Imagining War and Peace in Eighteenth-Century Britain, 1690-1820

Ranging over political, moral, religious, artistic and literary developments in eighteenth-century Britain, Andrew Lincoln explains in a clear and engaging style how the 'civilizing process' and the rise of humanitarianism, far from inhibiting war, helped to make it acceptable to a modern commercial society. In a close examination of a wide variety of illuminating examples, he shows how criticism of the terrible effects of war could be used to promote the nation's war-making. His study explores how ideas and methods were developed to provide the British public with moral insulation from the overseas violence they read about, and from the dire effects of war they encountered at home. It shows, too, how the first campaigning peace society, while promoting pacificism, drew inspiration from the prospects opened by imperial conquest. This volume is an important and timely call to rethink how we understand the cultural and moral foundations of imperial Britain.

Author: Andrew Lincoln
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 11/23/2023
Pages: 300
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.75d
ISBN: 9781009366540

About the Author
Lincoln, Andrew: - Andrew Lincoln is Emeritus Professor of English at Queen Mary, University of London. He has previously published on William Blake, including a 1992 edition of Songs of Innocence and Experience and the monograph Spiritual History (1996), and on Walter Scott, with his monograph Walter Scott and Modernity (2007). His current research focuses on eighteenth-century responses to war and ideas about how to achieve peace.

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