Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 1 - The Culture of War and Civil Society, from William III to George I

  • from Part I - Developing Ideals
  • Andrew Lincoln, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book:
    Imagining War and Peace in Eighteenth-Century Britain, 1690–1820
    Published online:
    10 January 2024
    Print publication:
    23 November 2023, pp 31-56

  • Summary

    This contests Norbert Eliass view of the civilizing process. It argues that in the first decades of the eighteenth century, the promotion of gentler manners worked in the service of military aggression. Martial virtue was promoted against the threat of effeminacy and corruption, while poets celebrated the humanity of brutal victors in contemporary wars. The Fast and Thanksgiving services of the Church sancitifed the violence of the war zone while discouraging brutality in daily life. Fears about the corrupting influence of war news were countered by ideal models of martial virtue. A new theory of the sublime was developed, which claimed that an imaginative engagement with representations of violence could have a humanizing effect.