Imagining War and Peace in Eighteenth-Century Britain, 1690–1820

Is war the opposite of peace, or its necessary accomplice? Andrew Lincoln explores this question in relation to eighteenth-century Britain.

Andrew Lincoln (Author)

9781009366540, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 November 2023

314 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 2 cm, 0.64 kg

'In this rich and expansive study, Lincoln shows that eighteenth-century writers responded to the moral dilemmas posed by modern warfare with a wide range of caveats and compromises, strategies and solutions. Lincoln is an immensely knowledgeable guide to eighteenth-century writing about war, and this fascinating book makes an important contribution to scholarship in the field.' Julia Banister, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Leeds Beckett University

Ranging over political, moral, religious, artistic and literary developments in eighteenth-century Britain, Andrew Lincoln explains in a clear and engaging style how the 'civilizing process' and the rise of humanitarianism, far from inhibiting war, helped to make it acceptable to a modern commercial society. In a close examination of a wide variety of illuminating examples, he shows how criticism of the terrible effects of war could be used to promote the nation's war-making. His study explores how ideas and methods were developed to provide the British public with moral insulation from the overseas violence they read about, and from the dire effects of war they encountered at home. It shows, too, how the first campaigning peace society, while promoting pacificism, drew inspiration from the prospects opened by imperial conquest. This volume is an important and timely call to rethink how we understand the cultural and moral foundations of imperial Britain.

I. Developing Ideals: 1. The Culture of War and Civil Society, from William III to George I
2. War and the Culture of Politeness: The Case of The Tatler and the Spectator
3. Sacrifice: Heroism and Mourning
4. Sacrifice: Christian Heroes
II. Developing Questions: 5. War and the 'Elevation' of the Novel
6. War and the 'Science of Man'
III. War and Peace in an Age of Revolutions: 7. Complicities in the Novel
8. Saving Individual Virtue
9. Saving Communal Virtue
10. The ideal of Non-resistance
IV. The Landscape of Conquest: 11. A Case Study: Gibraltar.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]