7 - Loyalism, Nationalism and the Army, 1790–1860

Summary

Introduction

This chapter examines the loyalism shown by professional solders in the early nineteenth century. Over the past 25 years there has been extensive debate on the role of the armed forces in generating early nineteenth-century political loyalism. Attention has been given, particularly in the context of the French Wars, to the role of soldiers in building a popular sense of politically stable nationhood. This chapter explores the attitudes of rank-and-file soldiers to these issues. The main contributor to the debate has been Linda Colley. Whilst arguing convincingly that working-class soldiers were part of this process, she shows how they could often display ‘multiple identities’:

[I]n time of extreme danger from without, the unreformed British state rested on the active consent of substantial numbers of its inhabitants. To recognise this is not to deny that large numbers of Britons were opposed to the political ordering of their state, to its fiscal exactions, to its social and economic inequities, and to its involvement in a protracted war.

In a later work she emphasised how the same dual attitudes existed in Empire:

It is imperative too to consider them [common soldiers] in tandem with their civilian counterparts back home. Any assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the British empire abroad in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries must take on board the fact that its white soldiers … were recruited from the same social and occupational groupings that were becoming more literate, more disorderly, and in many cases more politically active at home.

Colley's views have been criticised, especially by those undertaking new research on the political impact of the volunteer movement from 1793 to 1809. Whilst the volunteers are not discussed in detail in this book, the work of John Cookson is relevant. He argues that wartime soldiers’ narratives emphasised pride in service and regiment rather than class or the British state. Recently, Joe Cozens has also challenged both Colley's and Cookson’s work by arguing that such ‘nation in arms’ theories ignore ‘history from below’. He emphasises the indifference or hostility of working-class soldiers to authority and their loyalty to an overarching contract culture, which can be explored through recruitment and courts martial records of the regular army and militia.