This title was first published in 2001: Hundreds of European travelogues produced by British travellers between 1750 and 1800 remain out of sight in most libraries and have generally been out of print since the 18th century. While many people with a working knowledge of the 18th century are familiar with works including Sterne's "A Sentimental Journey" and Smollett's "Travels through France and Italy", those produced by less "literary" travellers are largely unknown. This study aims to recreate the world of 18th-century travel writing in order to illuminate its central role in shaping Britain's emerging sense of national identity - an identity which proves to be more complex an less homogeneous than some cultural and historical studies would suggest. The author finds that the developing discourse of national character is bound up with questions of gender: national and authorial virtue are projected in terms of appropriately gendered behaviour, for male and female travel writers alike. In turn, gender intersects with class, most obviously in the tendency to denigrate aristocratic travellers as effeminate and celebrate the more manly activities of the middle-class traveller. These then - national identity, authorship and gender - are the central preoccupations of the study

This book seeks to bridge a gap in the historiography of Spain and Great Britain by arguing that while the eighteenth century witnessed periods of tension, conflict and hostility between the two powers, their relationship remained multifaceted and significant in other spheres. Throughout the eighteenth century, Spain and Great Britain passed through phases of open warfare, armed peace and deep suspicion. The British capture of Gibraltar and Menorca dealt a severe blow to the newly established Bourbon dynasty in Spain. Even in times of war, however, not all communication channels were closed, with numerous formal and informal contacts being made despite the volatile political climate and enmities. The contributors of this book go beyond the well-known animosity and conflicts to explore the spectrum of interactions, encompassing cultural exchange, traditional diplomacy, trade and espionage plus a multitude of other facets. This book is a valuable resource for researchers and students interested in the complex relations between Great Britain and Spain during the eighteenth century, as well as for a broader audience of historians and both undergraduate and postgraduate students of history and international relations.

In the iconography of the Peninsular War of 1808–14, women are well represented—both as heroines, such as Agustina Zaragosa Domenech, and as victims, whether of starvation or of French brutality. In history, however, with its focus on high politics and military operations, they are invisible—a situation that Charles J. Esdaile seeks to address. In Women in the Peninsular War, Esdaile looks beyond the iconography. While a handful of Spanish and Portuguese women became Agustina-like heroines, a multitude became victims, and here both of these groups receive their due. But Esdaile reveals a much more complicated picture in which women are discovered to have experienced, responded to, and participated in the conflict in various ways. While some women fought or otherwise became involved in the struggle against the invaders, others turned collaborator, used the war as a means of effecting dramatic changes in their situation, or simply concentrated on staying alive. Along with Agustina Zaragoza Domenech, then, we meet French sympathizers, campfollowers, pamphleteers, cross-dressers, prostitutes, amorous party girls, and even a few protofeminists. Esdaile examines many social spheres, ranging from the pampered daughters of the nobility, through the cloistered members of Spain’s many convents, to the tough and defiant denizens of the Madrid slums. And we meet not just the women to whom the war came but also the women who came to the war—the many thousands who accompanied the British and French armies to the Iberian peninsula. Thanks to his use of copious original source material, Esdaile rescues one and all from, as E. P. Thompson put it, “the enormous condescension of posterity.” And yet all these women remain firmly in their historical and cultural context, a context that Esdaile shows to have emerged from the Peninsular War hardly changed. Hence the subsequent loss of these women’s story, and the obscurity from which this book has at long last rescued them.