Narratives Of The Revolutionary And Napoleonic Wars

The volume explores how the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were experienced, perceived and narrated by contemporaries in Britain and Ireland, drawing on an extensive range of personal testimonies by soldiers, sailors and civilians to shed new light on the social and cultural history of the period and the history of warfare more broadly.

The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution. Almost all future revolutionary movements looked back to the Revolution as their predecessor. Its central phrases and cultural symbols, such as La Marseillaise and Liberté, fraternité, égalité, ou la mort, became the clarion call for other major upheavals in modern history, including the Russian Revolution over a century later._x000D_ The values and institutions of the Revolution dominate French politics to this day. The Revolution resulted in the suppression of the feudal system, emancipation of the individual, a greater division of landed property, abolition of the privileges of noble birth, and nominal establishment of equality among men. The French Revolution differed from other revolutions in being not only national, for it intended to benefit all humanity._x000D_ Contents:_x000D_ Old Regime in Europe_x000D_ The Old Regime in France_x000D_ Beginnings of the Revolution_x000D_ The Making of the Constitution_x000D_ The Legislative Assembly_x000D_ The Convention_x000D_ The Directory_x000D_ The Consulate_x000D_ The Early Years of the Empire_x000D_ The Empire at Its Height_x000D_ The Decline and Fall of Napoleon_x000D_

The volume explores how the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were experienced, perceived and narrated by contemporaries in Britain and Ireland, drawing on an extensive range of personal testimonies by soldiers, sailors and civilians to shed new light on the social and cultural history of the period and the history of warfare more broadly.

Austerlitz, Wagram, Borodino, Trafalgar, Leipzig, Waterloo: these are the places most closely associated with the era of the Napoleonic Wars. But how did this period of nearly continuous conflict affect the world beyond Europe? The immensity of the fighting waged by France against England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and the immediate consequences of the tremors that spread throughout the world. In this ambitious and far-ranging work, Alexander Mikaberidze argues that the Napoleonic Wars can only be fully understood in an international perspective. France struggled for dominance not only on the plains of Europe but also in the Americas, West and South Africa, Ottoman Empire, Iran, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Taking specific regions in turn, Mikaberidze discusses major political-military events around the world and situates geopolitical decision-making within its long- and short-term contexts. From the British expeditions to Argentina and South Africa to the Franco-Russian maneuvering in the Ottoman Empire, the effects of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars would shape international affairs well into the next century. In Egypt, the wars led to the rise of Mehmed Ali and the emergence of a powerful state; in North America, the period transformed and enlarged the newly established United States; and in South America, the Spanish colonial empire witnessed the start of national-liberation movements that ultimately ended imperial control. Skillfully narrated and deeply researched, here at last is the global history of the period, one that expands our view of the Napoleonic Wars and their role in laying the foundations of the modern world.

The wars between 1792 and 1815 saw the making of the modern world, with Britain and Russia the key powers to emerge triumphant from a long period of bitter conflict. In this innovative book, Jeremy Black focuses on the strategic contexts and strategies involved, explaining their significance both at the time and subsequently. Reinterpreting French Revolutionary and Napoleonic warfare, strategy, and their consequences, he argues that Napoleon’s failure owed much to his limitations as a strategist. Black uses this framework as a foundation to assess the nature of warfare, the character of strategy, and the eventual ascendance of Britain and Russia in this period. Rethinking the character of strategy, this is the first history to look holistically at the strategies of all the leading belligerents from a global perspective. It will be an essential read for military professionals, students, and history buffs alike.

The author maintains that modern attitudes toward total war were conceived during the Napoleonic era; and argues that all the elements of total war were evident including conscription, unconditional surrender, disregard for basic rules of war, mobilization of civilians, and guerrilla warfare.

Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present explores the relationship between the sea and culture from the early modern period to the present. The collection uses the concept of the ‘sea narrative’ as a lens through which to consider the multiple ways in which the sea has shaped, challenged, and expanded modes of cultural representation to produce varied, contested and provocative chronicles of the sea across a variety of cultural forms within diverse socio-cultural moments. Sea Narratives provides a unique perspective on the relationship between the sea and cultural production: it reveals the sea to be more than simply a source of creative inspiration, instead showing how the sea has had a demonstrable effect on new modes and forms of narration across the cultural sphere, and in turn, how these forms have been essential in shaping socio-cultural understandings of the sea. The result is an incisive exploration of the sea’s force as a cultural presence.

Narratives of War considers the way war and battle are remembered and narrated across space and time in Europe in the twentieth century. The book reflects on how narratives are generated and deployed, and on their function as coping mechanisms, means of survival, commemorative gestures, historical records and evidence. The contributions address such issues as the tension and discrepancy between memory and the official chronicling of war, the relationship between various individuals’ versions of war narratives and the ways in which events are brought together to serve varied functions for the narrators and their audiences. Drawing upon the two World Wars, the Spanish Civil War and the ex-Yugoslav wars, and considering narrative genres that include film, schoolbooks, novels, oral history, archives, official documents, personal testimony and memoirs, readers are introduced to a range of narrative forms and examples that highlight the complexity of narrative in relation to war. Approached from a multidisciplinary perspective, and taken together, analysis of these narratives contributes to our understanding of the causes, experience, dynamics and consequences of war, making it the ideal book for those interested in twentieth-century war history and the history of memory and narrative.