Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-5xszh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T09:11:19.858Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

10 - Conflicted Identities: Soldiers, Civilians and the Representation of War

from Part III - Who is a Civilian? Who is a Soldier?

Philip Shaw
Affiliation:
University of Leicester
Erica Charters
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Eve Rosenhaft
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
Hannah Smith
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access

Summary

Joseph Wright'sThe Dead Soldier (frontispiece) highlights the issues addressed by the chapters in this section. First exhibited at the Royal Academy in May 1789, a few weeks before the dramatic inception of the French Revolution, Wright's painting depicts the corpse of a British soldier, his grieving widow and their newly orphaned child. Most likely a recollection of the recent war against the American colonies, the legal, political and social distinctions between civilians and combatants are blurred in this image. As the circle of suffering extends beyond the immediate scene of devastation, the message of the painting appears insistent to the point of banality: it is one thing for a soldier to lay down his life in defence of his country, but what of the effects of war on ordinary men, women and children?

The question prompts some further reflections on the relations between war, critical debate and the nature of citizenship. Writing in 1767 in An Essay on the History of Civil Society, the social philosopher Adam Ferguson announced that ‘he who has not learned to resign his personal freedom in the field [with] the same magnanimity with which he maintains it in the political deliberations of his country, has yet to learn the most important lesson of civil society, and is only fit to occupy a place in a rude, or in a corrupted state’. Not only the soldier but the citizen too must learn to renounce his personal liberty so that the nation, considered as a whole, may be free.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×