Battle-Scarred: Politics, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain

Historians of the British Civil Wars are increasingly taking notice of these bloody conflicts as a critical episode in the welfare history of Europe. Battle-scarred examines the human costs of the conflict and the ways in which they left lasting physical and mental scars after the cessation of armed hostilities. From a wider perspective, it continues the huge advances which have been made in our understanding of the experiences of the common people during this series of conflicts. Its chapters analyse the effectiveness of the provision of medical care, how military welfare operated and the means by which the British peoples endured this traumatic catastrophe.

The book focuses on epidemic disease, mortality, burial, wounds, surgery and hospitals, herbal medicine, desertion and demobilisation, trauma, imprisonment, pensions and charitable collections during wartime. It advances and widens our understanding of the medical history of the Civil Wars through examining details of the soldiers' wounds and ailments, along with the treatments afforded to them. It also broadens approaches to military history by examining the many ways in which state-sponsored military welfare functioned. Its concern to articulate the experience, agency and self-fashioning of war widows will appeal to historians of women, allowing them to extend their focus beyond the more heavily studied memoirs of the social elite.

This book will be of interest to academics and students alike, and beyond academia it reaches out to Civil War enthusiasts and those interested in the wider history of medicine and welfare.