Conclusion

Abstract

Murphy’s conclusion suggests that the respective efforts of the East India Company and Regular Army to provide books to soldiers represent two of the most remarkable library initiatives of the nineteenth century, and that study of the history of these institutions affords scholars another way of thinking about some of the key debates pertaining to working-class reading—and leisure—during the 1800s. Authorities and soldiers alike, Murphy argues, imbued the libraries with increasing educational and cultural significance as the years went by, with many manifesting a singular pride at the notion that it was the British and, in particular, the British military who were bringing these symbols of culture and civilization to far-flung and otherwise “primitive” places. In this context, Murphy declares, the libraries and reading rooms that the East India Company and Regular Army established signified a truly remarkable cultural achievement on the part of both forces, functioning as sites where British culture was preserved and celebrated and, potentially, shaped and interrogated as well. The conclusion to The British Soldier and his Libraries also considers the potential “effect” of the libraries upon the soldiers who used them and, by extension, the contribution that they made to the discipline, morale and, ipso facto, workings of the military workings of the British military during the 1800s.