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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.
List of contents
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.
About the author
Andrew Lincoln is Emeritus Professor of English at Queen Mary, University of London. He has previously published on William Blake, including a 1992 edition of Songs of Innocence and Experience and the monograph Spiritual History (1996), and on Walter Scott, with his monograph Walter Scott and Modernity (2007). His current research focuses on eighteenth-century responses to war and ideas about how to achieve peace.
Summary
Is war the opposite of peace, or its necessary accomplice? Exploring this question in relation to eighteenth-century Britain, Andrew Lincoln opens up complex, paradoxical and enduring issues and shows how ideas and methods were developed to provide the British public with moral insulation from violence both overseas and at home.
Foreword
Is war the opposite of peace, or its necessary accomplice? Andrew Lincoln explores this question in relation to eighteenth-century Britain.
