The culture of local xenophobia

Abstract

This article tackles the subject of 'local xenophobia' in rural and cottage-industrial areas of England and Wales in the period c. 1700-1938. It argues that historians have neglected the historical record of such sentiments towards 'foreigners' from other parishes, and it suggests that these attitudes were so widespread in the countryside (and rural workers so numerous within the population) as to lead one to doubt arguments for the early, post-1790, emergence of the working class, as expressed most famously by E. P. Thompson. Many manifestations of this 'culture of local xenophobia' are discussed, pointing also to its legal and related contexts. The article outlines some of the factors that led it gradually to be eclipsed in many regions during the nineteenth century by a wider trans-parochial sense of class consciousness and allegiance.

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