Uses of the History of the British Civil Wars in Colchester in the long nineteenth and early twentieth century with special reference to the Siege of Colchester in 1648.

This thesis provides an analysis of the uses and meanings of historical memory of the Siege of Colchester of 1648 in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. The study has two main aims. The first is to contribute to historical understanding of the long-term significance of the history of the Civil Wars in British culture. The second is to deepen appreciation of how nineteenth century identity, both local and national, was constructed through active engagement with the past. Central to the argument of the thesis, is the recognition that the past needs to be viewed in pluralistic terms. Meanings of history vary according to age, gender, class and locality. They also shift over time and according to context. For this reason, the thesis takes a micro-historical approach that allows for a finely grained and multi-layered analysis of uses of the past that is sensitive to tensions between uses of the history of the siege by different individuals and groups, as well as between local and national historical narratives in the context of long-term processes of change. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate that the Civil Wars remained an influential historical reference in both nineteenth century Colchester and more broadly in British culture. They challenge historical emphasis on a growing national focus of popular understandings of the past and argue that local history remained one of the most important sites in which memory was constructed. Meaning was tied closely to the local events of the 1648 siege as well as specific spaces, and people in Colchester associated with that tragedy, long after living memory was lost. While some remained indifferent to its legacy, for many the history of the siege remained a central component in the construction of Colchester’s collective identity until the second half of the twentieth century.