Militarized Cultural Encounters in the Long Nineteenth Century

This book explores European soldiers encounters with their continents exotic frontiers from the French Revolution to the First World War. In numerous military expeditions to Italy, Spain, Russia, Greece and the Levant they found wild landscapes and strange societies inhabited by peoples who needed to be civilized. Yet often they also discovered founding sites of Europes own civilization (Rome, Jerusalem) or decaying reminders of ancient grandeur. The resulting encounters proved seminal in forging a military version of the civilizing mission that shaped Europes image of itself as well as its relations with its own periphery during the long nineteenth century.