Abstract
Palgrave’s ‘War, Culture and Society 1750–1850’ book series has become so well established and respected in its field that the announcement of each new volume is greeted by scholars with anticipation and excitement. The most recent instalment, War, Demobilisation and Memory, will not disappoint. As ever, the editors have scoured far and wide across European and American universities to find some of the most original young, and more established, researchers on the post-Napoleonic world. There has been a depressing sense in nineteenth-century history that the period between Waterloo and the unifications of Italy and Germany has been consigned to a few derogatory sentences. Until very recently, this period was described, at best, as the waiting room for greater developments or, at worse, as an age of depressing reaction. Thankfully, the late Sir Christopher Bayly warned against such a facile dismissal. Indeed, he dedicated an entire chapter of his seminal Birth of the Modern World to this important post-imperial age. The editors of this volume have clearly responded to this challenge with a superb collection of research essays. For the sake of fairness, they were slightly beaten to the post by the Journal of Military History. Its January 2016 issue on the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars covered many of the same questions from a more military perspective. Certainly the volume under review can be read in conjunction with that special issue (which contains some great articles by Clavet, Tozzi, and especially Nordhagen Ottosen).
That being said, Forrest, Hagemann and Rowe have ambitiously uncovered a highly original way of reading a neglected period of history. Far too often, Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna are portrayed as harbingers of dismal reaction. Clearly this interpretation, though containing some truth, is not very enlightening or imaginative. Millions of soldiers were demobilized, economic reconstruction on an unprecedented scale began, colonial conflicts emerged, the nature of society was debated, and a massive battle to master the legacy of the Napoleonic experience was unleashed by the peace treaties of 1815. Implicit throughout the volume is a parallel with the post-war era of 1945. This approach will give rise to interesting comparisons and original ways of understanding Europe’s recovery from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic maelstroms. The collection is divided into four eminently sensible sections that deal with: demobilization, political culture, economic and social restoration, and the battle for national memory.
Among the best contributions are those of Bew, Blaufarb, Chambers, Lambert, Rowe, and Todd. Their approaches, as one expects, differ enormously and it is difficult to provide anything but an inadequate summary. Blaufarb deals with the arms trade to South America and the influence of Napoleonic veterans in keeping Spain’s imperial resurgence in check. Rowe enters the world of religion and examines the unenviable position that the German Jewish population occupied politically during the Hep Hep riots. Bew imaginatively analyses how European international events contributed to a sense of British exceptionalism and a continued sense of wartime emergency. The United Kingdom built forms of governance that contrasted with European models rather than emulating them. Todd breaks new ground in highlighting the Bourbon Restoration’s doomed attempt to resurrect the desiccated corpse of the French Caribbean. Chambers provides a number of telling cases studies on the fate and tribulations of Spanish colonial administrators who were placed in cold storage in Cuba. Finally, Lambert deals with that most forgotten conflict of all, the Anglo–American War of 1812. He examines its peculiar place in the historical/national memories of both the USA and UK. He demonstrates how memories of the conflict deeply influenced national identity and turned Americans inwards for the better part of the nineteenth century. These are the chapters that truly stand out but almost every other contribution is of an extremely high calibre.
Indeed, the editors have wisely saved the best for last. Llyod Kramer’s suggestion that one can examine the post-Napoleonic from a postcolonial perspective is truly innovative from a theoretical standpoint. Michael Broers had already hinted at the relevance of this some time ago but Kramer tackles the attempt to use the postcolonial to read the post-Napoleonic much further. He makes a compelling, though no doubt controversial case, for how Europeans and Americans in the midst of the ruins of Empire tried to rethink and question the social, cultural, gendered, and hierarchical bonds that had held them together. There is much to debate, relish, and contest in this rich chapter. I am left a little uncertain, having read it several times, whether a distinction needed to be drawn between the post-imperial and postcolonial. For continental Europe, settler colonialism was unknown and consequently the processes in the old world needs to be distinguished more sharply from American Creole experiences. This is a mere quibble for what is a seminal piece of writing which will definitely give much food for thought in future years.
Naturally no collection is wholly perfect. The contributions by Maas and Knouff, though excellent in terms of research and analysis, deal with the 1780s which makes them a rather awkward fit with the rest of the volume. It seems a shame to have inserted them uncomfortably in this collection and one suspects that the aftermath of the American War of Independence needs its own volume in this series. Perhaps more disappointing is John Davies’s chapter on Italy which is descriptive and struggles to break any new ground. Impressively, the author of this chapter succeeds in citing himself in over a quarter of the footnotes for this contribution.
This minor infelicity aside, this is a very fine and highly original collection of articles from a top-notch team of European scholars. I suspect that it will set the research agenda for many years to come. It must be the first port of call for scholars and graduate students seeking to understand the Restoration period in its most original and up-to-date perspective.