Project

Bearing Witness in Wartime is an MSCA project on soldiers’ historical role as authors and eyewitnesses. Specifically, my objective is to determine how soldiers’ testimony shaped British attitudes to empire in India. Over two years, I will analyse the content and reception of soldiers’ memoirs, witness statements, and printed letters to the editor. Doing so will illuminate changing ideas of transparency, accountability, and ‘injurious disclosures.’

Modern resonances

In 2010, former US army analyst Chelsea Manning became notorious for releasing classified information to WikiLeaks. Manning’s 35-year prison sentence, commuted in 2017, raised questions about how to manage the tension between transparency and national security. Manning is the famous face of a larger trend. Since the early 2000s, soldiers have used social media to publicize combat experiences through blogs and video clips. What impact might this testimony have on public attitudes to overseas military operations? This MSCA project looks to the past for possible answers.

Historical perspectives

Political theorists trace the emergence of modern ideals of open government to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. During this period, growing calls for parliamentary reform coincided with the expansion of the newspaper and print industry in Britain. Simultaneously, Britain was also emerging as a dominant imperial power fighting wars on a global scale. Because professional war correspondents did not yet exist, the primary source of public information about these conflicts, apart from official army dispatches, were soldiers themselves. In Asia (the main theatre of military activity), most served in the armies of the East India Company (EIC). At a time when the EIC’s trading monopoly limited British access to Indian shores, soldiers were important vectors of information. Soldiers acted as witnesses in parliamentary inquiries, submitted letters to newspapers, and published books and pamphlets. This project will determine what soldiers disclosed and what impact this had on public attitudes to empire, and to the military.

Soldiers returning from service in India disembark from a troopship at Gravesend.