About

Abstract

The project will commemorate the bicentenaries relating to the period of the wars of revolution and liberation between 1775 and 1830, with the Napoleonic conflicts at its centre, in a transatlantic perspective with a focus on the transition from war to peace. This transition, which post-war societies on both sides of the Atlantic needed to make, has rarely been studied in a comparative framework. The extend of the challenges confronting post-war societies was in nearly all involved regions unprecedented, not least because of the vast scale of the conflicts that had ended. States and societies were ill-prepared to deal with the consequences of a style of mass warfare legitimated with national ideologies that arguably had become ‘total’. We only can understand these challenges if we combine the exploration of military, economic and social, political and cultural demobilization and include the dimension of memory.

Aims and Agenda

Over the next few years many European countries will celebrate bicentenaries relating to the Napoleonic conflict. These include the Russian campaign of 1812, the ‘liberation’ of Germany in 1813, and the final battle against Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. Between 2012 and 2015 these momentous events, which were worked into nationalist myths during the nineteenth century, will be commemorated across Europe in local and national celebrations. Many of these commemorations will, however, overlook an important aspect of these wars: their global dimension. For the wars in the decades straddling the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were the culmination of a far longer and larger global struggle for empire between major European powers, especially Britain, France, Spain and the Netherlands. Each was anxious to extend its influence overseas and to win new markets. The slave trade and the institution of slavery, both central to the profitable exploitation of Europe’s colonies, were therefore inextricably connected to these wars, as was the abolitionist movement.

This wider imperial struggle characterized the whole era of Atlantic Revolutions between 1775 and 1830, an era that began with the outbreak of the American War of Independence and would be dominated by the French and Haitian revolutions and by the Revolutionary, Napoleonic and Ibero-American wars. By 1830 Latin America had experienced a series of Wars of Independence from European domination, and the maps of both Europe and the Americas had been redrawn. Throughout this era of imperial encounters and revolutionary struggles for national liberation, the transatlantic world experienced more or less constant warfare, touching not only all of Europe but also large parts of Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean archipelago.

These wars were distinguished not merely by their broad geographical scope, but also by the infusion of revolutionary and national ideologies. These facilitated the mobilisation of vast forces, now composed increasingly of conscripts, militias and volunteers, as well as long-service professionals. As revolutionary and conservative regimes deployed mass armies across Europe and the Americas, the conduct of warfare was transformed, along with the political, social and gender orders on both sides of the Atlantic. Soldiers and civilians of all classes, races, and ethnicities—men and women alike—were mobilized for war on an unprecedented scale. Governments promised men—regardless of race—personal freedom and political rights in return for military service. When necessary, the armed forces on both sides admitted to their ranks groups that had previously been marginalised, including even slaves.

Recent historiography emphasizes the importance of the transatlantic dimension in the history of the period from 1775 to 1830. Rather than constituting a barrier, the Atlantic was a highway for exchange not only of peoples and commodities, but also of ideas and of political and cultural practices. Improving literacy and the spread of the printed word meant that the public in both Europe and the Americas was made aware of events from across the ocean. This was most clearly seen in the American and French Revolutions and in the Wars of Liberation in Spanish America. To date, however, this transatlantic perspective has yet to be applied to the legacy of war in this age of revolution.

Such considerations justify the parameters of the present project: in chronological and geographical terms, they are set broadly; thematically, however, the focus is tightly on the challenge which both Europeans and Americans eventually confronted, namely the need to make the transition from armed conflict to peace. This transition, which post-war societies on both sides of the Atlantic needed to make, has rarely been studied beyond the local and national framework.  The scale of the challenge confronting post-war societies was unprecedented, not least because of the vast scale of the conflicts that had ended. States and societies were ill-prepared to deal with the consequences of a style of warfare that was arguably now ‘total’. One obvious consequence was the need to de-mobilize armies and navies, and re-integrate large numbers of ordinary combatants into civilian life. Beyond this, they had to deal with the economic consequences of warfare: the destruction of towns and villages, of fields and forests. Especially painful was the re-adjustment of the Atlantic economy following the dismantling of blockades and counter-blockades, the collapse of mercantilism and the abolition of the slave trade by several of the leading slaving nations. It was in this unpropitious context that communities and families needed to accommodate unprecedented numbers of physically and psychologically scarred veterans. Similar processes took place in the cultural sphere, which had been militarized during wartime through the celebration of heroism and martial virtues. Culture and the arts, which had been widely used as an instrument of war mobilization, had to adapt to an environment in which large-scale armed conflict was at an end and where bellicose rhetoric was no longer useful. This cultural aspect of demobilization cannot be detached from the political and social. Rather, it had an integral role to play, as culture influenced narratives and memories, which were themselves contested by groups struggling to find a more advantageous social and political position in the new post-war order.

Based on these reflections five major questions will stand at the centre of the international conference:

  1. How were the processes of military, economic, social and cultural demobilization organized? What were the major problems incurred at the different levels of demobilization?
  2. What was the economic, social, political and cultural short-term aftermath and long-term legacy of the wars for different regions, countries and continents?
  3. How were the wars remembered in different regions and nations? Which functions did the memories have in the process of cultural demobilization? How did the collective memories change over time and why?
  4. What similarities and differences can we identify in the ways postwar societies on both sides of the Atlantic approached military, economic, social and cultural demobilization and memory construction?
  5. What are the most important transnational and transatlantic legacies of the wars in the era of Atlantic Revolutions?

In studying these five questions we will focus in the discussion particularly on the similarities, differences and connections between the nations of the Atlantic World.

The conference brings together an international team of scholars whose research offers the basis for a comparative study of the above questions. In so doing, it not only sheds light on an aspect of this period that has been characterized by relative neglect; it also offers the potential for further comparison between demobilization in this age, and similar demobilizations following later ‘total wars’.