and rural settlements separated in the course of the eighteenth century, this article analyses overlaps and interdependencies between town and countryside in the British Empire. The Jacobite rebellions after 1688, the American Revolution and the Irish Rebellion of 1798 deserve to be studied in terms of a growing anti-centralism and anti-globalism in Britain and the colonies. Many eighteenth-century uprisings were, in fact, transregional and transcended the traditional socio-cultural stratification of society. Although rural areas were often infrastructurally disadvantaged, they nevertheless participated in overarching concepts of nationhood and counter-global networks. Furthermore, the Sacheverell Riots of 1710 as well as the anti-Catholic riots of 1778 to 1780 suggest a great political relevance of the suburban space. As zones of transition and social mobility, the outskirts of eighteenth-century towns and cities were vital hubs of communication and radicalisation. A clearer physical and discursive separation of urban and rural cultures only emerged in the nineteenth century when economic and demographic change fostered unprecedented class-distinction.