War and the Nation, 1793–1815: British Identity and the New Empire

Abstract

There is a division in the historiography of Britain during the long period of warfare and conflict with revolutionary France between 1793 and the final end of war in Europe with the Allied victory over Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. On the one hand there are histories of the British state, celebrating its survival during long years of defeat at the hands of the French, as well as ultimate victory and security in status as a dominant European power in a ‘Concert of Europe’ founded at the Congress of Vienna. These were also years in which Britain acquired a substantial overseas empire which, as with that won in 1763, made Great Britain truly a world power. On the other hand, from a domestic perspective, success abroad masked civil division within, both between the traditional ruling class and a new emerging group of people with a political consciousness who were of artisan and middle-class background, although of course the language of class did not yet exist. The issue here was the rights of man as enshrined in the words of Thomas Paine. There have been relatively few attempts by historians to relate each of these perspectives to the other.