Work

French prisoner-of-war sociability in Hampshire during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Daniel Gordon in his monograph on Citizens without Sovereignty explored how, in eighteenth-century France, sociability enabled those without power in the ancien régime to organize and order social spaces where they could have autonomy and offset their political impotence. The idea that those without power could create an autonomous existence within the ‘gaps and interstices’ of that hierarchical, authoritarian regime offers a potential framework for thinking afresh about French prisoners of war held in Britain during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793–1815), when tens of thousands of captured French sailors, soldiers, civilians, women and children were held in sites across the country. This article will explore examples of the ways in which the prisoners of war found a sense of dignity and purpose in seemingly insignificant forms of sociability and benefited from the networks that underpinned the Transport Board’s organization of their captivity.

Source: French History

DOI: 10.1093/fh/craf043

Authors: Katherine Astbury, Abigail Coppins

Language: English

Topic: European Political History Analysis

Subfield: History

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,512

Funders: University of Warwick, Arts and Humanities Research Council

Award: French Theatre of the Napoleonic era