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66 Automne | 2007
Victorian Representations of War

Edited, with an introduction by Gilles Teulié
Couverture CVE n°66
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ISBN 978-2-84269-821-8
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War is a defining feature of Victorian and Edwardian society. It cannot be forgotten that the nineteenth century began with the Napoleonic Wars and that the period of Queen Victoria's reign saw the expansion of the British Empire, 'on which the sun never sets'. The last decades of the Victorian period witnessed the famous 'Scramble for Africa', which led Europe into an already frantic conquest of the last remaining uncolonised continent. If so-called colonial wars have left their mark on British imperial presence in the world (the Indian Mutiny, the Anglo-Boer Wars, etc.), not forgetting the numerous conflicts grouped under the name of ‘Victoria's little wars’, others anticipated world conflicts, such as the Crimean War. This martial theme is thus at the heart of Victorian concerns, whether philosophical (Fichet, Hegel, Nietzsche), economic (Hobson), religious (Charles Kingsley's ‘Muscular Christianity’) or societal (the empire becomes ‘an outdoor relief for the upper classes’). It spread throughout society through literature (Kipling, Carlyle, Le Queux), children's literature (Haggard, Henty, Ballantyne), theatre and even politics (the 1900 Khaki elections). This issue of the Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens offers, through 22 contributions, a wide range of Victorian and Edwardian representations of war, representations that the English 'Tommies' (who were children under Victoria's reign) would take with them to the battlefields of the Flanders and the Somme during the First World War strongly embedded in their minds.

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