Background to Wilkes - the Age of George III 1760-1789

Question 1

Reform Movements, 1763-1789, O’gormon

What CANNOT explain radical reform movements of the 18th Century?

Answer 1

‘The reform movements of this period have customarily been seen as the ancestor and origin of the reform movements of the early nineteenth century and thus of the Reform Act of 1832.

In the face of such an emotive, thematic interpretations, a few warnings need to be issued. Most contemporaries were in fact content with their parliamentary system and the electoral structure which underpinned it….the old electoral system…lasted as long as it did because it me[t] contemporary standards.

‘radical reform was not simply a response to an increase in population’

‘the demand for reform was not simply a product of rapid industrialisation: in the 1760s industrialisation had hardly begun’

not linked to urban activity specifically as it could be found in rural areas

Not to do with Middle Class - many in middle classes unsympathetic to reform