Guy Hinton - War Commemoration and Civic Culture in the North East of England, 1854–1914

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This book stems from an interest in the impact of imperialism on British society. War, as the dramatic and inevitable by-product of imperialism, began to loom large in my research, giving prominence to reactions to various conflicts and specifically how wars were portrayed and justified by local and national leaders. My interest was particularly piqued by the case of the Boer War, surely one of the least justifiable of all this countrys many wars but supported (or at least tolerated) by the major part of society. The post-war representation of this most jingoistic of conflicts seemed particularly enlightening, occurring in a period that to a large extent reacted against the war and the imperial mentalities that had encouraged it. As the research incorporated earlier conflicts and became increasingly immersed in vibrant nineteenth-and early twentieth-century civic culture, other historiographical themessuch as notions of identity and the influence of classasserted themselves.

Therefore, like most studies of war memorialisation, this book is much more than merely an analysis of certain conflicts and their memorials. By this I mean that it is as much to do with the social, political and cultural contexts that motivated the memorials organisers and influenced the narratives they sought to convey in the monuments they created. While the memorials expressed the organisers views and attitudes of how the recent conflict should be remembered by their communities, I would argue that the memorials were more intent with imposing the socio-political purview and values of the organisers and indeed shoring up their social prestige and political primacy within their community and endorsing the socio-economic status quo. It was in this way that the memorials were political objects, more so than seeking to justify Britains involvement in the wars or extol patriotic or imperialistic virtues.

The book was researched and written during a period of unparalleled political crisis and politico-cultural controversies which often seemed to mirror its themes. Most pertinent have been debatesboth within the academy and the wider publicover the suitability of historical public monuments in twenty-first-century society. This includes a burgeoning disillusionment with the very memorialisation of war (or at least the twenty-first century version of it) which some perceive as mawkish or inherently triumphal and as tacit endorsement of martial values and military action. More prominent in the popular imagination has been a widespread questioning of monuments with imperial connotations or anachronistic societal narratives, considered questionable in diverse post-colonial societies. This has been driven by movements such as Decolonizing the Curriculum and the Rhodes Must Fall protests in this country and, in the United States, with activist campaigns to remove statues commemorating confederate participants in the American Civil War.

All this has given the book an unanticipated but welcome topicality; hopefully, it will contribute to the debate by enabling a greater understanding of how and why such historic monuments were erected. Indeed, the statue of Edward Colston (16361721) in Bristol, erected in 1895 and whose forceful removal by protesters in the summer of 2020 generated widespread popular debate and reflection, shares many of the gestational characteristics of the monuments examined here, such as its attempted funding by popular subscription and a type of municipal mythologising that was particularly en vogue in the late-nineteenth century. Examining the motivations of the memorial organisersmen from tightly knit, middle-class municipal elitesand the narratives they chose to convey to their contemporaries (and their descendants) provides an in-depth yet nuanced understanding of the process behind the erection of these now often controversial monuments.