Mortality, medical care and military welfare in the British Civil Wars
David Appleby, Andrew Hopper, Manchester University Press, 1 Sep 2018
Members may be interested in this work especially if they attended our Summer Conference Russet coated Soldiers in Newark in July 2017. Andy Hopper gave a keynote on the subject of The Human Costs of Civil War: War Victims and their stories whilst the Conference was of course organised by Ismini Pells. She is not only a contributor but is working with both the editors at Leicester on a new project entitled ‘Conflict, Welfare and Memory during and after the English Civil Wars, 1642-1710’: http://www.civilwarpetitions.ac.uk
Battle-Scarred investigates the human costs of the British Civil Wars. Through a series of varied case studies it examines the wartime experience of disease, burial, surgery and wounds, medicine, hospitals, trauma, military welfare, widowhood, desertion, imprisonment and charitable endeavour. These issues demand our attention because the percentage population loss in these conflicts was far higher than during the two World Wars, rendering the Civil Wars arguably the most unsettling experience the British peoples have ever undergone. This volume will explore these themes from these varied new angles, drawing upon the insights shared at the inaugural conference of the National Civil War Centre in August 2015, and since developed further in the Centre's well-received 'Battle-Scarred' exhibition on the same theme. This volume shows how military history is broadening its remit, and reaching out to new audiences.
