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Three-day Conference 16-18 May 2008

War, Empire and Slavery, c.1790-1820

The revolutionary and Napoleonic wars are frequently interpreted as a European phenomenon, closely intertwined with the process of political and cultural nation- building across Europe, and the first wars fought by all combatant parties as "national wars". Yet they were also part of what could be called the first world war, a war which touched every continent of the globe. They saw the fatal weakening of the Dutch and the Spanish, and eventually the French empires, yet the continuing expansion of the British, Russian and North American empires. The impact of the warfare of this period can only be fully understood if this global dimension is given full weight, and if the experience of these wars is placed in the context of the parallel developments taking place in the political, military and economic systems of Asia and Africa, in the Mogul, Persian, Ottoman and other empires. In relation to Britain, the 'new imperial history' has focussed on categories of difference as critical to the shaping of identities; and in the circumstances of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, from 1790-1820, those differences were most sharply experienced in the diverse and multicultural sites of both military and imperial conflict.

The focus of the research project based at the University of York, 'Nations, Borders and Identities' lies in the comparative study of the experiences of European men and women in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, from 1790-1820. It asks how these wars were experienced by men and women of different ethnic backgrounds, religious affiliation, political outlook, age and familial status, as soldiers, sailors or civilians, abroad and at home. It considers which factors most shaped experiences and perceptions of the wars and how far these became a part of individual and collective identities, with particular reference to gender, class, race and nation. It is an essential part of the project to examine the kinds of military, political and cultural encounters which took place not only within Europe and those overland empires on the edges of Europe, Russia and the Ottoman Empire, but across the world, in southern India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, St Domingue, Canada, Brazil, Surinam, and elsewhere. These wars were related to, but cannot be simply correlated with, the expansion of worldwide economic relationships which characterised the period, in the global exchange of goods and peoples. In particular, the slave trade and the resulting slave economies of North America became entangled in complex ways with the conflicts of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. French revolutionary ideology promised freedom and citizenship to all. British evangelical initiatives brought the abolition of the slave trade, though British resistance to revolutionary ideas of citizenship and economic interests meant continuity in the institution of slavery. In the West Indies European powers were engaged in military and naval confrontations which recharted the map of imperial dominance, but also profoundly affected the future of slavery. In the garrisons of the West Indies, British and French troops and their civilian followers interacted with black populations, slave and free, to a greater extent than ever before.

We hope that this conference will bring together scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds as well as those with specialised knowledge of the different geographical areas of these wars. Charting the experiences of the men and women engaged in the conflicts requires not only discussion of the conventional sources of military and political history, but critical examination of personal and autobiographical writings and their cultural and imaginative contexts. The visual dimension, in the representation of war in both high art and popular propaganda, is essential to the understanding of such contexts. We would hope also that the conference will address the ways in which the wars were remembered and commemorated in their immediate aftermath, as new narratives of experience were constructed from different national perspectives.

PROGRAMME

war-prog (MS Word , 71kb)

CENTRE FOR EIGHTEENTH CENTURY STUDIES/ DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY CULTURAL CONFERENCE