Pressure for change 1812 onwards

Question 1

Luddism

Answer 1

Already know

Question 2

Radical Agitation

Answer 2

Response to problems: Demanded parliamentary reform, fair representation, and universal male suffrage.

Pressure on the government: Events like the Peterloo Massacre (1819) saw 60,000 protesters demanding voting rights. The government responded with the Six Acts (1819) to suppress protests.

Effectiveness: Immediate repression, but reforms followed. The Great Reform Act (1832) gave voting rights to 1 in 7 men (around 813,000 people).

Question 3

Anti-slavery

Answer 3

Anti-Slavery (pp.105-7)
Response to problems: Campaigned against the transatlantic slave trade and slavery in British colonies.

Pressure on the government: The sugar boycott (1791) saw 300,000 people stop buying sugar from slave plantations. Over 1.5 million signatures were collected in petitions led by figures like William Wilberforce.

Effectiveness: The Slave Trade Act (1807) banned the trade, and the Slavery Abolition Act (1833) freed 800,000 enslaved people in British territories.

Question 4

Methodism

Answer 4

Response to problems: Promoted moral and social reform, emphasizing education and discipline. By 1800, there were around 100,000 Methodists in Britain.

Pressure on the government: Methodists set up hundreds of schools, increasing literacy rates among the working class. Sunday schools educated over 1 million children by 1831.

Effectiveness: Methodism influenced later social reforms and factory laws. Many Chartists and reformers were Methodists, linking religion to activism.

Question 5

Robert Owen

Answer 5

Response to problems: Pioneered factory reforms, education, and cooperative communities. At New Lanark (1810) he reduced working hours to 10.5 per day (before the Factory Acts).

Pressure on the government: Introduced free education for children and improved workers’ housing. His ideas influenced the Factory Act (1833), which limited child labor.

Effectiveness: New Lanark had a 95% literacy rate, compared to the national average of 67% at the time. Though his utopian socialist ideas had limited immediate success, they inspired later cooperative movements.