1. The modern study of the “crowd” was pioneered by social historians such as George Rudé and E. P. Thompson and has since generated much debate and a considerable literature particularly relating to the history of early modern and modern Europe. See, for example, George Rudé, The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England (London, 1964); Paris and London in the Eighteenth Century: Studies in Popular Protest (London, 1970) and
2. E. P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century”, Past and Present, vol. 50, 1971, pp. 76–136. For a recent discussion of the literature see the introduction in
3. Tim Harris (ed.) The Politics of the Excluded, c.1500–1850 (Basingstoke, 2001). The concepts developed by Rudé et al were quickly taken up and applied to Iran by Ervand Abrahamian, see “The Crowd in Iranian Politics, 1905–1953”, Past and Present, vol. 41, December 1968, pp. 184–210; “The Crowd in the Persian Revolution”, Iranian Studies, vol. 2, no. 4, Autumn 1969, pp. 128–50. Since then, the application of this approach to Iranian history has received only sporadic attention, although it has continued to generate some scholarly research, for example
4. Stephen L. McFarland, “Anatomy of an Iranian Political Crowd: The Tehran Bread Riot of December 1942”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, February 1985, pp. 51–65. In the meantime, historians working on a number of non-European countries, in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, have developed an interest in the politics and history of the “crowd”.
5. See, for example, James E. Kirby, Jr., “The Foochow Anti-Missionary Riot: August 30, 1878”, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 25, no. 4, 1966, pp. 665–79;