War Memories

The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars had an enduring influence on the collective memory of all European nations and regions, and have given them an international dimension. These essays look at how the French Wars were remembered in personal diaries, paintings and literature, allowing a comparative analysis with atransnational perspective.

• 1812
• Austria
• Britain
• culture
• Europe
• gender
• individual
• Invasion
• media
• Napoleon
• nation
• novel
• perception
• revolution
• Russia

'We have focused so intensely on issues of history and memory arising out of the world wars of the twentieth century that we have tended to lose sight of the huge transnational impact of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. This superb, stimulating and vivid collection of essays offers a welcome invitation to reconsider a major factor in the making of western modernity.' - Colin Jones, Queen Mary University of London, UK

"What forged nation-states was not so much war as the cultural memory of war. Since nationalism was primarily a nineteenth- and twentieth-century phenomenon, the Napoleonic Wars played a vital part in shaping national cultures of remembrance and public history. This carefully-composed volume offers new and convincing perspectives on these processes and provides an impressive and truly European overview of the question." - Horst Carl, University of Gießen, Germany

"The field of remembrance studies is now very crowded, but this book stands out as a wide- ranging compendium and showcase for the inventive, challenging work being done in this field for the Revolutionary-Napoleonic period. The editors have brought together a collection of uniformly fine essays, from some of the best scholars working in this genre, many of them young and emerging. This marks an important step in the ever burgeoning renaissance of Napoleonic studies. Yet another new, conceptual front has been opened here." - Michael Broers, Oxford University, UK

"This fine addition to a splendid book series opens important new perspectives on the ways the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon have been remembered and commemorated in European culture. Ranging across genres from memoirs to novels to the visual arts and material culture, the essays collected here add significantly to our understanding of the wars' impact, and form a fascinating counterpart to the literature on war memories and culture in the twentieth century." - David A. Bell, Princeton University, USA

"Drawing on a fascinating battery of concepts that originate in anthropology and sociology as well as in history, the editors have assembled a team of well-respected historians whose work emphasises the many links between experience and memory, the public and the private, history and fiction, violence and pacification, and between male values and a specifically feminine sensibility that helps to redefine gender difference." - Pierre Serna, Université Paris 1 - Panthéon Sorbonne, France

"This is a collection of original, first-class chapters that brings fresh and interesting insights to the French wars and their aftermaths with a depth of knowledge that easily cuts across regions and periods. It is a must for scholars of the Napoleonic era as well as cultural historians of Europe." - European History Quarterly

KIRSTIN BUCHINGERResearch Fellow, the Centre for French Studies, the Free University of Berlin, Germany ALAN FORRESTProfessor of Modern History, the University of York, UK ÉTIENNE FRANÇOIS Professor Emeritus of History, the Free University of Berlin, Germany, and the University of Paris-I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), France KAREN HAGEMANNJames G. Kenan Distinguished Professor of History, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA HOLGER HOOCKCarroll J. Amundson Professor of British History, the University of Pittsburgh, USA LEIGHTON S. JAMES Lecturer in History, the University of Swansea, UK CATRIONA KENNEDY Lecturer in History, the University of York, UK PETER K. KLEINProfessor Emeritus of Art History, the Eberhard-Karls-University of Tübingen, Germany WOLFGANG KOLLER formerly Research Fellow, the Centre for French Studies, the Free University of Berlin, Germany RUTH LEISEROWITZDeputy Director, the German Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland LAURENCE MONTROUSSIER-FAVREResearch fellow, CHERPA, Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Aix-en-Provence, France DAVID O'BRIENAssociate Professor of Art History, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA MARINA PELTZER Member of the Board of Trustees of the Brussels Royal Society of Archaeology, Belgium LARS PETERSAcademic Consultant, Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, Berlin, Germany ROLF REICHARDT Professor h.c. for Modern History, the Justus-Liebig-University in Giessen, Germany MARIA SCHULTZResearch Assistant, the Gedenk- und Begegnungsstätte Leistikowstraße, Potsdam, Germany BERNHARD STRUCKReader in Modern History, the University of St. Andrews, UK MARIE-CÉCILE THORAL Senior Lecturer in History, Sheffield Hallam University, UK