Soldiers and soldiering in Britain, c.1750 to 1815

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Britain's relationship with its soldiers during the eighteenth century was a complex one. Georgians branded these men a danger to liberty, victims of oppression, and 'bloody backs', whilst also celebrating their victories and championing their generals, such as General Wolfe at Quebec in 1759. Britain's soldiers were both heroes and the 'scum of the earth', yet this dynamic and multifaceted connection has yet to be fully explored, largely because the scale of Britain's military mobilisation has not been recognised, nor its significance fully appreciated. This fraught relationship became more complicated with the increasing mobilisation of the male population into novel forms of military service beyond the full-time soldiering of the British Army. The militia, reformed during the Seven Years' War in 1757, and large-scale volunteer forces (part-time soldiers raised for home defence) in the American War of Independence and especially the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars created new types of soldier in Britain and new ways for men to be under arms. At its peak in the Napoleonic Wars, some 680,000 men were involved in some form of military service, yet the experiences of these men remains largely forgotten.To better understand the concept of soldiering and explore the similarities and differences between the different forms of military service in Britain, this project will explore the language, broadly defined, in which the soldier was described by others and written about by themselves, thus contextualising shifts in attitudes towards soldiers and soldiering. Working from the premise that a 'soldier' was a particular category within society that was defined by contemporaries and by soldiers themselves, and therefore relational and contextual rather than being fixed, the project will be able to utilise methodological techniques more commonly seen in the social sciences and gender history when studying identity to create new knowledge on the topic. The project will involve extensive archival research and will form a network of scholars working in this period to cover the many different geographical, methodological and temporal angles to the topic. These will include regional differences, questions of citizenship and manliness, and the changes wrought by the almost permanent state of war against France between 1754 and 1815.Alongside academic outputs, the project aims to make key documents available in an online repository for anyone interested in the subject of soldiers in this period. The aim is to distribute the findings of the project beyond academia, to users such as schools, local historians, military enthusiasts, and genealogists. A fundamental part of the project will be an interactive website allowing these interest groups not only to view what the network is doing, but to contribute their questions, expertise and knowledge. This will further assist us in our goal of promoting a better understanding of this crucial period in the making of the concept of 'soldiering' in Britain. Furthermore, these outputs will be well timed for the forthcoming 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.