Duché, Elodie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2677-6854 (2026) Prisoners of War in the 18th Century. In: Watson, Alexander, (ed.) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Military History. Oxford University Press (In Press)

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Abstract

While most studies on prisoners of war (POWs) have focused on the 20th century, this field is rapidly expanding and opening up exciting research opportunities for earlier periods. In particular, research into 18th-century POWs has highlighted how transformative war captivity could be for individuals, communities, towns, and states, and this research has thereby enriched our understanding of the complex sociopolitical landscape of the period. Early-21st-century scholarship in this field focuses on transnational, colonial, and global encounters caused by captivity. Histories of prisoners’ life-writing and interactions with host societies have illuminated how war prisons served as contact zones. These studies have revealed critical nuances by showing how race, faith, class, and gender influenced wartime experiences. Since the mid-2010s, attention has also been drawn to how women and civilians navigated war captivity. This feeds into a broader discussion of how war captives intersected with other coerced mobilities, including those of slaves and convicts, along with civil wars, which challenged contemporaries in identifying who was a lawfully taken captive. Another ongoing debate centers on whether the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars marked a turning point. While Enlightenment ideas ushered in greater restraint in war, studies of how administrators interpreted normative texts have shown that the statuses of war captives were, in practice, diverse and malleable. Significant gaps remain in understanding the broader societal impacts of war captivity, particularly outside Western Europe and North America. As research continues, historians are called to adopt a multilingual approach to connect microhistories of wartime prisons and to explore their social and environmental ramifications across different times and regions.

Item Type:	Book Section
Status:	In Press
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > D History (General) D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D204 Modern History D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D901 Europe (General) D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain > DA505-522 George III, 1760-1820 D History General and Old World > DB Austria D History General and Old World > DC France D History General and Old World > DJ Netherlands (Holland) > DJK Eastern Europe D History General and Old World > DL Northern Europe. Scandinavia D History General and Old World > DP Spain D History General and Old World > DR Balkan Peninsula D History General and Old World > DS Asia D History General and Old World > DT Africa D History General and Old World > DU Oceania (South Seas) E History America > E11 America (General) E History America > E151 United States (General) H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman U Military Science > U Military Science (General)
School/Department:	School of Humanities
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/12087

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