Triumph of Order: Democracy and Public Space in New York and London

by Lisa Keller

Overview

In an effort to create a secure urban environment in which residents can work, live, and prosper with minimal disruption, New York and London established a network of laws, policing, and municipal government in the nineteenth century aimed at building the confidence of the citizenry and creating stability for economic growth. At the same time, these two world cities attempted to maintain an expansive level of free speech and assembly, concepts deeply ingrained in both national cultures. As democracy expanded in tandem with the size of the cities themselves, the two goals clashed, resulting in tensions over their compatibility.

The results of this clash continue to resonate in our society today. Treating nineteenth-century London and New York as case studies, Lisa Keller examines the critical development of sanctioned free speech, controlled public assembly, new urban regulations, and the quelling of riots, all in the name of a proper regard for order. Drawing on rich archival sources that include the unpublished correspondence of government officials and ordinary citizens, Keller paints an intimate portrait of daily life in these two cities and the intricacies of their emerging bureaucracies. She finds that New York eventually settled on a policy of preempting disruption before it occurred, while London chose a path of greater tolerance toward street activities.

Dividing her history into five categories—cities, police and militia, the public, free speech and assembly, and the law—Keller concludes with an assessment of freedom in these cities today and asks whether the scales have been tipped too strongly on the side of order and control. Public officials increasingly use permits, fees, and bureaucratic hassles to frustrate the ability of reformers and protesters to make their voices heard, and by doing so, she argues, they strike at the very foundations of democracy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231146722
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	11/25/2008
Series:	Columbia History of Urban Life
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lisa Keller is associate professor of history at Purchase College, State University of New York. She worked for ten years in Europe as a professor and journalist.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Maps
Part 1. Prologue
Introduction: A Perfect Storm of People
1. The Elements of Democracy: Free Speech, Free Assembly, and the Law
2. The World of the Great City
Part 2. Public Order in Victorian London
3. London Before 1850
4. The Sunday Trading Bill Riots
5. Prelude to Black and Bloody
6. Black Monday, Bloody Sunday
7. Taking Back Trafalgar
Part 3. Violence and Control in the Empire City
8. New York Before 1870
9. The Battle Over Tompkins Square
10. New York Under Control
11. The Regulated City
Part 4. Epilogue
12. The Triumph of Order
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Kenneth T. Jackson

Triumph of Order is one of the most important and provocative books to appear in recent years. Beautifully written, thoroughly researched, and impressively illustrated, it shatters our assumptions about freedom in even the greatest of cities, and it forces us to reconsider our priorities as the British and American governments use the excuse of both terror and traffic to resist even the possibility of public expression in public places.

— Kenneth T. Jackson, Barzun Professor of History at Columbia University and president emeritus of the New-York Historical Society

David Cannadine

Lisa Keller's landmark study of public protest and public order in nineteenth-century London and New York is an outstanding piece of comparative history; it is also full of stimulating and sobering insights into the challenges and constraints of big-city living in our own day.

— David Cannadine, Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and author of The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy

Editorial Reviews

Detailed and illuminating.... Throughout her study, Keller compares the historical evidence to twenty-first-century events and compellingly demonstrates how nineteenth-century antecedents have contributed to modern-day perspectives and positions. This brings a refreshing sense of relevance and significance, which is so often lacking from historical studies.

Journal of American Studies

The value of this book lies in its excellent detailed case studies of the management of particular public events.

Victorian Studies

Triumph of Order offers smart insights into how a city defines quality of life.

New York Times - Sam Roberts

Triumph of Order is the all-too-rare scholarly book that, being so well written, is fully accessible to the proverbial general reader.

Times Higher Education Supplement - Howard P. Segal

Lisa Keller's meticulously researched book invites consideration of a range of issues concerning the urban environment and the politics of public health that will be of interest beyond her major audience of political historians.

H-Urban - Samantha MacBride

Lisa Keller's meticulously researched book invites consideration of a range of issues concerning the urban environment and the politics of public health that will be of interest beyond her major audience of political historians.

— Samantha MacBride

H-Urban

Triumph of Order is the all-too-rare scholarly book that, being so well written, is fully accessible to the proverbial general reader.

— Howard P. Segal

Times Higher Education Supplement

Triumph of Order offers smart insights into how a city defines quality of life.

— Sam Roberts

New York Times