Abstract
The picture that appears on the cover of this book, Moritz Daniel Oppenheim’s The Return of the Volunteer from the Wars of Liberation to his Family still living in Accordance with the Old Customs, may seem a strange choice for a volume that purports to speak to war, demobilization and memory in the Era of Atlantic Revolutions—starting in the 1770s and ending in the 1830s. The German-Jewish painter Oppenheim, born in 1800 in the Hessian town of Hanau, was too young to volunteer for the Wars of 1813–1815, the final struggle to liberate Germany and Europe from Napoleonic rule. But in this painting, which dates from 1833–1834, Oppenheim invoked the memory of these wars. He referred to the participation of young Jewish volunteers in what he saw as a fight for liberation and liberty.1 His painting portrays the return of one of these victorious fighters after demobilization to the warmth of his family. Like many other Jewish families that had allowed their sons to participate in these ‘people’s wars’, they had hoped to become part of the German people as a result of their patriotic support for the war. The Jewish volunteers also expected to get equal citizenship rights after the wars—as was promised by kings and princes—because they had done their military duty as men and protected family, home and country.2
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Notes
See Georg Heuberger and Anton Merk (eds), Moritz Daniel Oppenheim: Die Entdeckung des jüdischen Selbstbewußtseins in der Kunst (Cologne, 1999);
and Maurice Berger and Joan Rosenbaum (eds), Masterworks of the Jewish Museum (New York, 2004), 42–43.
See Horst Fischer, Judentum, Staat und Heer in Preussen im frühen 19. Jahrhundert: Zur Geschichte der staatlichen Judenpolitik (Tübingen, 1968);
and more recently Karen Hagemann, Revisiting Prussia’s Wars against Napoleon: History, Culture and Memory (Cambridge, 2015), 113–129.
See, for instance, Timothy Wilson-Smith, Napoleon and his Artists (London, 1996);
Holger Hoock, Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War and the Arts in the British World, 1750–1850 (London, 2010);
Todd Porterfield and Susan L. Siegfried, Staging Empire: Napoleon, Ingres, and David (University Park, PA, 2006);
and David O’Brien, After the Revolution: Antoine-Jean Gros, Painting and Propaganda Under Napoleon (University Park, PA, 2006).
Donald Stoker et al. (eds), Conscription in the Napoleonic Era: A Revolution in Military Affairs? (London, 2008).
See for example, Christophe Belaubre et al. (eds), Napoleon’s Atlantic: The Impact of Napoleonic Empire in the Atlantic World (Leiden, 2010).
See for example, Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (eds), War in an Age of Revolution, 1775–1815 (Cambridge, 2010).
See Ibid.; and Alan Forrest et al. (eds), Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians: Experiences and Perceptions of the French Wars, 1790–1820 (Basingstoke, 2009);
and Richard Bessel et al. (eds), War, Empire and Slavery, 1770–1830 (Basingstoke, 2010).
David A. Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It (Boston, MA, 2007);
and Jean-Yves Guiomar, L’invention de la guerre totale, 18 e –20 e siècle (Paris, 2004).
See for example, Erica Charters et al. (eds), Civilians and War in Europe, 1618–1815 (Liverpool, 2012), 182–261.
Katherine B. Aaslestad and Johan Joor (eds), Revisiting Napoleon’s Continental System: Local, Regional and European Experiences (Basingstoke, 2014).
Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848 (Oxford, 1994), 514–516.
See Tamar Herzog, ‘Identities and Processes of Identification in the Atlantic World’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World, 1450–1850, ed. Nicholas Canny and Philip Morgan (Oxford, 2011), 480–495.
Peter Lorge, ‘War and Warfare in China, 1450–1815’, in War in the Early Modern World, 1450–1815, ed. Jeremy Black (London, 1999), 87–103.
Christopher Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (Oxford, 2004), 125–126.
For a striking instance of this global mobility see Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: How a Remarkable Woman Crossed Seas and Empires to Become Part of World History (London, 2008).
Lynn Hunt, ‘The Global Financial Origins of 1789’, in The French Revolution in Global Perspective, ed. Suzanne Desan et al. (Ithaca, NY, 2013), 32–43.
Bailey Stone, The Genesis of the French Revolution: A Global-Historical Interpretation (Cambridge, 1994), 99.
See David Armitage and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds), The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c.1760–1840 (Basingstoke, 2010);
also David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Cambridge, MA, 2007).
Alan Forrest et al. (eds), War Memories: The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in Modern European Culture (Basingstoke, 2012), esp. 1–37;
and Michael A. McDonnell et al. (eds), Remembering the Revolution: Memory, History, and Nation Making from Independence to the Civil War (Amherst, MA, 2015).
For France, for instance, see Alan B. Spitzer, The French Generation of1820 (Princeton, NJ, 1987).
Michael Broers, ‘Civilized, Rational Behaviour? The Concept and Practice of Surrender in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars’, in How Fighting Ends: A History of Surrender, ed. Holger Afflerbach and Hew Strachan (Oxford, 2012), 229–238.
See, for instance, John Darwin, The Empire Project: the Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830–1970 (Cambridge, 2009).
On the Russian campaign, see Dominic Lieven, Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814 (London, 2009);
and Adam Zamoyski, Moscow 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March (London, 2004).
Stefan Dudink et al. (eds), Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History (Manchester, 2004), 3–40; and idem et al. (eds), Representing Masculinity: Citizenship in Modern Western Culture (Basingstoke, 2008).
See also Janet M. Hartley, Russia, 1762–1825: Military Power, the State, and the People (Westport, CN, 2008).
See also, Leighton S. James, Witnessing the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in German Central Europe (Basingstoke, 2013).
See also, Rafe Baufarb, Bonapartists in the Borderlands: French Exiles and Refugees on the Gulf Coast, 1815–1835 (Tuscaloosa, AL, 2005).
See for example, Thomas Hippler, Citizens, Soldiers and National Armies: Military Service in France and Germany, 1789–1830 (London, 2008), 163–189;
more critical is Ute Frevert, A Nation in Barracks: Modern Germany, Military Conscription and Civil Society (Oxford, 2004).
See also, John Bew, Castlereagh: A Life (Oxford, 2012).
See also John A. Davis, Naples and Napoleon: Southern Italy and the European Revolutions (1780–1860) (Oxford, 2006).
Michael Broers, The Napoleonic Empire in Italy, 1796–1814 (Basingstoke, 2005), 291–194.
Karen Hagemann et al. (eds), Gender, War and Politics: Transatlantic Perspectives, 1775–1830 (Basingstoke, 2010), 93–168.
See also Ibid., 169–227; and Catherine Davies et al., South American Independence: Gender, Politics, Text (Liverpool, 2006).
See as an example, Karen Hagemann, ‘Reconstructing “Front” and “Home”: Gendered Experiences and Memories of the German Wars against Napoleon— A Case Study’, War in History 16/1 (2009): 25–50.
See also David Todd, Free Trade and its Enemies in France, 1814–1851 (Cambridge, 2015).
See also, Katherine B. Aaslestad, Place and Politics: Local Identity, Civic Culture, and German Nationalism in North Germany during the Revolutionary Era (Leiden, 2005).
See also, Sarah C. Chambers, Families in War and Peace: Chile from Colony to Nation (Durham, NC, 2015); and idem, From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender, and Politics in Arequipa, Peru, 1780–1854 (University Park, PA, 1999).
See also, Kit Candlin and Cassandra Pybus, Enterprising Women, Race Gender and Power in the Revolutionary Atlantic 1770–1830 (Basingstoke, 2015).
See also Gregory T. Knouff, Soldiers’ Revolution: Pennsylvanians in Arms and the Forging of Early American Identity (Pennsylvania, PA, 2003); and idem, A Seductive Sedition: Loyalists, Language, and Power in Revolutionary New Hampshire (forthcoming).
See also, Alexander M. Martin, Enlightened Metropolis: Constructing Imperial Moscow, 1762–1855 (Oxford, 2013).
See also, Andrew Lambert, The Challenge: Britain, Against America in the Naval War of 1812 (London, 2012).
See also, Matthew Brown, Adventuring through Spanish Colonies: Simón Bolívar, Foreign Mercenaries and the Birth of New Nations (Liverpool, 2006).
Most notably for World War I, perhaps, Annette Becker, War and Faith: the Religious Imagination in France, 1914–1930 (Oxford, 1998).
See Karen Hagemann, ‘Mannlicher Muth und Teutsche Ehre’: Nation, Militär und Geschlecht zur Zeit der Antinapoleonischen Kriege Preußens (Paderborn, 2002), 143–148.
See, for instance, Nigel Aston, Christianity and Revolutionary Europe, 1750–1830 (Cambridge, 2002).
Natalie Petiteau, Lendemains d’Empire: Les soldats de Napoléon dans la France du dix-neuvième siècle (Paris, 2003);
and Stéphane Calvet, Les officiers charentais de Napoléon au dix-neuvième siècle (Paris, 2010).
Christine Wright, Wellington’s Men in Australia: Peninsular War Veterans and the Making of Empire, c. 1820–1840 (Basingstoke, 2011), 175–178.
Pierre Serna, ‘Toute révolution est guerre d’indépendance’, in Pour quoi faire la Révolution?, ed. Jean-Luc Chappey et al., (Marseille, 2012), 19–49, here 37–40.
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© 2016 Alan Forrest, Karen Hagemann and Michael Rowe
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Forrest, A., Hagemann, K., Rowe, M. (2016). Introduction: War, Demobilization and Memory in the Era of Atlantic Revolutions. In: Forrest, A., Hagemann, K., Rowe, M. (eds) War, Demobilization and Memory. War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-40649-1_1
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