Séverine Angers

Thesis

Families in arms: British military families and the experience of war, 1793-1815

Supervisor: Catriona Kennedy

Research

My thesis looks at British military families’ wartime experiences during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, bringing into dialogue front and home experiences. It investigates how familial relationships were conducted in wartime, analysing the gendered experience of warfare, families’ dynamics and emotional responses to war. As the majority of soldiers were bachelors, my research focuses on the relationships between mothers and sons and between siblings, and considers h ow martial identities intersected with identities within the family. It also takes a particular interest in the experience of grief and mourning to explore how the families of British soldiers killed during these wars commemorated and mourned their loved ones, often in the absence of a body.

My research, which is funded by the Wolfson Foundation, draws on the rich archive of correspondence between soldiers gone overseas to fight and their families in Britain, on military memoirs, journals, as well as on epitaphs written by bereaved families. It is also informed by material culture analysis, considering the role of objects in mediating familial relationships.

Papers and Publications

Conference Papers

•  “Alas he is fallen, but how bravely fallen”: British Military Families and Mourning during the Napoleonic Wars. 16th Congress of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Rome, July 2023
• How Sleep the Brave who Sink to Rest!: Familial Memorialization of Fallen Soldiers in Britain during the Napoleonic Wars. Lund-York-Bielefeld PhD Conference in Historical Studies, Bielefeld, June 2023,
• The Most Painful Duty to Perform: Mourning and Correspondence between British Soldiers and Bereaved Families during the Napoleonic Wars. Alliances in the History of Armed Conflicts, National Army Museum, London, March 2023
• “May we be all worthy of joining him in that blessed eternity”: British Military families and mourning during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793-1815. War and Peace in the Age of Napoleon Conference (Napoleonic and Revolutionary War Graves Charity,) London, September 2022
• “All that is left of his possessions”: The Materiality of Bereaved Military Families’ Responses to Death during the Napoleonic Wars, Annual Postgraduate Research Conference, University of York, September 2022,
• Centering Families in the Study of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in Britain, 1793-1815, CECS Postgraduate Forum, York, June 2022

Publications

•  “ ‘May we be all worthy of joining him in that blessed eternity’: British Military Families and Mourning during the Napoleonic Wars.” Conference Proceedings of War and Peace in the Age of Napoleon Conference. Helion & Company. Forthcoming 2024.
• “A Well Felt Presence: Soldiers' Wives in Quebec British Garrison, 1763-1820.” Chapter in the edited collection Women, War & Violence on Turtle Island Before 1914, ed. Dr. Amy Shaw (University of Lethbridge) and Dr. Sarah Glassford (University of Windsor). Forthcoming 2024.