In These Times: Living in Britain Through Napoleon's Wars, 1793-1815

I found this volume thoroughly entertaining. I particularly liked the author's device of following certain families through the long wars with France, which gave a personal face to the broader narrative. Although I know a good deal about the military, political, and diplomatic maneuvering of the period, I knew far less about the social history--a lacunae this volume has done much to fill.Two things did concern me, however, causing me to give this volume less than five stars. Towards the end, it asserts that Col. Andrew Jackson, at the head of 700 men, defeated the British at New Orleans. Jackson was a general (he was unusual in that the only rank he ever held was that of general), and he commanded about 5000 men. The extraordinary aspect of his victory was not the relative disparity of numbers but that the Americans were almost all ill-trained militia and the British soldiers veterans of the Peninsular War. This is a relatively minor error given the book's subject, but I could not help but wonder if similar mistakes crept into other aspects of the author's discussion of subjects outsider her specialty.I also thought that the author was hard on some of the Tories. It is true that they jumped to repression too quickly when facing domestic unrest, but it is also true that, under the pressures of war, almost everyone will behave in a more extreme fashion than they might in peacetime. In many ways, the problems Britain faced as the first industrial nation were without precedent, and its leaders were having to chart a new course without the help of any precedents. After the war was over, George Canning and Lord Liverpool would demonstrate real imagination in some circumstances (in the mid-1820s, Liverpool's administration would sponsor a number of important reforms). Nor were they all ignorant of the cost of the war--certainly, Lord Wellington's lament to a friend after the Battle of Waterloo that "the only thing worse than a battle lost is a battle won" indicates a real horror of war. Like George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight Eisenhower, Wellington considered the cause for which he fought just and never apologized for his actions, but he never soft-peddled the horrors of war either and counseled against rash action later in his career. Some Tories were indeed cloddish, but many others had simply concluded that the country had no choice but to fight Napoleon to the finish if it wanted to preserve its independence and simply had to pay the costs involved in the struggle.It seems that I have spend most of my review in criticism, so let me reiterate that, on the whole, I found this a very impressive volume. From bankers trying to stay afloat in a very uncertain economic environment, to farmers seeking to wring profits from their land, to sailors dodging press gangs, it paints a rich picture of British society over a particularly trying generation.

This book’s narrative being written chronologically, I confess to having read it only through the chapter that covers through 1801 (because the novel I’m working on takes place in 1800). But what I did read (nearly 300 pages out of about 650) was extraordinary. For someone like me, who was craving details on the political and social contexts of an era, it was a gold mine, not just of data but also of enlightenment.In a multitude of brief chapters that focus on specific aspects of the topic (particular military engagements, the effects of war on various trades, government policies and finances, political and philosophical debates, the state of the rural poor, etc.), Uglow presents a complex and comprehensive picture of England during the Georgian era of war against France. Clumps of chapters are grouped chronologically: 1789–92, 1793–96, 1797–1801, and so on. This approach allows the reader to grasp the big picture while still absorbing detail.The narrative relies heavily on primary sources—journals, letters, publications of the era—but the underlying scholarship, unlike some works of this kind, is also informed by extensive secondary reading. There is a very useful bibliography, and even more gems are to be found in the notes. Uglow writes in a readable style, without a lot of scholarly jargon and without getting bogged down in the weeds of academic debate. This is real history for the lay reader. Highly recommended!

I've long been fascinated by the Napoleonic Wars and so are many others--witness the success of Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey series on naval warfare. While O'Brian's and others' novels often provide incidental information on life on the home front--O'Brian sometimes uses them as plot elements--and innumerable histories describe the major campaigns, this is the first serious book I've encountered that describes daily life in Britain in detail.I hadn't given much thought to the Wars' influence on the Enclosure movement, Parliamentary reform, changes in the Corn Laws and many other topics addressed in In These Times, but Ms. Uglow clearly explains how the Wars affected civil issues.For example, it is widely held that Britain emerged from the Wars as a greatly enriched nation, thanks to her increased opportunities for trade. But grinding poverty among the lower classes was also a result.If you have even a passing interest in early Nineteenth Century Britain, this is a book you should read.

Learning much more about an interesting time in history (not as though they haven't all been! Anyone ever heard of a truly boring era? Probably not.)

Great view of normal life during the Napoleonic wars in England. The style of writing was clear and understandable and brought the opinions of the more middle of the road people to light. I have been familiar with the opinions of those of the upper class who wrote novels (like Jane Austen) but did not understand how small bankers and farmers were fairing, and especially did not really understand how the factory workers, soldiers and sailors suffered during the two decades of the war. I was also interested to see just how much the American revolution cost the English and how far into debt all these wars forced England.

In an era not unlike our own the Napoleonic wars went on for more than two decades, generations overlapping, one into the next. This is a great panorama of everyone in England involved or touched by it, and we can see in this era echoes of tyranny common on all sides in war, whether genuine or false. It's a splendid work and makes the ideal complement to Andrew Roberts great biography of Napoleon.

In spite of the few instances the story drifts and tends to lose it's forward movement, the book captures the times, events, and feel of the period. Most informative and interesting.

I was drawn to this book by admiration for Jenny Uglow's excellent biography of Charles ll and my fascination with the Napoleonic period. The author has set out to write a social history from the viewpoint of a wide range of people living in Britain at a time when, in addition to the threat of a remarkably successful military opponent, they had to contend with the throes of the Industrial Revolution and a growing demand for democracy.Using a framework of themed chapters, each ending with an impressive list of sources researched, Jenny Uglow quotes widely from letters and journals, and recounts the exploits of those who may not have had much truck with writing, such as the blacksmith who led a group of "labourers wearing skirts to look like housewives" who "marched through villages crying 'We cannot starve", and wrecked a mill that was supplying the navy rather than the people of Devon. He was hanged at the same mill "with great ceremony", whereas other ringleaders sometimes escaped with the lesser punishment of transportation.Jenny Uglow contrasts a hidebound parson who feared that the French Revolution would spark unrest in England, with the respectable, liberal-minded men who joined more anarchic colleagues in urban pressure groups calling for political reform. At first quite nonchalant about a foreign uprising which he expected to be short-lived, first minister of state William Pitt was driven in due course to take a tougher line, banning societies and public meetings and suppressing free speech as ferociously as a modern dictator. The author is good on the direct effects of the war with France, such as the way troops waiting in coastal ports for the order to attack commandeered so much food that the local people began to go hungry.I was less impressed by chapters which seemed to ramble off at a tangent into a morass of detail. An example of this is "Warp and Weft" which seems to belong more to a book specifically on the Industrial Revolution. I learned that "to add strength to the cotton, weavers added `fustian', wool or linen yarns, to make the warp", and that Robert Peel, son of a future Prime Minister, employed in his factories children who had no shoes or stockings, visiting Poor Law Guardians being informed "if they gave them shoes they would run away". These points had to be teased out of a mass of information on a few weavers and mill owners - arbitrarily chosen except perhaps that they happened to have left records.The brain can only absorb so much "dissociated" fact and it becomes distracting to be continually asking, "Why am I reading this? What does it have do with the impact of Napoleon on the lives of ordinary people in the British Isles?" I realise that this is a question of taste, and some people thrive on detail, plus it may be of value to students, but I would have preferred a shorter text with a stronger focus on the Napoleonic Wars and their impact on Britain. I coped with the book by skipping through some passages to find what interested me, but that is not entirely satisfactory in what I do not think is intended to be a reference work.

Every conceivable part of life during the Napoleonic wars is here. We have Clapham evangelicals led by Wilberforce fighting to end the slave trade, alongside good old Hoare's bank worrying about the lack of bullion - doing an irregular deal with turnpike operators was the answer to this - and of course soldiers and sailors galore. We think of WW1 as seminal for our nation but 100 years earlier, Britain saw one man in six in the Army or Navy and of those perhaps as many as fifth died. even for the rest of the population everyday life was completely transformed.But this is not a book primarily about the Napoleonic wars, though they are the backdrop. Nor is it a book about politicians or royalty, although they too feature from time to time again as a kind of theatrical background. The subject of the book rather is the myriad detail of human life in all its varied forms. Much of the diaries and letters are taken up with everyday events, from people throughout the British Isles, rich poor and middling and men and women. The very poor and illiterate are of course difficult to capture but there are plenty of surprising voices saying surprising things. When Louis XVIII the refugee King of France is rowed ashore to seek safety in England, the crew refuse to take payment and write to the admiral " we don't like to take it, because how we know, right enuff that it was the King of France..and that he and our King (God bless them both!) is good friends now". Not that the patriotism of the poor was always appreciated, Jane Austen - of all people - writing after a bloody battle in Spain "how horrible it is to have so many people killed! And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!".The effect of the war was to transform Britain's economy and society. Huge industrial and agricultural developments gathered pace, often at cost to the poor labourer and rural peasantry. This provoke the appearance of King Lud and his followers the Luddites who smashed up the new looms: some of the resulting disturbances became so large that at one point 12000 soldiers had to be sent to keep order around Manchester. It was also an era like now where the limits of free speech in times of threat were regularly tested, the hard working staff of Hoare's bank were horrified to see the Attorney General being mobbed right outside their offices on Fleet Street by protestors defending the freedom of the press. One of the main themes of the book is the emergence of hundreds of newspapers which were devoured by news hungry Britons. A visitor to a quarry in Anglesey is surprised to find one afternoon one of the labourers reading the news to his fellow workers.Some of the best bits of the book are nothing to do with war at all. In places it is laugh out loud funny. Two sisters write diaries, Eugenia is getting married but her sister Betsey wrote rather cattily "Eugenia is not improved in her looks but appears a happy little creature" whilst meanwhile Eugenia writes at the same time "I was most happy to see my sisters although they will not treat me with respect". We have an English family in Portugal hurriedly packing to escape French troops taking time to butcher and eat their turkey who has terrorised them - named of course Napoleon. We have Byron who when not agitating on behalf of distressed labourers decides to visit Cambridge and in particular call in at St Johns College not for any academic reasons but because it is noted for its fine beer. we read the diary of the wealthy 15 year old Sophia Thrale who on a tour round the Lakes (British tourism boomed as the rich could not travel abroad) meets the young Samuel Coleridge "who struck me as being remarkably clever, but unfortunately has a provincial accent". Finally we have the enterprising smugglers of Whitstable who are illicitly bringing not only French brandies in but also smuggling French officers out and who devise an elaborate signalling system involving broomsticks in chimneys which means that by the time the dragoons thunder down the road from Canterbury all traces of their nefarious activities have been carefully hidden.I really recommend this book if you like to see how ordinary people lived, loved, coped with tough economic times, gossiped, collected subscriptions for invalid soldiers, mourned, speculated, emigrated, escaped from prison, argued with their families, worshipped God, invested in their businesses and generally got on with their lives. Jenny Uglow notes that Tolstoy's words are as true of Britons as of Russians "In reality, private interests of the immediate present are always so much more important than the wider issues that they prevent the wider issues which concern the public as a whole from ever being felt - from being noticed at all in fact. The majority of the people of that time paid no attention to the broad trend of the nations affairs and were influenced only by their private concerns. And it was those very people who played the most useful part in the history of their day"

Like Jenny Uglow's other books, this is an impeccably researched book on how the period of the Napoleonic Wars was experienced by those living in Britain. This is an unusual and refreshing perspective which consolidates existing studies of military heroes and political biographies and Uglow has found some fascinating personal diaries and accounts which convey well the spirit of the times. She writes with verve and carries the reader along with her. My only reservation is that the structure of the book - loosely chronological - is not tight enough and that it is rather too long. Uglow's is clearly torn between including all the interesting sidelights she has found and imposing a more coherent narrative and a stronger thematic analysis. So it makes for a thoroughly entertaining, if meandering read. The paper the book is printed on is unusually nice. The illustrations would have been better served by being larger and some by being in colour but no doubt the publisher's were constrained by cost. Apart from that, it is hugely enjoyable and highly recommended and Uglow deals extremely well with the constantly changing political alliances which marked the period.

Not quite Faber and Faber’s finest hour in book design, but the writing is a gem and brings real life to history. Rich flowing dialogue, endlessly full of detail with good illustrations, often contemporary cartoons, describes a multitude of facets of life in a Britain away from the battlefield. No myopic account of history here; Britain was a veritable beehive of creative dog-eat-dog rampant capitalism and exploitation, failed harvests, and suffering from the effects of Order in Council that prevented trade with enemy Europe. The author covers the lives of people in all walks of life, rich and poor and all between, as they applied for poor relief, bankrupted themselves, destroyed, drank, exploited, fought, got rich or transported, invented, misspelt, prayed, protested, rioted, smuggled, starved, stole, survived, toiled, worried or, God-forbid, watched illegal boxing matches or hangings, or went to the playhouse. Overall, a national of individuals so preoccupied with their personal interests and dilemmas found itself sufficiently galvanised by Napoleon to account for the great evolutions that would take place over the next century. Jenny Uglow is marvellously informative and a pleasure to read.

An excellent book. Well written and easy to read. If you want to learn what life was like under the threat of French invasion during the Long Eighteenth Century then this book creates a real atmosphere by delving into the lives of a complete cross-section of society.