The 1820 Scottish Rising has been increasingly studied in recent decades. This collection of essays looks especially at local players on the ground across multiple regional centres in the west of Scotland, as well as the wider political circumstances within government and civil society that provide the rising’s context. It examines insurrectionist preparation by radicals, the progress of the events of 1820, contemporary accounts and legacy memorialisation of 1820, including newspaper and literary testimony, and the monumental ‘afterlife’ of the rising.

As well as the famous march of radicals led by John Baird and Andrew Hardie, so often seen as the centre of the 1820 ‘moment’, this volume casts light on other, more neglected insurrectionary activity within the rising and a wide set of cultural circumstances that make 1820 more complex than many would like to believe. 1820: Scottish Rebellion demonstrates that the legacy of 1820 may be approached in numerous ways that cross disciplinary boundaries and cause us to question conventional historical interpretations.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction: ‘The ebbing of the old shallow tide’: The civil context of the Radical War (1820)
• 1 The 1790s: Establishing the mind of government in 1820
• 2 The Belfast press and the Scottish connection, 1791–1820: Radicalism in Belfast, the Thomas Muir trial and the Scottish Radical War
• 3 1820 in contemporary press account
• 4 Policing the industrial order in the west of Scotland: The Radical War and its aftermath in the Glasgow Herald, 1819–20
• 5 ‘The most loyal of towns’: Greenock and the Radical War of 1820
• 6 ‘A great, and dangerous, and treasonable conspiracy, by some persons unknown’: Duntocher, Dunbartonshire and the Scottish Insurrection of 1820
• 7 The looker-on: Carlyle and the radical disturbances of the 1820s
• 8 Finding Alexander Rodger, the Glasgow poet, in 1820
• 9 In search of the Langloan radicals: Janet Hamilton’s ‘Reminiscences of the Radical Time in 1819–20’
• 10 The satirical poetry and commemorative contests of Scotland’s 1820 Radical War
• 11 1820 and radicalism in Paisley Museum and Archives
• 12 1820 in the museum: A review of Glasgow Museums’ collections of Scottish radical political history of the time
• 13 Remembering the Radical War: Monuments, markers and commemorations
• Select bibliography
• Index
• Picture Section