“I cannot wait to possess you”: Reading 18th century letters for the first time

University of Cambridge historian Renaud Morieux was poring over supplies at the National Archives in Kew when he got here throughout a field holding three piles of sealed letters held collectively by ribbons. The archivist gave him permission to open the letters, all addressed to 18th century French sailors from their family members and seized by Great Britain’s Royal Navy throughout the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763).

“I noticed I used to be the first individual to learn these very private messages since they’re written,” stated Morieux, who simply revealed his evaluation of the letters in the journal Annales Histoire Sciences Sociales. “These letters are about common human experiences, they’re not distinctive to France or the 18th century. They reveal how all of us deal with main life challenges. When we’re separated from family members by occasions past our management like the pandemic or wars, we now have to work out how to keep in contact, how to reassure, care for folks and hold the ardour alive. Today we now have Zoom and WhatsApp. In the 18th century, folks solely had letters, however what they wrote about feels very acquainted.”

England and France have a protracted, difficult historical past of being at struggle, most notably the Hundred Years’ War in the 14th and fifteenth centuries. The two nations had been additionally virtually constantly at struggle throughout the 18th century, together with the Seven Years’ War, which was fought in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific as England and France tried to set up world dominance with the support of their respective allies. The struggle technically developed out of the North American colonies when England tried to increase into territory the French had already claimed. (Fun truth: A 22-year-old George Washington led a 1754 ambush on a French power at the Battle of Jumonville Glen.) But the battle quickly unfold past colonial borders, and the British went on to seize a whole bunch of French ships at sea.

According to Morieux, regardless of its assortment of wonderful ships throughout this era, France was quick on skilled sailors, and the massive numbers imprisoned by the British—practically a 3rd of all French sailors in 1758—did not assist issues. Many sailors finally returned dwelling, though a couple of died throughout their imprisonment, often from malnutrition or sickness. It was no straightforward feat delivering correspondence from France to a continually transferring ship; usually a number of copies had been despatched to totally different ports in hopes of accelerating the odds of a letter reaching its meant recipient.

This specific batch of letters was addressed to varied crew members of a French warship referred to as the Galitee, which was captured by a British ship referred to as the Essex en route from Bordeaux to Quebec in 1758. Morieux’s genealogical analysis accounted for each member of the crew. Naturally, a few of the missives had been love letters from wives to their husbands, akin to the one Marie Dubosc wrote to her husband, a ship’s lieutenant named Louis Chambrelan, in 1758, professing herself his “ceaselessly trustworthy spouse.” Morieux’s analysis confirmed that Marie died the following 12 months earlier than her husband was launched; Chambrelan remarried when he returned to France, having by no means acquired his late spouse’s missive.

Morieux learn a number of letters addressed to a younger sailor from Normandy named Nicolas Quesnel, from each his 61-year-old mom, Marguerite, and his fiancée, Marianne. Marguerite’s letters chided the younger man for writing extra usually to Marianne and never to her, laying the guilt thick. “I believe extra about you than you about me,” the mom wrote (or extra seemingly, dictated to a trusted scribe), including, “I believe I’m for the tomb, I’ve been sick for three weeks.” (Translation: “Why do not you write to your poor sick mom earlier than I die?”)

Apparently, Quesnel’s neglect of his mom brought about some stress with the fiancée since Marianne wrote three weeks later asking him to please write to his mother and take away the “black cloud” in the family. But then Marguerite merely complained that Quesnel made no point out of his stepfather in his letters dwelling, so the poor younger man actually could not win. Quesnel survived his imprisonment, per Morieux, and ended up engaged on a transatlantic slave ship.

For Morieux, studying the letters shed new mild on the lives of shipmen and their households, significantly the ladies. “These letters present folks coping with challenges collectively,” he stated. “Today we might discover it very uncomfortable to write a letter to a fiancée realizing that moms, sisters, uncles, neighbors would learn it earlier than it was despatched, and plenty of others would learn it upon receipt. It’s arduous to inform somebody what you actually take into consideration them with folks peering over your shoulder. There was far much less of a divide between intimate and collective.”

Annales Histoire Sciences Sociales, 2023. DOI: 10.1017/ahss.2023.75  (About DOIs). (In French)