This book deals with the impact of war on the British Isles, examining the armed response to the French strategic encirclement of Britain and Ireland during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Dr Cookson provides the first comprehensive survey of the mobilization of armed force for the regular army, militia, and volunteers, in England, Scotland, and Ireland. He shows the effect on Scottish and Irish identities, and how in England mobilization often owed more to
working-class pragmatism and the `town-making' interests of urban rulers than to national defence patriotism.