Bartłomiej Beniowski 1800-1867

Biografia polistopadowego emigranta, jedynego cudzoziemca, który odegrał znaczącą rolę w londyńskim ruchu czartystów w latach 30-tych XIX wieku. Jest pierwszą próbą odtworzenia losów tej barwnej postaci na wielokulturowym tle – od Rosji carskiej poprzez Francję orleańską i Egipt Mehmeta Alego, aż po liberalną Anglię. Pokazuje Beniowskiego jako człowieka konsekwentnie przez całe życie wspierającego idee demokracji, działającego na rzecz emancypacji Żydów, popularyzatora własnego system mnemotechniki (frenotypyki), wynalazcy w dziedzinie drukarstwa. This is the first reconstruction in either Britain or Poland of the life of Bartłomiej Beniowski, a Polish post-1831 émigré who was the only foreign refugee to play an identifiable role in early London Chartism. It places Beniowski’s Chartist record in the context of his earlier political affiliations, and explores his post-Chartist political allegiances. It investigates his success in 1840s London as a mnemonist who developed a system that he called “Phrenotypics,” and his invention in the 1850s of printing techniques which were taken up for commercial exploitation by a group of entrepreneurial Liberal M.P.s. It is the biography of an exceptional and colourful individual, acted out against a vast multi-cultural backdrop, from tsarist Russia to Liberal England via Orléanist France and Muhammad Ali’s Egypt. It reveals a life-long commitment to the cause of Polish independence, along with consistent advocacy of democracy and championship of the oppressed, including vocal campaigns for Jewish civil rights. It provides the narrative of a life that illustrates contemporary European political and social movements and their bearing on 19th-century British labour history.