Social Inequality, Identity and the Labouring Poor in Eighteenth-century England

Abstract

Partly in response to the fragmentation of identities, and to the celebration of difference and diversity, which characterise our times, eighteenth-century historians have become increasingly aware in recent years of the many dimensions that can shape social identity. The detailed research they have done on the now venerable trinity of gender, race and class, and on a range of other sources of identity—nation, ethnicity, wealth, consumption, disability, age, sexual preference, religion, family, locality or mobility—has shown how varied the nature, meanings and impacts of each can be. This has produced some excellent and deeply contextualised histories, some of which have defined as well as reconstructed these categories.¹ However, the huge range of directions taken by this research has itself raised a number of questions. In particular it now seems necessary to ask—have historians become so focused on the plurality of forces that shaped individual senses of identity, that we are in danger of losing sight of the core elements in experiences and ways of thinking (both about self and others) which shaped the lives and actions of people in the eighteenth century? This chapter explores two important aspects of this question in relation to one specific social group—the rural labouring poor. First it looks at the degree to which various forms of social inequality moulded not only the experiences of the labouring poor but also their sense of who they were.