Uniform and Distinction: Symbolic Aspects of Officer Dress in the Eighteenth-Century Danish State

Abstract

Dressing early modern military officers in uniform was socially complicated. The history of Danish army officer uniforms during the long eighteenth century demonstrates how style of dress and lifestyle together were shaped by a number of social forces: signalling distinction and social superiority despite the core message of service and belonging transmitted by uniforms, reducing the stresses between individual desire for flexibility in dress and the love of uniformity of a heavily militarized and centralized absolute monarchy, and finally finding a way to maintain the distinction of the military man when civilian uniforms became common during the last decades of the century. Many of these developments reflected common European patterns, but others were shaped by the conditions of the heavily militarized northern European states or by the peculiar political and social mechanisms of the Danish monarchy. Uniform and Distinction Basic Aspects of the UniformIf we disregard certain strange dress items mainly found in the cavalry, such as the full Hungarian dress of the Hussars, eighteenth-century army uniforms were standard urban male dress: coat, waistcoat, shirt, breeches, stockings and shoes. Cavalrymen wore boots when riding, but so did civilians. Military dress changed a lot during the century on a superficial level. Colours changed, and so did the shape of hats, coats, buttons, cuffs, and so on. Some changes reflected internal considerations in the military organization, others changing male fashion. The waistcoat replaced the casaque as partner of the coat during the first decade of the eighteenth century. During the last decade, the long coat became a shorter frock and trousers replaced breeches. But, despite these modifications of the basic parts and a considerable volatility in the details, the uniform was essentially the same. 3 Few concessions were made to the functional requirements of military service. The most important was the choice of material. Except for the shirt, everything was made of wool. Silk and velvet, high fashion for most of the century, were only used for decorative details. Gaiters -often worn by civilians for travel and long walks -were another concession to the requirements of the service. Hats were standardized in certain shapes, only or mainly found among military men, such as the three-cornered hat, which was assumed to be practical when shooting. All ranks wore swords, and enlisted men needed to be able to carry various bags. This required appropriate belts and straps.Thus, a number of details revealed that this was a military uniform despite the general resemblance to standard urban dress. Most important, however, was uniformity itself, the resemblance of military men to each other. Like all European armies, the Danish army was dressed according to the practice of hierarchical uniformity. Hierarchical uniformity implied that some traits were standard for the whole army, others for all units of a certain kind, such as all infantry or dragoons, and still others were specific for a c...

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