Crowds, Police and Provocations: Temporal Patterns of Rioting in Britain, 1800–1939

Abstract

This essay develops an original, temporal approach to the study of rioting. It uses a catalogue of 414 riots from 19th- and early 20th-century Britain to identify several common developmental patterns: (1) riots often begin with provocation, intervention by the police or routines that license violence; (2) while often short-lived, riots can also be linked by cycles of revenge and the feedback loop between action and identity; (3) the state’s monopoly of organised violence was often decisive in bringing riots to an end. These findings reveal significant limits to the explanatory power of two widely used concepts in this area: triggers and identity. More interestingly, they show that this power varies meaningfully over time. I therefore argue for a properly historicised theory of rioting, drawing attention to two key sites of historical change: the norms and traditions which govern public violence, and the state’s monopoly of force.