200 Years of Trafalgar: From Jubilation to Commemoration

Abstract

The author of this article attempts to trace the evolution of the British memory concerning the Battle of Trafalgar, which predetermined the long-term dominance of Britain on the seas. Almost immediately after receiving the first news of Trafalgar and the death of H. Nelson, large-scale ceremonies began which were associated with a grand victory on the national scale. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the era of the “living memory” of Trafalgar was over. At the same time, radical changes in the balance of geopolitical forces made the British think again and again about Trafalgar. Even though the First and Second World Wars pushed the images of glorious victories at sea in the distant era of the Napoleonic wars into the background in the minds of the British, during the 150th anniversary of Trafalgar, the British military and state elite tried to revive the glorious images of the distant past, using “historical resources” to maintain the national spirit. The dynamics in the awareness of the British elite and the public of the importance of the anniversary was remarkable as it evolved from semi-indifference to events of the widest scope. Fifty years later, London made another attempt to use the anniversary of Trafalgar to raise patriotic sentiments among the British youth, as well as strengthen the military-strategic partnership with its allies. At the same time, analysts noted the progressive loss of the fundamental moments for the national identity of the British. The author concludes that the perception of the image of Trafalgar by the British has passed a difficult path over 200 years, which demonstrated a variant of the development of “living memory”, which, despite all attempts to preserve the energy and direction of the original impulse, is being inevitably replaced by what is now commonly called commemoration.

Keywords

• трафальгар
• историческая память
• политика памяти
• коммеморация
• британская идентичность