Annual Booklist 2025 : Professor Jennine Hurl-Eamon
Dr Jennine Hurl-Eamon is Professor of History at Trent University in Canada. She is the author of four books, including the recent Childhood and War in Eighteenth-Century Britain (2025), and Marriage and the British Army in the Long Eighteenth Century (2014), both published with Oxford University Press. She has also co-edited a six-volume series with Lynn MacKay called Women, Families, and the British Army, 1700-1880. She is currently working on a monograph dealing with the boy regiments established by the Duke of York in 1797.
Myna Trustram, Women of the Regiment: Marriage and the Victorian Army (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
This book began life as a PhD thesis under Miriam David at Bristol University, and was the first to delve deeply into the complex relationship between Army wives, military administration and Victorian society. Although it is now more than four decades old, it remains a core text for anyone working in this field, and it is stimulating reading for history buffs in general. It is impressive in its ability to deliver a clear narrative on the challenges faced by military men and their families that is at the same time insightfully grounded in historical theory.
Lynn MacKay, Women and the British Army, 1815-1880 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2023).
MacKay brings her expertise in charity records and a meticulous study of nineteenth-century newspapers to this treatment of army families in an important period the Army’s history. Where Trustram has focussed on the women and children at home in Britain, MacKay expands her scope to include those serving in the Crimea and in colonial garrisons. Again, MacKay’s work is very readable for a broad audience. I was fascinated to read accounts like the courtship experiences of a young couple in Frederickton (New Brunswick), and of the challenges faced by wives of men stationed in places like New Westminster (British Columbia), and Western Australia.
Kevin Linch, The British Army, 1783-1815 (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword, 2024).
This 2025 Templer Medal winner has taken pride of place in my library as a quick go-to reference for everything from the administrative structure of the army to Britain’s colonial military outposts. Even more importantly, Linch showcases the Army as a transnational force with corresponding challenges. This is not only a reference book; it is a very engaging cover-to-cover read as well. In an excitingly inclusive approach, Linch goes far beyond the men in uniform to show the diversity of race, gender, and even species (!) behind the military in this important era.
Matthew McCormack, Embodying the Militia in Georgian England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
This is a very well-written treatment of the militia during an important period in its history. It peers not only into the structural changes to its administration, but also into its culture. The latter includes discussion of the broader political context of the militia reforms as well as microhistories of how things worked on the ground. My favourite chapter is “The Material Life of the Militiaman,” which covers everything from the uniform to the layout of the camp.
Erica Charters, Disease, War, and the Imperial State: The Welfare of the British Armed Forces during the Seven Years’ War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
This book won the SAHR prize for best first book in 2014, and it was richly deserving. It places the military in direct conversation with contemporary science, demonstrating the importance of imperial ambitions and servicemen’s health in stimulating scientific investigation. Where an armed conflict like the Seven Years War would tend to appear primarily to spread disease and death, under Charters’ pen it also becomes a driver of medical innovation.
I would love to read an in-depth study of the non-commissioned ranks of the eighteenth-century Army. Although a few sergeants (and the odd corporal) have left memoirs, we still know remarkably little about their daily activities. It would be fascinating to know more about how men were chosen for promotion, and how sergeants’ duties varied from those of corporals. We know that military discipline reduced these men to a private’s rank with some frequency, yet little is known about how this may have affected company dynamics. I have also seen some tantalizing evidence to suggest that NCOs’ wives played a distinct role in the regiment. Ideally, a book-length investigation would offer insight into all of these issues and more.