Commemorating the Battle of Waterloo in Great Britain,1815-1852

Abstract

This thesis analyses the range of practices that developed to commemorate the Battle of Waterloo in nineteenth-century Britain. It examines the role of material culture in these acts of remembrance and compares how commemorative practices changed from the aftermath of the battle in 1815 to the death of the Duke of Wellington in 1852. This thesis identifies four areas of Waterloo battle commemoration in nineteenth-century Britain that merit particular consideration. The first chapter considers commemorations of individual experiences in the Battle of Waterloo and how eyewitness accounts from the battle influenced these practices. This chapter examines how Waterloo veterans were celebrated in commemorative visual arts and literary compositions; were fêted in public ceremonies arranged by the British government, local political figures, or community associations; and how the names of Waterloo and its heroes were incorporated into the very communities of Britain through memorial naming practices. Individual Britons travelled to Waterloo in various capacities from the summer of 1815 onwards, and thus became witnesses to changes at the battle site over time. The second chapter explores the experiences of two groups who participated in commemorative travel to the battlefield, civilian tourists and volunteer surgeons. It considers the way in which the legacy of the Battle of Waterloo was shared with tourists in the format of a guided tour of the field and explores how the memory of Waterloo was preserved through items of battlefield material culture, with a particular focus on the objects selected by visitors as relics of the field and their method of collection. It also examines what British surgeons hoped to gain by travelling to Waterloo and considers how these experiences of battlefield surgery contributed to the cultural memory of Waterloo in Britain. The third chapter draws on a range of commemorative displays that explored themes from the battle in order to gain an understanding of how Waterloo exhibitions were disseminated in the nineteenth-century media and how they contributed to the wider culture of Waterloo battle commemoration in Britain. These commemorative displays ranged from theatrical productions and reenactment spectacles to relic collections and panorama galleries. Finally, this thesis examines the array of practices used to commemorate the deaths of Waterloo veterans within the context of nineteenth-century British death culture. The fourth chapter reflects on the way in which memorialising the death of a Waterloo veteran not only commemorated the individual’s life, but also perpetuated the memory of the battle itself in the British public realm. This is considered through the array of death relics preserved to remember Waterloo veterans, the content and structure of public announcements upon the death of veterans, the evolution of funeral arrangements for Waterloo veterans across the prescribed period of study, and finally the range of monuments erected to honour Waterloo veterans and the battle. This thesis makes contributions to recent scholarship on war commemoration and provides new insight into the cultural implications of the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars in nineteenth-century Britain.