Travel Writing and Encounters with National ‘Others’ in the Napoleonic Wars

Abstract

Studies of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars have generally focused upon the military dimension or the political consequences of the conflict. Although recent scholarship has broadened to consider the cultural aspects of the wars, the travel experiences of those that fought have been neglected. Histories concerned with state‐building or languages of patriotism and nationality generally focus on elite groups, while the concentration of military history upon the battlefield has occluded other aspects of the soldierly experience. On the other hand, historians of travel writing have ignored the extent to which many war narratives were also travelogues. But Napoleonic soldiers’ letters, diaries and memoirs are full of ethnographic observations on the foreign peoples and cultures they encountered while campaigning. The role of eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century travel literature in shaping images of the foreign ‘other’ and hierarchies of civilisations has been recognised. However, much of this existing work concentrates on famous travel writers. It is only relatively recently that soldiers’ accounts from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars have been approached as a form of travel writing and one that did much to shape understanding of Europe. Indeed, soldiers appropriated the travelogue style to construct their own accounts.

British national and patriotic identities in the army officer corps, 1793–1815

“…Historians of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars have recently begun to explore the relationship between military service, travel and the construction of national identities through the encountering of national 'others'. 15 British officers' and soldiers' experiences on campaign in southern Europe, Egypt and the West Indies reinforced their belonging to European civilization, as they contrasted the modernity of western and northern Europe with the backwardness of the cultures they encountered. 16 In addition to encounters with foreign civilians, military service brought British junior officers into contact with foreign officers and soldiers as allies, opponents, or fellow members of the British army.…”