History

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This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's Department of History.

Research outputs are organized by type (eg. Master Thesis, Article, Conference Paper).

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Browsing History by Subject "18th century"

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    A Russian Way of War? Westernization of Russian Military Thought, 1757-1800
    (University of Waterloo, 2009-04-30T20:15:02Z) Miakinkov, Eugene
    The present study constitutes one of the first attempts to establish the extent to which Russian military thought became westernized by the end of the eighteenth century. The task is an important one in light of Soviet and Russian scholarship that maintains that Russia developed a unique, different, and, some argue, superior way of war to the West. This work argues that Russian military thought was greatly influenced by the ‘military enlightenment’ of Europe, and that the ideas proposed by Russia’s foremost military theoreticians were not as novel as previously claimed. Therefore, the final intellectual product was more a continuation of, rather than a break with, Western practices and traditions of warfare. In this respect, the underlying theme of this thesis clashes with traditional Russian national military historical scholarship. The second major theme of this study is to challenge the pervasive but flawed and often simplified interpretation of the Russian army and its soldiers as undisciplined and uneducated barbarians. Contrary to these misleading views, the writings of Russian theorists bring to light the concerns about discipline and education for the officers, personal hygiene and hospital care for the soldiers and Russian awareness of complex strategic theoretical issues. The humanitarianism and sophistication of early-modern Russian military thought thus becomes abundantly clear. The scope of this work is inescapably restrictive, and the period that it examines, roughly from 1757 to 1800, has been consciously chosen to reflect the ideas of Russia’s two most important and influential military statesmen: Peter Rumyantsev and Alexander Suvorov.
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    War, Factionalism, and Civil-Military Tension: The Madras Army and the Company State in the Carnatic, 1767-1777
    (University of Waterloo, 2018-05-23) Gayford, Matthew
    This study explores how the Madras Army and its officers helped to shape the East India Company’s developing state in the Carnatic during the late 1760s and 1770s, and in particular it draws attention to their critical role during a period of factionalism and flux. It focuses on the First Anglo-Mysore War (1767-1769), and highlights how the war’s conduct and outcome were decisively shaped by the tensions arising from ambiguities and personal agendas that marked civil-military relations. It then proceeds to analyze the 1776 coup at Madras, in which a faction of the governing Council ousted the Governor, George, Lord Pigot (1719-1777), by drawing on the support of key officers in the Madras Army, and then considers the coup’s aftermath. Both the war and the coup are excellent examples through which civil-military relations can be illuminated. This study is primarily grounded in archival research in the British Library and National Library of Scotland, and employs civil-military theory in its analysis. Civil-military relations were particularly challenging in India under the Company Raj, due in large part to the complicated nature of the EIC’s relationship with Parliament and the British Crown (including the British Army and the Royal Navy) as well at the inherent hybridity of the Anglo-Indian ‘Company State.’ Nevertheless, this uniqueness, combined with scholarly neglect of the Madras Army in general and the events of the 1760s and 1770s in the Carnatic in particular, make it an ideal subject for an exploration of civil-military relations, military institutions, and military culture. It is clear from the findings of this study that the military – and particularly the officer corps of the Madras Army – played a prominent role in the factional disputes in the Madras Presidency during the period in question. The military, however, was never as monolithic or as praetorian as some abstract theories might otherwise suggest, for officers, individually as well as collectively, often aligned themselves with civilian actors due to overlapping financial or political interests.