Youth, Heroism and War Propaganda

From January 1799 until December 1818, a periodical entitled The Naval Chronicle described the Royal Navy’s experience of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. In addition to recording the navy’s operational history, it also included naval officers’ autobiographies, essays on nautical subjects, maritime prints, and poems and ballads related to life at sea. It is therefore a valuable source for historians of this period; it is also unmanageably voluminous and lacking any semblance of logic or order. Relief came first in 1933 with the publication of an index and, second, in 1998–9 with the publication of Nicholas Tracy’s condensed and organised edition. Tracy’s five volumes are frequently cited and undoubtedly useful, but D.A.B. Ronald’s latest book demonstrates the potential for historians willing to engage in close reading of all forty original volumes of the Chronicle. Two of the Chronicle’s early editors—James Stanier Clarke and John McArthur—are well known primarily for their successful and hagiographic biography of Nelson, published in 1809. Many historians have also assumed that they founded the Chronicle. Ronald convincingly shows that, while they were involved at the beginning, in fact the impetus came from a retired admiral who used his connection to the Prince of Wales to secure funding and political support. Having established the Chronicle’s independence from Pitt’s administration, Ronald situates himself alongside J.E. Cookson (and largely in opposition to Linda Colley) in his view of the role of the British state in developing and deploying propaganda and the cult of the hero. The Chronicle sought to create a patriotic pantheon of British naval heroes, and it did so largely without direct support from the government. From there, Ronald’s work largely leaves Cookson and Colley behind and relies instead on the work of Timothy Jenks. Ronald uses Jenks’s Naval Engagements: Patriotism, Cultural Politics and the Royal Navy, 1793–1815 (2006; rev. ante, cxxiii [2008], 1,308–10) as the framework for his arguments—a debt he readily admits. What is new about Ronald’s book is his emphasis on youth

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