Mercy and British Culture, 1760 - 1960

Mercy and British Culture, 1760-1960 provides a wide-reaching yet detailed overview of the concept of mercy in British cultural history. It looks first at mercy's religious and philosophical aspects, its cultural representations and its embodiment. It then looks at large-scale mobilisation of mercy discourses in Ireland, during the French Revolution, in the British empire, and in warfare from the American war of independence to the First World War. This study concludes by examining mercy's place in a twentieth century shaped by total war, atomic bomb, and decolonisation.