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This chapter explores the nature of the French Revolutionary-Napoleonic Wars in light of recent historical debates over the question of ‘total war’ and the degree to which these wars constitute ‘old’ or ‘new’ wars within the broad currents of European history. The focus is on France as the epicentre of the wars. Notwithstanding continuities with the past, and regional and time variations, this chapter argues for important quantitative and qualitative changes in the nature of the French experience of war over this period: the ideologisation of war, the extraordinary growth of the state’s claims over its citizens for the purpose of waging war, the nation-in-arms, and the unprecedented impact of war on the lives of civilians.

The final chapter of the book focuses on fears about the importation of yellow fever from the West Indies during and immediately after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It argues that fears about the arrival of disease were bound up with fears about a French invasion and the permeation of revolutionary ideas. Attempts to guard against yellow fever using quarantine thus acquired additional meanings, and the doctrine of contagion on which quarantine was based was staunchly defended by the conservative political elite and senior members of the medical profession. However, many colonial practitioners challenged the theory of contagion and the system of quarantine, some equating these with tyranny and oppression, professional and political. Although they made little impact upon official doctrines, this chapter shows that colonial practitioners had begun seriously to challenge the authority of the Royal College of Physicians.

The concept of irregular warfare emerged in the mid-eighteenth century. Irregular warfare was initially conceptualized as a tactical complement of regular warfare. However, with the nationalization of war in the framework of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars a completely new notion of irregular warfare developed. Irregular fighters such as the French counter-revolutionary fighters in the Vendée and elsewhere, as well as guerrilla fighters in Napoleon’s empire, were denounced as illegitimate combatants. The marginalization of irregular fighters thus arose from the ambiguity of the idea of the levée en masse: if the nationalization of war meant that national war was essentially people’s war, it was difficult to deny that popular uprisings could have political legitimacy too. The denunciation of the irregular as the illegitimate fighter solved this dilemma.

Veterancy is a natural figure for the kind of wisdom-through-experience that is purveyed, as Walter Benjamin noted in ‘The Storyteller’ (1936), through traditional storytelling. But these three veterans have been stupefied by their experiences in mass, industrial, globalized war – William Wordsworth’s ‘Discharged Soldier’ in the French Revolutionary Wars, Rebecca West’s Chris Baldry (The Return of the Soldier (1918)) and Virginia Woolf’s Septimus Warren Smith (Mrs Dalloway (1925)) in the First World War. Consequently, they are unable to process their experiences into communicable wisdom – a different thing from being able to describe them. Those who encounter these veterans (and this includes the texts’ readers) may feel sadness or anger at their plight. But, though there is affect, there is no empathy, whether through body or mind. All that remains is to look upon these unfathoming, unfathomable characters with consternation.

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, British and American codependence in the India trade heightened, and so too did codependence in British industrial production and American cotton cultivation. American ships and merchants provided ready access for British Indian goods into Napoleon’s Europe, and they supplied Britain with raw cotton from the southern U.S. states. Yet the French Wars also reignited conflict between Britain and the United States, and the resulting embargoes and the War of 1812 magnified the dangers of British dependence on American cotton. By the time of the East India Company’s charter renewal in 1813, British production of India goods and the demand for India’s raw materials had eliminated the benefits believed to have come from the Company’s monopoly.

Nelson was created Duke of Bronte and received the vast estate in 1799 as a gift from Ferdinand IV, King of the Two Sicilies. It was a standard, if especially ostentatious, form of military reward and reflected both the ‘Nelson-mania’ prevailing in Naples and the King's personal gratitude to the British for having saved his kingdom from the French Revolutionary armies. But the gift also brought disgrace on Nelson, in that it pointed to his dubious role in the brutal suppression of the Jacobin Republic in Naples (not to mention his love affair with the British ambassador's wife). All was not what it appeared to be in Bronte either. The first British men to arrive there found nothing but trouble and bad luck, and at the time of his death of 1805, Nelson was complaining that the place was a drain on his finances. After Nelson's death, his brother William inherited the estate and the title and, through William's daughter, Charlotte, Lady Bridport, the estate passed to the Bridport family.

This chapter explores the creation and maintenance of Britain’s European island empire during the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. It traces the initial establishment of island bases in the Mediterranean, North and Baltic Seas, outlining their importance to British trade and strategy. It explains how and why British war aims came to rely on these imperial possessions. Across the Mediterranean, the war came to be defined by the extension of island empires. British victory in 1814 owed much to these islands, lynchpins of its wider European strategy. In northern waters, the island of Heligoland acted as a rendezvous point for trade with the continent, and was a key site from which Napoleon’s ‘Continental System’ could be undermined. Britain’s European island empire proved itself to be a crucial part of Britain’s wider imperial network, and its significance would continue into the nineteenth century and the era of Pax Britannica.

This chapter explores the persistent French diplomatic efforts to negotiate a Franco-Ottoman alliance. These efforts were one of the most consistent foreign policy doctrines of revolutionary France. The first topic of this chapter is how the changes in the strategic aims of French foreign policy took shape during the Revolution. It therefore gives a concise overview of French foreign policy strategies during the old regime. Next, the Ottoman perspective on the French overtures is considered, with an account of the course of Franco-Ottoman negotiations in 1793. Despite a positive bias towards the French, Ottoman policymakers considered France to be too weak and chose to stay neutral and to defer the conclusion of an alliance. The chapter ends with an examination of the obstacles which hampered the accomplishment of the first republican envoy’s diplomatic mission.

This chapter examines American consular records in order to understand the priorities of the United States and the configuration of American shipping within the Mediterranean during the French Revolutionary Wars. It explores the establishment of American consulates; the increase in American diplomatic and military presence; the increase in American trade due to the demand for neutral transport during wars; the presence of American ships in Mediterranean ports; and the emergent patterns in American shipping. It discovers that American trade in the Mediterranean was a profitable enough enterprise to justify the Tripolitanian War, but further research into American economic affairs is needed to better understand the long-term American interest in Mediterranean affairs.