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This chapter therefore makes a case for a political history of shoes, by bringing
together these two rich fields. It will begin by thinking about the nature of
political culture in the eighteenth century, where political virtue was evaluated in
highly moral and gendered terms, and where shoes became the focus of debates
about masculinity and citizenship. It will then turn its attention to citizenship in a
national sense, to think about how certain types of leather shoes came to be seen
as synonymous with Britishness, and how wearing them informed what it meant
to live as a 'Briton.' Debates about politics and gender were inseparable from those
on social class, and shoes worn by different social classes were loaded with political
meaning. They also give us an insight into how people from different social classes
moved and comported themselves. Focusing on the history of shoes in these ways
can therefore show how embodiment should be central to our understanding of the
practice of politics in eighteenth-century Britain.

Introduction: What is citizenship? -- The state and the public sphere -- Political masculinities, 1688-1837 -- The British electoral tradition -- Patriotism and revolution, 1776-1819 -- Women and political campaigning -- Reform, domesticity and citizenship, 1820-1848 -- Feminism and citizenship -- Popular politics in the age of mass party, 1837-1901 -- Citizenship, society and the state -- Votes for women, 1865-1928.

Shoes may not seem to be an obvious topic for political history, but shoes were highly politicized in Georgian Britain. Changes in shoe design, and the differences in the footwear worn by different social classes, shed light on the types of masculinity that came to be privileged within the political cultures of the day. Historians often argue that it was over the eighteenth century that modern, binary schemes of gender difference emerged, positing that men and women had different bodies that befitted them for different spheres of activity. The political subject of the Georgian period was a male head of household, who governed and represented those who depended upon him, on the model of a Roman citizen. The consumption of foreign goods and styles could be highly politicized in the eighteenth century. Gay's focus on footwear in the poem was quite deliberate, since shoes were redolent with national symbolism.

Writings on footwear tend to emphasise a fundamental division between those made for men and women: men's are plain, sturdy and functional, whereas women's are decorative, flimsy and impractical. Of all male footwear, boots are typically the plainest, sturdiest and most functional of all. In the eighteenth century they were emphatically outdoor wear, and scholars have noted their rustic and unrefined image. This article re-evaluates the elite male boot of the long eighteenth century in Britain, emphasising its complex symbolic associations and its significance for the gendered lives of men. Boots were associated with equestrianism, social status and the military, and therefore were key markers of gender, class and national identities. Furthermore, the article considers boots as material objects, and what this tells us about their use and the impact that they had upon the bodies of their wearers. Based on research in three key shoe archives, this study uses boots to think about Georgian notions of masculinity, the body and the self.