The Nineteenth-Century Invention of the Modern Battlefield

Atherton, Ian

Abstract

Many of the traits associated with the modern battlefield, its commemoration and the tourism associated with it, are first seen not (as scholars often assume) at Gettysburg (1863) in an American context or in the First World War (1914–18) in a European one, but at Waterloo (1815). The first monument to name all the dead, not just officers, was erected there in the 1820s, by which time a thriving industry of battlefield visiting, alongside the erection of battlefield memorials, a trade in relics, the hiring of guides, and the establishment of a museum, were well under way. All the paraphernalia of the battlefield as tourist and heritage site, had been created. These were the product not of industrialized mass slaughter, but of changes in attitudes to ordinary soldiers. The development of these practices is analysed at a range of battlefields, including those of the Crimean War (1853–6).

Citation

Atherton, I. (2024). The Nineteenth-Century Invention of the Modern Battlefield. In Britons and their Battlefields: War, Memory and Commemoration since the Fourteenth Century (186-241). Oxford University Press (OUP). https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198912880.003.0007

• Online Publication Date: Aug 19, 2024
• Publication Date: Aug 19, 2024
• Deposit Date: Sep 6, 2024
• Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
• Pages: 186-241
• Book Title: Britons and their Battlefields: War, Memory and Commemoration since the Fourteenth Century
• Chapter Number: 7
• ISBN: 9780198912859
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198912880.003.0007
• Keywords: Waterloo, pilgrimage, Agincourt, invention of folklore, Neville’s Cross, memorialization, relics, tourism, Romanticism, naming the dead
• Public URL: https://keele-repository.worktribe.com/output/889985
• Publisher URL: https://academic.oup.com/book/58081/chapter-abstract/478611481?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=true#no-access-message