Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution

PART III: Books Not Taken

PART III Books Not Taken T here were many books on war available in eighteenthcentury Britain that did not appear in our officers’ records. Our officers very likely relied on some of the books that escaped their lists, inventories, and catalogues. We cannot be sure which titles they deliberately ignored and which titles simply did not survive in their lists. We can try to create a checklist of books on war that our officers were most likely to have known about and that are not among the books that they preferred. This is such a checklist—243 books on war that were either advertised or published in eighteenth-century Britain but that were not included in our officers’ lists and inventories. It gives us an idea of the books and kinds of books on war that did not retain a conspicuous place in the memories or on the shelves of forty-two unusually wealthy, experienced, and well-informed officers. Should we be interested in knowing which books our officers neglected or, perhaps, deliberately rejected? Yes, and for several reasons.To know that our officers preferred some books and kinds of books to others is to get a much sharper understanding of their preferences. If, for example, we know that our officers admired the Duke of Marlborough, that they bought and read books about him and his campaigns, and that they also neglected other well-known books about him, we can better appreciate not just how Marlborough was understood across time but especially how eighteenth-century British officers chose to see themselves and the art of war. Similarly, to know that our officers preferred and neglected books quite out of proportion to what was available—to know, for example, that their preference for the art of war and neglect of drill in the mid-eighteenth century was not just a result of what was in print—is to increase our appreciation for what mattered most to them and to make us wary of thinking drill books and manuals “made up most eighteenth-century military literature” (Brewer, Sinews of Power, 57). Indeed, to know which books our officers preferred and which they neglected should help us in understanding the eighteenth-century 236 BOOKS NOT TAKEN British army and in choosing sources for the history of that army. Without such a perspective on sources, we are all too likely to prefer books that appeal to our sensibilities or sustain our prejudices. This checklist gives us a rare opportunity to know more about our subjects and our sources. The list has been assembled from advertisements in books that our officers did prefer and from references in later, scholarly works dealing with the British army in the age of the American Revolution. Finding advertisements of books on war that our officers could have seen—advertisements included in books that they did own, read, or recommend—has been difficult but rewarding . The Society of the Cincinnati has roughly two-thirds of the 650 “Catalogue des Livres Nouveaux,” which accompanied Constapel’s edition of Jeney, Le Partisan (1759), 176–77, included many titles of books on war. Among the books that Constapel advertised were some, such as Vauban’s Attaques & Defences des Places, that our forty-two officers preferred as well as three that they did not—three that are now listed in Part III (Books Not Taken). BOOKS NOT TAKEN 237 titles that our officers preferred; and it has been possible to inspect some 390 of those books. But only 72 of the 390 books in the Society’s collections contain advertisements; and of those 72 advertisements, only 21 contain notices of books on war that were not in our officers’ libraries or reading lists (the other advertisements contain either no books on war or books on war that are among the 650 that our officers did prefer). If few in number, the twenty-one advertisements have proved to be diverse and rich sources. They represent the offerings of twenty-one publishers : nine British, six Dutch, five French, and one Belgian, including some of the most prominent military publishers of the century (John Millan and T. & J. Egerton of London, Charles-Antoine Jombert—father—of Paris, and Pierre De Hondt of The Hague). These advertisements have yielded some 120 titles of books on war that were available in the era of the American Revolution, that would very likely have come to the notice of our...