Britons and their Battlefields: War, Memory, and Commemoration since the Fourteenth Century

Atherton, Ian

Abstract

While much attention has been paid to the commemoration of conflict in the twentieth century, this book is the first to consider conflict memory in the long term, arguing that modern practices were not created out of the mud of the trenches, but evolved from much longer customs. Memories are first shaped through a series of post-battle rituals that begin on the battlefield as soon as the fighting ends. Three key periods of memory are delineated. In the later Middle Ages battlefields were consecrated by the burial of the fallen and often by the erection of a battlefield cross or chapel to pray for the dead. Second, the abolition of pilgrimage and prayers for the dead in the sixteenth-century Reformation meant that battlefield chapels were dissolved and many battlefield crosses demolished. The third phase began in the eighteenth century when antiquaries and others established new monuments on past battlefields. Fields of conflict were made to speak about identity and liberty. As such ideas spread, in the nineteenth century monuments to survivors and the dead were established on contemporary battlefields such as Waterloo, once again hailed as sacred ground hallowed by bloodshed, fit destinations for a pilgrimage. Even ordinary soldiers began to be memorialized by name. These ideas intensified in the twentieth century to produce the cult of the names of the dead enshrined by the creation of the War Graves Commission in 1917 and the idea that battlefields should be preserved unchanged seen in modern heritage management.

Citation

Atherton, I. (2024). Britons and their Battlefields: War, Memory, and Commemoration since the Fourteenth Century. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198912880.001.0001

• Book Type: Monograph
• Online Publication Date: Aug 19, 2024
• Publication Date: Sep 19, 2024
• Deposit Date: Dec 13, 2024
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• ISBN: 9780198912859
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198912880.001.0001
• Keywords: conflict, remembrance, battle site, longue durée, Reformation, antiquaries, fallen, soldiers, War Graves Commission, heritage bodies
• Public URL: https://keele-repository.worktribe.com/output/951662
• Contract Date: Aug 1, 2024