Britons and their Battlefields War, Memory, and Commemoration since the Fourteenth Century

While much attention has been paid to the commemoration of conflict in the twentieth century, this book is the first to consider conflict memory in the long term, arguing that modern practices were not created out of the mud of the trenches, but evolved from much longer practices. From the fourteenth century to the present day, this work analyses the changing commemoration and memories of British battlefields at home and overseas, from Bannockburn (1314) to Bosworth (1485) to Basra (2003-9).

Across these seven centuries, there has been a series of recurring post-battle rituals that have shaped and continue to shape memories of conflict. Three distinct but overlapping periods of memory can be delineated. In the later Middle Ages battlefields were consecrated by the burial of the fallen and often by the erection of a battlefield cross, or chapel or chantry to pray for the dead. The second phase began with the Protestant Reformation in the 1530s, when pilgrimage and prayers for the dead were abolished, and battlefield chantries were dissolved and many battlefield crosses were demolished. Memories shifted from the dead to the living, especially the bodies of surviving veterans who commemorated the conflict by their wounds, and from soil and stone to print and ink. The third phase began in the eighteenth century when antiquaries and others established new monuments on past battlefields. Monuments to survivors and the dead were established on contemporary battlefields such as Waterloo, once again hailed as sacred ground hallowed by bloodshed, fit destinations for a pilgrimage. Not just officers but ordinary soldiers began to be memorialized by name on the battlefield, culminating in the cult of the names of the dead enshrined by the creation of the War Graves Commission in 1917, and the idea that battlefields should be preserved unchanged as seen in modern heritage management.

Drawing on a wide variety of literary and historical sources and taking a uniquely longue durée approach, the book explores and links memory-making practices from across the period to reconsider the ways in which battlefields are commemorated and re-commemorated. In so doing, it makes a unique contribution to a wide range of historiographical fields: British history since the fourteenth century, memory studies, heritage studies, landscape history, conflict archaeology, and military history.

Ian Atherton, Senior Lecturer in History, Keele University

Following a PhD at Cambridge University on politics in early Stuart England, Ian Atherton spent two years as a Leverhulme Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for East Anglian Studies at the University of East Anglia working on a project to research and publish a history of Norwich Cathedral. Dr Atherton joined Keele University in 1995 and became senior lecturer in 2003. His research has covered politics and religion in early modern Britain, particularly the history of cathedrals and religious change, the English civil wars, and the commemoration of conflict.

Preface1. Introduction: Battlefields and Memory over TimePart One. Continuing Customs2. The Aftermath of Battle3. The Naming of Parts: Battlefield Naming and MemoryPart Two. Chronological Change4. Burial and the Battlefield War Memorial in the Late Middle Ages5. The Reformation of the Battlefield in Early Modern Britain6. The Rediscovery of the Battlefield in the Eighteenth Century7. The Nineteenth-Century Invention of the Modern Battlefield8. 'We Will Remember Them': Battlefield Remembrance and the Cult of the Fallen since 19149. Conclusion: The Future of the Past and the Past of the Future