The Miseries Of War And The Hope Of Final And Universal Peace Set Forth In A Thanksgiving Sermon Preached At Colyton In The County Of Devon July 29th 1784 By Joseph Cornish

Examines sermons preached at national thanksgiving celebrations to show in detail what it meant to be properly British in the period.

This original study aims to provide a contribution to international relations and British political history. Its analysis of the birth of the British peace movement includes a historiography of British politics and many theories about international relations.

The author maintains that modern attitudes toward total war were conceived during the Napoleonic era; and argues that all the elements of total war were evident including conscription, unconditional surrender, disregard for basic rules of war, mobilization of civilians, and guerrilla warfare.

“A mesmerizing account that illuminates not just the Napoleonic wars but all of modern history . . . It reads like a novel” (Lynn Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of modern European history, UCLA). The twentieth century is usually seen as “the century of total war.” But as the historian David A. Bell argues in this landmark work, the phenomenon actually began much earlier, in the era of muskets, cannons, and sailing ships—in the age of Napoleon. In a sweeping, evocative narrative, Bell takes us from campaigns of “extermination” in the blood-soaked fields of western France to savage street fighting in ruined Spanish cities to central European battlefields where tens of thousands died in a single day. Between 1792 and 1815, Europe plunged into an abyss of destruction. It was during this time, Bell argues, that our modern attitudes toward war were born. Ever since, the dream of perpetual peace and the nightmare of total war have been bound tightly together in the Western world—right down to the present day, in which the hopes for an “end to history” after the cold war quickly gave way to renewed fears of full-scale slaughter. With a historian’s keen insight and a journalist’s flair for detail, Bell exposes the surprising parallels between Napoleon’s day and our own—including the way that ambitious “wars of liberation,” such as the one in Iraq, can degenerate into a gruesome guerrilla conflict. The result is a book that is as timely and important as it is unforgettable. “Thoughtful and original . . . Bell has mapped what is a virtually new field of inquiry: the culture of war.” —Steven L. Kaplan, Goldwin Smith Professor of European history, Cornell University

Reprint of the original, first published in 1841.