Introduction: War, Empire and Slavery, 1770–1830

Abstract

For historians, the six decades spanning the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century seem pivotal to the emergence of modernity. For Eric Hobsbawm, they formed an ‘age of revolution’; for Christopher Bayly, they witnessed a ‘world crisis’ and a series of ‘converging revolutions’; Reinhart Koselleck has described them as a ‘Sattelzeit (saddle period) during which modern ways of thinking took shape against a backdrop of accelerated political, economic and social transformation.1 These dramatic changes, including the emergence of new forms of statehood and of nationalism, and major shifts in global power relations, were partly forged in the crucible of imperial wars fought around the globe by European powers: principally France, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. The Seven Years War might claim the distinction of being the first worldwide war. But the American War of Independence, in which the same European rivals were engaged, established an independent nation and a durable model of citizenship. As Jürgen Osterhammel observes in his recent panoramic history of the global nineteenth century, ‘the great conflict between the empires in the years between 1793 and 1815 did not remain limited to Europe. It was fought out on four continents: a true world war.’2 The military and political conflicts between France, Britain and their allies from 1793 to 1815 were larger and more diffuse than earlier wars, and were truly far-reaching in their effects and legacies.3