1 a Women's History of War (1750-1815) – Course Description
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1 A Women’s History of War (1750-1815) – Course description - Special Subject 2021-2022 Renaud Morieux NB. Because this is a new Special Subject, this is not yet the final version of this course (but it is very close to it!). For the same reason, there is no sample exam paper. As Margaret Hunt writes in a recent article, ‘While there have been exceptions, most military history is still represented as a male event. The focus of the ‘military revolution’ scholarship still tends to be military institutions, logistics and success in battle, while the literature on the fiscal-military state compounds this by tying military affairs tightly to the traditionally masculine sphere of politics. This does not only have implications for studying women and gender’.1 While most eighteenth-century women were not involved in the conduct of war, the so- called ‘new history of war’ has indeed drawn attention to life on the homefront. Surprisingly, however, there is no work of synthesis, at least on the early modern period and the eighteenth century, addressing the political, cultural, economic and social consequences of war on women. War was a ‘normal’ activity in the eighteenth century. Did war reinforce gender roles, did it give new opportunities to women, or did both phenomena take place simultaneously? How did women experience life without their husbands? It is well-known that for sailors’ wives, living without their husbands for weeks, even months at a time, was a common experience, which raises the question of the specificity of the ruptures induced by war in comparison with times of peace. The absence of a husband often led to the increase of the domestic roles of the woman, but also created professional opportunities. Yet this distance, temporary or permanent, could also imply abject poverty for women in difficult times. Another concern regards the social effects of men’s return from war. It is well known that the troops’ demobilization was always a factor contributing to disorder in the eighteenth century, in addition to growing unemployment. How much was the violence of the battlefield transferred to the household? Can one establish a link between sexual violence against foreign women and domestic violence? Furthermore, armies and military institutions continue to exist in peace time, and the interactions between these men and women were notoriously fraught, a phenomenon that can be traced in judicial records. Another problem, on which historians of contemporary wars provide useful insights, is the reinsertion into civil, familial or parish life by prisoners who had been captive for years. How many stayed in their countries of detention? Married there and had families? War had consequences on civil societies at large. For many enslaved women, wars could mean the brutal destruction of their families and forced removal by new masters; for others, the redrawing of imperial boundaries and the promises of emancipation offered opportunities to conquer their freedom. The history of women and gender is at the heart of this proposed paper, which aims to question the hypothetical specificity of a ‘feminine’ experiences of war, by paying attention to a wide spectrum of experiences. In order to acclimatize students to these discussions, the 1 Margaret Hunt, ‘War’, Unpublished conference paper, Leverhulme Network on Gender and Work, 2020, used by permission. 2 first two sessions will cover theoretical issues regarding gender and feminist history, the history of war and the history of violence. Because eighteenth-century wars were global, the geographical coverage is expansive, from Europe to North America, and from India to the Atlantic Ocean. The relation between general processes and local contexts will also be explored. This Paper pays attention to lived experiences as well as discursive practices. Various sources will be considered, such as legal treaties, political discourse, visual representations, female memoirs, family correspondence, fiction, or economic data. Teaching The paper will be taught in 16 two-hour seminar style classes in the Michaelmas and Lent Terms. These seminars will be structured around student presentations, with topics assigned early in Michaelmas. In addition, two classes (one in MT and the other in LT) will focus on specific primary sources (2x1 hour). There will be a film screening in Michaelmas, followed by a class (1 hour). COVID allowing, one of the classes focusing on specific primary sources will be organized around a visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Lent. A fieldtrip to the Cambridgeshire Archives in Ely will take place in Lent (2 hours + 1 hour class). Exams preparation: Michaelmas: one Q&A class on gobbets (1 hour). Lent: one gobbets practice session (1 hour), and one class discussing strategies for researching and writing the Long Essay (1 hour). Easter: revision sessions, on gobbets (2 x 1 hour), and on the Long Essay (1 hour). The total contact time will be 42 hours of teaching. The topics studied in Michaelmas will focus on the experience of war; we will turn to the homefront in Lent. MT. Michaelmas Term: Women’s experiences of war Week 1. Introduction. Writing the global history of gender and women in wartime: historiography and methodology [lecture + seminar – 2 hours] Week 2. Global comparisons and local variations [lecture + seminar – 2 hours] Week 3. Fighting Women [seminar – 2 hours] Film screening followed by class [1 hour] Week 4. Army wives and camp followers in Europe [seminar – 2 hours] Week 5. Refugees, exiles and forced (im)mobility (India and North America) [seminar – 2 hours] 3 Week 6. Violence towards women (North America and Ireland) [seminar: 2 hours] CONTENT WARNING Class: Legal sources [1 hour] Week 7. Enslaved women [seminar: 2 hours] Week 8. Female captives and ‘conversion’ in colonial North America [seminar: 2 hours] Class: Gobbets Q&As [1 hour] Lent Term: The effects of war on women at home Week 1. Wars and the gender order: marriage and adultery [seminar: 2 hours] Class: Visual sources (1 hour) – if possible, held at the Fitzwilliam Week 2. Wartime politics and patriotism (the American Revolution) [seminar: 2 hours] Week 3. Women’s role in wartime popular subversions (the French Wars) [seminar: 2 hours] Fieldtrip to the Cambridgeshire Archives in Ely (2 hours). Week 4. Women writing the war (the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars) [seminar: 2 hours] Class: Fieldtrip discussion and presentations [1 hour]. Week 5. Women’s work (Europe and the Caribbean) [seminar: 2 hours] Class: gobbets practice [1 hour] Week 6. Widows and single women (India and North America) [seminar: 2 hours] Week 7. Maintaining family ties at a distance: The sailors’ sisters, wives and mothers [seminar: 2 hours] Week 8. Interactions with foreign prisoners [seminar: 2 hours] Class: strategies for researching and writing the Long Essay [1 hour] Easter Term Revision sessions. Gobbets (1 hour) Gobbets (1 hour) Long essay (1 hour) 4 Michaelmas Term: Women’s experiences of war 1. Introduction. Writing the history of gender and women in wartime: historiography and methodology [lecture + seminar – 2 hours] This session will primarily focus on the secondary literature, including research on contemporary conflicts and feminist theory. We will discuss one key methodological challenge, i.e. the difficulty of ‘finding’ the women in these documents, by bringing to the fore the problem of the silences of the archives. Reading (indicative) Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (University of Chicago Press, 1987). Frey, Linda S. and Marsha L. Frey (eds.), Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Europe, 1618– 1900 (Greenwood Press: 2007) Joshua S. Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (Cambridge University Press, 2001) Hacker, B C and Vining, M (eds) 2012, A Companion to Women’s Military History (Brill, 2012). Karen Hagermann and Jane Rendall, ‘Introduction: Gender, War and Politics: Transatlantic Perspectives on the Wars of Revolution and Liberation, 1775-1830’, in Karen Hagemann, Gisela Mettele and Jane Rendall Gender (eds.), War and Politics: Transatlantic Perspectives 1775-1830 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010): 1-37. *Karen Hagermann, Stefan Dudink, and Sonya O. Rose (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600 (Oxford University Press, 2000), introduction. Ebook Margaret R. Higonnet and Patrice L.-R. Higonnet, ‘The Double Helix’, in M.R. Higonnet et al. (eds.), Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (Yale University Press, 1996): 31–50. ebook Olwen Hufton, The prospect before her: a history of women in Western Europe, I, 1500- 1800 (London, 1995): 217-50 Lynn II, John A., Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2008) Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Princeton UP, 1983). 2. Global comparisons and local variations [lecture + seminar – 2 hours] Defining war, in the eighteenth century as in the present, is more complicated than it sounds. Some military conflicts were not considered legitimate and were deemed to be ‘rebellions’ or ‘insurrections’. This could justify a more ruthless conduct towards the enemy and civilians. ‘Civil wars’ and imperial wars, in particular, raise specific questions for women and the family. Reading (indicative) C. B. Stevens, ‘Women and War in Early Modern Russia (Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries)’, A Companion to Women’s Military History, 74 (2012) 5 Bernadette Whelan, 'The weaker vessel'?; the impact of warfare on women in seventeenth-century Ireland', in Christine Meek and Catherine Lawless (eds), Studies in medieval and early modern women (Dublin, 2005). 3. Fighting Women [seminar – 2 hours] Warfare was not only a masculine enterprise. Some cases of female participation in warfare are well-documented. These actions, which often entailed crossdressing, were usually described as transgressions to the male patriarchy. The disproportionate space that these women occupy in popular culture needs to be explained and compared to what we know about ‘real’ women on the battlefield.