Resisting Napoleon: The British Response to the Threat of Invasion, 1797û1815

by Philp,Mark; Philp,Mark

• ISBN13: 9780754653134
• ISBN10: 0754653137
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2016-03-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The long war with Revolutionary France had a fundamental impact on British political culture. The most dramatic example of this is the mass mobilisation of the British people in response to French invasion threats throughout the last years of the century but, most spectacularly, in the period 1803-5, after the collapse of the Peace of Amiens, and the massing of an invasion fleet by Napoleon.The preparations for the threatened invasion had many dimensions including military and naval mobilization, the development of defensive earthworks and fortifications on the British Coast, the surveillance and monitoring of radicals identified with the French cause, the incitement of loyalist sentiment through caricature, newspapers, tracts and broadsides, and loyalist songs, and the construction of Napoleon as the prime enemy of British interests. Although aspects of these issues have been studied, this book is the first time that they have been brought together systematically. By bringing together historians of Britain and France to examine the dynamics of the military conflict between the two nations in this period, this book measures its impact on their domestic political cultures, and its effect on their perceptions of each other. In so doing it will encourage scholars to further examine aspects of popular mobilisation which have hitherto been largely ignored, such as the resurgence of loyalism in 1803, and to see their contributions in the light of the dual contexts of domestic political conflict and their war with each other. By allowing scholars to focus their attention on this period of heightened tension, the book contributes both new detail to our understanding of the period and a better overall understanding of the complex place which each nation came to occupy in the consciousness of the other.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgements	xi
List of Contributors	xiii
Introduction: The British Response to the Threat of Invasion, 1797-1815	1	(18)
Mark Philp
A Tale of Two Conflicts: Critiques of the British War Effort, 1793-1815	19	(22)
Philip Harling
The Sea Fencibles, Loyalism and the Reach of the State	41	(20)
Nicholas Rogers
The Defence of Manchester and Liverpool in 1803: Conflicts of Loyalism, Patriotism and the Middle Classes	61	(14)
Katrina Navickas
`An Insurrection of Loyalty': The London Volunteer Regiments' Response to the Invasion Threat	75	(16)
Jon Newman
In Defence of Great Britain: Henry Addington, the Duke of York and Military Preparations against Invasion by Napoleonic France, 1803-1804	91	(20)
Charles John Fedorak
This Soldierlike Danger': The Trial of William Blake for Sedition	111	(14)
Jon Mee
Mark Crosby
John Bull in a Dream: Fear and Fantasy in the Visual Satires of 1803	125	(16)
Alexandra Franklin
Britain and the Black Legend: The Genesis of the Anti-Napoleonic Myth	141	(18)
Simon Burrows
`The Cheap Defence of Nations': Monuments and Propaganda	159	(14)
Holger Hoock
Music and Politics, 1793-1815	173	(32)
Introduction
Mark Philp
The Volunteer Band, Newcastle upon Tyne
Roz Southey
`You Heroes of the Day': Ephemeral Verse Responses to the Peace of Amiens and the Napoleonic Wars, 1802-04
Caroline Jackson-Houlston
`Thus We Kept Away Bonaparte': Music in Oxford at the Time of the Napoleonic Wars
Susan Wollenberg
Anti-English Discourse among the Authorities: Myths and Realities in the Northern Departements	205	(12)
Annie Crepin
Vincent Cuvilliers
An Inundation from Our Shores: Travelling across the Channel around the Peace of Amiens	217	(24)
Renaud Morieux
Index	241