How did a people learning to think of themselves as ‘civilised’ reconcile themselves to war? How did they manage the problems of conscience posed by the terrible effects of warfare? And how did those who tried absolutely to oppose war justify their attempt? These questions relate primarily to moral issues rather than to problems of strategy, fire-power, logistics, or the many other factors that might occupy a historian of war. In this study, such questions are posed in relation to an expanding reading public, some of whom went to war, but most of whom stayed at home.

It was a readership that included growing numbers of women, and that was increasingly influenced by the social and moral concerns of the middling sort. It was often addressed by writers concerned with moral and material improvement –with the improvement of readers, of the poor and, increasingly, of those who lived in distant lands that had come under the power and influence of Britain. War had to be justified in ways compatible with peaceful social ideals, just as morals and manners had to be reformed in the light of those ideals. This book looks at how writers attempted to shape their readers’ attitudes towards war and peace.

Published by Cambridge University Press, 2023