The Long Shadow of Waterloo

The Long Shadow of Waterloo
Author: Timothy Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2019-03-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1612007627

“[A] concise but authoritative narrative of the last action of the Napoleonic Wars” and its influence on French, British, German, and U.S. cultures (Military History Matters). The Battle of Waterloo ended a century of war between France and Great Britain and became a key part of their national identity, serving their political needs as the battle was refought throughout the 19th century in politics, books and art to create the myth of Waterloo. For Great Britain, Waterloo became a symbol of British hegemony while the multinational contribution to the battle was downplayed and for France it was remembered as a military disaster. Through looking at the battle’s significance in history, an insight is gained into how cultural myths and legends about a battle are made. Wellington and Napoleon both tried to shape the memory of the battle to their advantage. Wellington propagated the myth that the British won despite being outnumbered by a huge French army, while Napoleon chose to blame his subordinates for the loss, in particular Emmanuel de Grouchy. This book covers the battle’s influence on figures such as Jomini and Clausewitz, military theorists who wanted to find the objective truth of Waterloo and use it as a guide for future wars, as well as Victor Hugo (and Les Miserables) who challenged the myths of battle to transform it into a win for France from which the Republic would emerge. The way Waterloo was used for entertainment is also explored, as battlefield tourists came from all over the world to vicariously experience the legendary battle through visualizations such as the traveling panoramas in England and poetry of Sir Walter Scott.

The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century

The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century
Author: David Reynolds
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2014-05-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393244296

Winner of the 2014 PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for the Best Work of History "Brilliant…the most challenging and intelligent book on the Great War and our perceptions of it that any of us will read." —John Charley, The Times [London] One of the most violent conflicts in the history of civilization, World War I has been strangely forgotten in American culture. It has become a ghostly war fought in a haze of memory, often seen merely as a distant preamble to World War II. In The Long Shadow critically acclaimed historian David Reynolds seeks to broaden our vision by assessing the impact of the Great War across the twentieth century. He shows how events in that turbulent century—particularly World War II, the Cold War, and the collapse of Communism—shaped and reshaped attitudes to 1914–18. By exploring big themes such as democracy and empire, nationalism and capitalism, as well as art and poetry, The Long Shadow is stunningly broad in its historical perspective. Reynolds throws light on the vast expanse of the last century and explains why 1914–18 is a conflict that America is still struggling to comprehend. Forging connections between people, places, and ideas, The Long Shadow ventures across the traditional subcultures of historical scholarship to offer a rich and layered examination not only of politics, diplomacy, and security but also of economics, art, and literature. The result is a magisterial reinterpretation of the place of the Great War in modern history.

The Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars
Author: Alexander Mikaberidze
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 977
Release: 2020-01-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199394067

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.

Who Owned Waterloo?

Who Owned Waterloo?
Author: Luke Reynolds
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2022-06-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 019268843X

Between 1815 and the Duke of Wellington's death in 1852, the Battle of Waterloo became much more than simply a military victory. While other countries marked the battle and its anniversary, only Britain actively incorporated the victory into their national identity, guaranteeing that it would become a ubiquitous and multi-layered presence in British culture. By examining various forms of commemoration, celebration, and recreation, Who Owned Waterloo? demonstrates that Waterloo's significance to Britain's national psyche resulted in a different kind of war altogether: one in which civilian and military groups fought over and established their own claims on different aspects of the battle and its remembrance. By weaponizing everything from memoirs, monuments, rituals, and relics to hippodramas, panoramas, and even shades of blue, veterans pushed back against civilian claims of ownership; English, Scottish, and Irish interests staked their claims; and conservatives and radicals duelled over the direction of the country. Even as ownership was contested among certain groups, large portions of the British population purchased souvenirs, flocked to spectacles and exhibitions, visited the battlefield itself, and engaged in a startling variety of forms of performative patriotism, guaranteeing not only the further nationalization of Waterloo, but its permanent place in nineteenth century British popular and consumer culture.

The Long Shadow

The Long Shadow
Author: David Reynolds
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2013-11-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0857206389

In Britain we have lost touch with the Great War. Our overriding sense now is of a meaningless, futile bloodbath in the mud of Flanders -- of young men whose lives were cut off in their prime for no evident purpose. But by reducing the conflict to personal tragedies, however moving, we have lost the big picture: the history has been distilled into poetry. In TheLong Shadow, critically acclaimed author David Reynolds seeks to redress the balance by exploring the true impact of 1914-18 on the 20th century. Some of the Great War's legacies were negative and pernicious but others proved transformative in a positive sense. Exploring big themes such as democracy and empire, nationalism and capitalism and re-examining the differing impacts of the War on Britain, Ireland and the United States,TheLong Shadowthrows light on the whole of the last century and demonstrates that 1914-18 is a conflict that Britain, more than any other nation, is still struggling to comprehend. Stunningly broad in its historical perspective, The Long Shadowis a magisterial and seismic re-presentation of the Great War.

A Weary Road

A Weary Road
Author: Mark Osborne Humphries
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2018-11-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442661410

More than 16,000 Canadian soldiers suffered from shell shock during the Great War of 1914 to 1918. Despite significant interest from historians, we still know relatively little about how it was experienced, diagnosed, treated, and managed in the frontline trenches in the Canadian and British forces. How did soldiers relate to suffering comrades? Did large numbers of shell shock cases affect the outcome of important battles? Was frontline psychiatric treatment as effective as many experts claimed after the war? Were Canadians treated any differently than other Commonwealth soldiers? A Weary Road is the first comprehensive study to address these important questions. Author Mark Osborne Humphries uses research from Canadian, British, and Australian archives, including hundreds of newly available hospital records and patient medical files, to provide a history of war trauma as it was experienced, treated, and managed by ordinary soldiers.

Ancient Rome and Victorian Masculinity

Ancient Rome and Victorian Masculinity
Author: Laura Eastlake
Publisher:
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2019
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0198833032

Romans in Victorian literature are at once pagan persecutors, pious statesmen, pleasure-seeking decadents, and heroes of empire: this volume examines how these manifold and often contradictory representations are deployed in a range of ways in the works of authors from Thomas Macaulay to Rudyard Kipling to create useable models of masculinity.

The Transformation of England

The Transformation of England
Author: Peter Mathias
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1136600221

Peter Mathias’s subject is the creation in late eighteenth-century England of the industrial system – and thereby the present world. That unique conjuncture poses the sharpest questions about the nature of industrialization, social change and historical explanation, issues that are his principal scholarly concern. For many readers these collected studies will be as indispensable as the author’s general introduction, The First Industrial Nation, whether for the richness of their material or the freedom and subtlety of his analysis. These fascinating essays are divided into two groups: general themes, the ‘uniqueness’ in Europe of the industrial revolution, capital formation, taxation, the growth of skills, science and technical change, leisure and wages, diagnoses of poverty; and topics, the social structure, the industrialization of brewing, coinage, agriculture and the drink industries, advances in public health and the armed forces, British and American public finance in the War of Independence, Dr Johnson and the business world. This book was first published in 1979.

The Transformation of England (Routledge Revivals)

The Transformation of England (Routledge Revivals)
Author: Peter Mathias
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2013-04-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136464395

First published in 1979, The Transformation of England discusses the creation in late eighteenth century England of the industrial system and thereby the present world. Professor Mathias poses questions about the nature of industrialization, social change and historical explanation, issues that are his principal scholarly concern. This series of essays is divided into two groups. The first group of essays focuses upon general themes such as the 'uniqueness' in Europe of the industrial revolution, capital formation, taxation, the growth of skills, science and technical change, leisure and wages, and diagnoses of poverty. In the second section, Professor Mathias focuses on the social structure in the eighteenth century, considering the industrialization of brewing, coinage, agriculture and the drink industries, advances in public health and the armed forces, British and American public finance in the War of Independence, Dr Johnson and the business world.