Masculinity and the Making of the British Imperial Army, 1754-1783
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2015 Judging Empire: Masculinity and the Making of the British Imperial Army, 1754-1783 Emily Merrill University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Merrill, Emily, "Judging Empire: Masculinity and the Making of the British Imperial Army, 1754-1783" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1893. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1893 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1893 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Judging Empire: Masculinity and the Making of the British Imperial Army, 1754-1783 Abstract “Judging Empire” examines the culture of the British Army during its transformation from a national army to a primary agent of the expanding British Empire. Using letters, diaries, contemporary military manuals, and especially the army’s court-martial records, it focuses particularly on the masculine culture of the officer class. Due to their high social position and the lack of other authorities in the imperial areas where the army operated, members of this group held disproportionate power over both their military subordinates and the civilians with which the army interacted. Officers’ presentation of themselves emphasized traditional understandings of martial masculinity and class dynamics; their privileges as men were inseparable from their privileges as members of the upper class. Officers were determined to preserve these privileges as they came under threat from the development of increasingly technical forms of warfare, imperial administrators anxious to uphold centralized authority, enlisted soldiers demanding authority and autonomy based on their own claims to masculine privilege, and imperial civilian populations whose social hierarchies were often perceived to have a dangerous lack of resemblance to those of the army. Officers vde eloped a culture in which men’s fragile honor needed to be defended with deadly violence, and in which fighting wars and advancing the national interest were frequently perceived to be of lesser importance than deciding questions of personal honor and individual reputation. This culture, in turn, affected the army’s imperial role. Violent masculinity and honor culture negatively affected the army’s military capabilities, and army administrators and government officials attemptedo t control rogue officers through laws and regulations meant to curb their violent and dangerous behavior. Yet the vast distances of empire made such attempts at centralized control ineffective, and they found it necessary to cede to the officers themselves the task of regulating officers’ problematic behavior. So long as officers retained their power, imperial rule would be shaped by these men who insisted that violent domination was the necessary and essential foundation of their masculinity, military authority, status, and power. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group History First Advisor Kathleen Brown Subject Categories History This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1893 JUDGING EMPIRE: MASCULINITY AND THE MAKING OF THE BRITISH IMPERIAL ARMY, 1754-1783 Emily Merrill A DISSERTATION in History Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 Supervisor of Dissertation ____________________ Kathleen Brown Professor of History Graduate Group Chairperson ______________________ Benjamin Nathans Ronald S. Lauder Endowed Term Associate Professor of History Dissertation Committee Kathleen Brown, Professor of History Daniel K. Richter, Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History Antonio Feros, Associate Professor of History ii ABSTRACT JUDGING EMPIRE: MASCULINITY AND THE MAKING OF THE BRITISH IMPERIAL ARMY, 1754-1783 Emily Merrill Kathleen Brown “Judging Empire” examines the culture of the British Army during its transformation from a national army to a primary agent of the expanding British Empire. Using letters, diaries, contemporary military manuals, and especially the army’s court-martial records, it focuses particularly on the masculine culture of the officer class. Due to their high social position and the lack of other authorities in the imperial areas where the army operated, members of this group held disproportionate power over both their military subordinates and the civilians with which the army interacted. Officers’ presentation of themselves emphasized traditional understandings of martial masculinity and class dynamics; their privileges as men were inseparable from their privileges as members of the upper class. Officers were determined to preserve these privileges as they came under threat from the development of increasingly technical forms of warfare, imperial administrators anxious to uphold centralized authority, enlisted soldiers demanding authority and autonomy based on their own claims to masculine privilege, and imperial civilian populations whose social hierarchies were often perceived to have a dangerous lack of resemblance to those of the army. Officers developed a culture in which men’s fragile honor needed to be defended with deadly violence, and in which fighting wars and advancing the national interest were frequently perceived to be of lesser importance than deciding questions of iii personal honor and individual reputation. This culture, in turn, affected the army’s imperial role. Violent masculinity and honor culture negatively affected the army’s military capabilities, and army administrators and government officials attempted to control rogue officers through laws and regulations meant to curb their violent and dangerous behavior. Yet the vast distances of empire made such attempts at centralized control ineffective, and they found it necessary to cede to the officers themselves the task of regulating officers’ problematic behavior. So long as officers retained their power, imperial rule would be shaped by these men who insisted that violent domination was the necessary and essential foundation of their masculinity, military authority, status, and power. iv Table of Contents Introduction 1 Part I: Gender in the Army 1. Linear Warfare and the Politics of the Body 17 2. Paternalism and Symbolic Patriarchy 37 3. Above the Law 67 4. The Cult of Courage 99 5. No Retreat 133 Part II: The Army in the Empire 6. A Government of Men, not of Laws 165 7. The Supremacy of Honor 195 8. Imperial Protectors? 223 Conclusion 250 1 Introduction Major General Lord Charles Hay was unhappy. He had arrived in Halifax in July 1757 to join the Earl of Loudoun, the British Army’s Commander-in-Chief in North America, who was to lead a summer attack on territory held by Britain’s ancient enemy, France. The skirmishes between British and French troops in the interior of North America in 1754 had escalated into a general European war, but North America remained an important theater of war for the British, who sought to neutralize the threat that the French colonial presence in Canada, the Great Lakes, and along the Mississippi River presented to their own colonies on the eastern coast of North America. To that end, orders had crossed the Atlantic instructing Loudoun to attack either Quebec, at the heart of French Canada, or Louisbourg, the great Atlantic fortress that protected the approach to the St. Lawrence River. The choice of target was left to Loudoun to determine, as the weather and the need to coordinate with naval forces would have to be taken into consideration. Loudoun called a council of war to debate the question. Lord Charles Hay, a member of the council, found the meetings interminable. An attack on Quebec was soon dismissed as unfeasible, but the council spent several weeks debating whether or not it was too late in the year to mount an expedition to attack Louisbourg, calling on various people to testify to Louisbourg’s fortifications, winds, tides, weather, anchorages, and so on. Hay soon took to making impatient remarks that the army ought to sail to Louisbourg and begin fighting immediately—and not only in meetings of the council of war but also in public. Loudoun reported in his diary that another council member had “told us that 2 Ld Charles Hay this day at the Head of the Line declared that he could take Louisburg in ten dayes.”1 But Hay’s dissatisfaction was not confined to the delays of the council. Upon arriving in Halifax, Loudoun had started making arrangements to prepare his army for operations in North America, ordering the engineers to construct a sample fort, for the purpose of “instructing both Officers and Men in making Approaches towards a fortified Place,” so that the troops would be prepared to attack heavily fortified positions at Louisbourg.2 Furthermore, he had ordered the soldiers to clear ground for a garden, “in order to Sow Turnips and other Greens for themselves,” this being “the only thing that either prevents, or recovers them out of, those inveterate Scurvies we are infested with in this Country, from the Salt Provisions.”3 Hay publicly denounced these activities as well. One officer reported that Hay had declared that the soldiers ought to be concerned with fighting, not with gardening and “building Sham Forts, and making approaches to them,