Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2007 "The Foundation of British Strength": National Identity and the British Common Soldier Steven Schwamenfeld Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE ARTS AND SCIENCES “The Foundation of British Strength:” National Identity and the British Common Soldier By Steven Schwamenfeld A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2007 The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Steven Schwamenfeld defended on Dec. 5, 2006. ___________________ Jonathan Grant Professor Directing Dissertation _____________ Patrick O’Sullivan Outside Committee Member _________________ Michael Cresswell Committee Member ________________ Edward Wynot Committee Member Approved: ___________________ Neil Jumonville, Chair History Department The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables iv Abstract v Introduction 1 I. “Thou likes the Smell of Poother” 13 II. “Our Poor Fellows” 42 III. “Hardened to my Lot” 63 IV. “…to Conciliate the Inhabitants” 92 V. Redcoats and Hessians 112 VI. The Jewel in the Crown of Thorns 135 VII. Soldiers, Settlers, Slaves and Savages 156 VIII. Conclusion 185 Appendix 193 Bibliography 199 Biographical Sketch 209 iii LIST OF TABLES 1.1 National composition of nominally English Regiments – 1810 16 1.2 “Overwhelmingly” English Regiments – 1810 17 1.3 “Largely” English Regiments – 1810 17 1.4 National composition of nominally Scottish Regiments – 1810 18 1.5 Working background of soldiers of six Regiments – 1806-29 18 3.1 Geographical Location of Desertions – 1811-15 64 3.2 Geographical Location of Desertions – 1815-29 64 iv ABSTRACT The goal of this dissertation is to convey the importance of patriotism for British common soldiers serving during the period 1775-1837. The writings of these soldiers repeatedly express both strong national feeling and a belief in the uniqueness of British national character (“No other troops in the world would have endured, for so long, so terrible a struggle1”); in addition they contain even more numerous expressions of patriotism’s disreputable relation, xenophobia. The ubiquity of these expressions and the similarity of views of the soldier-memorialists serving in widely diverse environments justify a belief in their significance. In addition to first-hand accounts written by soldiers (and accounts written by officers depicting their men) a wide variety of documents have been utilized including Inspection reports of individual Regiments, Summaries of Courts-Martial and Returns of Desertions for units deployed on stationed throughout the British Empire. The most significant conclusion to be drawn from these documents (as related in chapters 3, 6 and 7) is that desertion was least common in stations that were both physically and culturally alien to Britons. The only foreign station in which desertion posed a serious threat to military cohesion was North America. Here an English-speaking, culturally familiar, if politically hostile, neighboring nation actively provided enticements for deserters from the British army. However, despite the comparatively high incidence of desertion, British troops serving in North America still exhibited voluble devotion to their country as the story of the “Convention Army” (chapter 2) and the account of Sgt Lamb clearly demonstrate. The Redcoats active loyalty remained “the foundation of British strength.2” 1 Sgt. Edward Cotton, 7th Hussars A Voice from Waterloo. (London: 1862) 155. 2 Antony Brett-James (ed.) Wellington at War. (London: 1961) 122. A quotation from Sir Arthur Wellesley’s 1805 “Memorandum on British troops serving in India.” v INTRODUCTION The aim of this work is to analyze the motivations and describe the experiences of British common soldiers who served in the period 1775-1837. This will be accomplished through the use of both official records and of literary remains of individual soldiers; although with somewhat greater emphasis on the latter. By literary remains I include letters, journals and memoirs; these works range in size from a single surviving letter to published memoirs of 350 pages. In discussing soldiers’ motives for enlisting and for carrying out their service faithfully I am particularly interested in the question of patriotism and ‘national consciousness.’ In other words, my dissertation is a look at national feeling in a nation that has often been described as having avoided ‘political nationalism;’ and among a class of people often described as being excluded from membership in the nation “The most pronounced moral traits of the English were violence and patriotism1;” this is how Christopher Duffy memorably describes the character and motivations of the British soldier of the 18th century. I am particularly interested in the soldier’s patriotism but the question of violence (especially against foreigners) is rarely far from the surface in this context. The degree to which these factors motivated ‘my’ soldiers will be compared to other motivating causes; these may range from the idiosyncratically personal to the broadly economic to those of loyalty to corporate institutions other than the nation (i.e. the Army or the Regiment). The role of the Protestant religion as a source of corporate loyalty in itself and as a factor in creating an integral British nationalism will be addressed extensively. I hope to show that patriotism was indeed an important motivating factor for the common British soldier even though his army was in a very real sense the last of the Ancient Regime. Thus it remained a very different institution from the national, conscript armies that arose in the wake of the French Revolution. As Hew Strachan writes, the British army “remained closer to the precepts of Frederick the Great than those of Napoleon2.” In addition, the vexed question of whether the United Kingdom constitutes a nation will thus necessarily be addressed and the relative strengths of British versus particular national patriotisms will be examined. Attention will be devoted to conditional factors that might enhance feelings of group solidarity; particularly that of service in deeply alien environments such as India and Egypt. Linda Colley has written that “a popular sense of Englishness…considerably predates3” the French Revolution. One study of the English foot soldiers of the Hundred Years War describes “the rising nationalism, bordering on xenophobia, that arose during the French wars” as a vital component of the soldiers’ motivations and morale. In 1476, the jurist Sir John Fortescue argued that the might of England “stondith most vppon archers, whch be no ryche men.” He added that ‘it is cowardisse and lakke off hartes and corage, wich no Ffrenchman hath like vnto a Englysh man” that prevented them from rising against their tyrannical government; “But the Englysh man is off another corage.”4 1 Christopher Duffy. The Military Experience in the Age of Reason. (New York: 1988) 31. 2 Hew Strachan. “The British Army’s Legacy from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars,” in Alan Guy (ed.) The Road to Waterloo. (London: 1998) 197. 3 Linda Colley. “Whose Nation? Class and National Consciousness in Britain 1750-1830.” Past and Present. No. 113 . 100. 4 Sir John Fortescue. The Governance of England. Ed. By Charles Plummer (Oxford: 1885), 137-142. 1 In this vein an Italian visitor to England in 1548 described his hosts thusly: “the English are commonly destitute of good breeding, and are despisers of foreigners, since they esteem him a wretched being and but half a man who be born elsewhere than in Britain.”5 Such feelings remained quite common, even in an “Age of Reason.” John Wilkes, the most influential radical of the era was an intensely chauvinistic Englishman. Even while resident in France he sought to express “the spirit of English liberty in a land of singing and dancing slaves.”6 And he endlessly railed against the “Macs and Sawneys” who had thoughtlessly been allowed to dominate Britain in the aftermath of the Union of the Kingdoms in 1707.7 As a fine account of 18th century warfare confirms: “the most pronounced moral traits of the English were violence and patriotism…All classes were united in their contempt for foreigners.” Thus just as the great historian of the Peninsular War could write: “war is the condition of this world. From man to the smallest insect all are at strife,” twenty years before the publication of “The Origin of Species;” so too could the common British soldier be motivated by national feeling despite the absence of nationalist parties or mobilizing ideologies in his homeland. As the anthropologist Lionel Tiger states: “xenophobia existed before biology…There was Social Darwinism before Darwin.” The present work hopes to go some ways to confirm the veracity of this viewpoint. Prior to discussing the background of the British army for the period 1775-1837 and of the stratum of society from which it was recruited, I will look a bit more closely at general ‘theories’ of nationalism and national feeling and of their pertinence to a discussion of the British experience. The idea of Primordialism is often associated with the sociologist Edward Shils. This does not argue that nations emerge from the evolutionary muck and then continue a perennial existence: “Any particular nation, especially if it is a small one, can disappear.” Rather it posits the notion that men necessarily exist in groups and that society precedes the individual. Thus all human experience is marked by the primal notion of the in-group. In this context the individual is born into a particular tradition that is itself ever-evolving. And he/she is ineluctably marked by this tradition if not strait-jacketed by it. Shils’ theory is nuanced yet it fails to address the reality of individuals who profess more than one identity; even if such an individual is born to a ‘mixed’ marriage.