Eamonn O'Keeffe
Research Topic
British Military Musicians during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793-1815
Supervisors: Professor Bob Harris and Dr Erica Charters
About me
I am an AHRC-funded doctoral student researching military musicians during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Before beginning my DPhil, I completed an MPhil at the University of Cambridge with a dissertation on honour, duelling and courts-martial in the early nineteenth-century British army. I am a Council Member of the Society for Army Historical Research, one of the world's oldest military history societies, and have published several articles on military memoirs, music, and courts-martial. I have also presented work at a number of academic conferences, including the Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain conference, the Society for Military History conference, and the Wellington Congress. My research has garnered attention from a variety of media outlets, including BBC News, BBC Radio 4's Today Progamme and CNN. I have appeared on the BBC One genealogy show 'Who Do You Think You Are?' twice, speaking with Kate Winslet and singer-songwriter Pixie Lott about drummers and military bandsmen in their family tree. My research on the Georgian diary of Yorkshire tenant farmer Matthew Tomlinson, which includes remarkable reflections on homosexuality, was also featured on 'Songs of Praise' on BBC One in September 2020.
More information about my work is available on my website, 1812 and all that, or my Academia.edu page. You can also follow me on Twitter – @1812andallthat or contact me via email at eamonn.okeeffe@history.ox.ac.uk.
About my project
Military music was pervasive in Britain and Ireland during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Regimental bands enlivened martial reviews and public spectacles while drummers and fifers encouraged enlistment by leading recruiting parties through teeming towns and remote villages. As the writings of soldiers and civilians attest, the nation-in-arms was experienced by the ears as much as the eyes.
Within the army, sound was critical to inculcating military discipline, governing soldiers' routines, and conveying orders. Regimental bands and drum corps also enhanced morale, lifting spirits on campaign and in garrison while promoting a wide range of local, regimental and national allegiances.
Military musicians played for myriad public events and staged free open-air concerts for socially diverse audiences in Britain, Ireland, and overseas colonies. Drummers and bandsmen encouraged and amplified expressions of wartime patriotism, helping buttress the British state during a revolutionary age, but were sometimes criticised for playing sectarian tunes, violating the sanctity of the Sabbath, and even emitting noise pollution through their recurrent performances. Military music constituted a form of soft power abroad: it aided diplomacy, enhanced imperial authority, and generally improved relations with local populations.
Military mobilisation increased opportunities to listen, learn and play. The drastic expansion of the armed forces prompted unprecedented investment in martial music-making, giving more men and boys the chance to acquire instrumental training. Military ensembles established in wartime continued playing together for decades after Waterloo, while discharged regiment musicians pursued varied careers as music teachers, performers and even opera singers. Martial music-making also facilitated the development of working-class brass bands while stimulating provincial and colonial musical cultures.
Ingrained in popular culture after two decades of conflict, martial music was widely emulated by post-war mass political movements. Supporters of parliamentary reform and expanded voting rights, as well as campaigners for Irish self-government, all plagiarised military sound and spectacle with the assistance of ex-servicemen. By marching in step to bands and bugles, demonstrators organised themselves in an orderly and eye-catching fashion while obliquely threatening insurrectionary violence.
Military music, in sum, was an everyday and intrusive part of wartime life, a source of entertainment and opportunity, and a politically-charged exponent of both patriotism and protest. My thesis demonstrates how the legacies of martial music-making echoed far beyond the barrack gates.
Publications
E. O'Keeffe, ‘“A Natural Passion?” The 1810 Reflections of a Yorkshire Farmer on Homosexuality’, Historical Research (February 2021).
E. O'Keeffe, ‘Theatre on the Move in Times of Conflict, 1750-1850’ (conference report), Eighteenth-Century Music (September 2020).
E. O'Keeffe, "The Anatomy of a Drum Corps: Drummers and Musicians in the Canadian Regiment of Fencible Infantry, 1803-1816", Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research (Winter 2020).
E. O'Keeffe (ed), Narrative of the Eventful Life of Thomas Jackson: Militiaman and Coldstream Sergeant, 1803-1815 (Helion, 2018).
E. O'Keeffe, “The Old Halberdier: From the Pyrenees to Plattsburgh with a Welshman of the 39th”, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research (Spring, Summer and Autumn 2017). Three-part series.
E. O'Keeffe, “Such Want of Gentlemanly Conduct: The Court Martial of Lieutenant John de Hertel”, Journal of Canadian Military History (Autumn-Winter 2016).
E. O'Keeffe, “Fops under Fire: British Drum-Majors in Action during the Napoleonic Wars”, The Napoleon Series (June 2016).
Conference and Seminar Presentations
E. O'Keeffe, "Diligence, Discipline, and Time: Training Military Musicians during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars", North American British Music Studies Association conference, Illinois State University and online, 21-24 July 2022.
E. O'Keeffe, "Germans, Choristers and Young Beginners: The Recruitment of Musical Warriors during the French Wars", British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies conference (online), 5-7 January 2022.
E. O'Keeffe, "No time [should] be lost in procuring the performers": The Recruitment and Training of Military Musicians, 1793-1815", Graduate Seminar in History, 1680-1850, University of Oxford, 23 November 2021.
E. O'Keeffe, "Regimental repertoires: the manuscript music books of Napoleonic-era British military musicians", Theatre on the Move in Times of Conflict (1750-1850), Magdalen College, University of Oxford, 18-19 September 2019.
E. O'Keeffe, "'An Evil of Long Standing': martial musicians, partisan performances and the militarization of British electoral spectacle", War and Peace in the Age of Napoleon (British Commission for Military History), King's College London, 13-14 September 2019.
E. O'Keeffe, "Regimental repertoires: the manuscript music books of Napoleonic-era British military musicians", 12th Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain Conference, Canterbury Christ Church University, 3-5 July 2019.
E. O'Keeffe, "Siblings or Subordinates? – Brotherhood, Hierarchy and Discipline among Napoleonic-era British Officers" (revised and expanded), Seventh Wellington Congress, University of Southampton, 12-13 April 2019.
E. O'Keeffe, "The Musical Armed Nation: Mass Mobilization, Music and Politics during and after the Napoleonic Wars", European Song and Political Protest workshop, University of Warwick, 24 November 2018.
E. O'Keeffe, "Siblings or Subordinates? – Brotherhood, Hierarchy and Discipline among Napoleonic-era British Officers", New Voices in the History of War, All Souls College, University of Oxford, 18 July 2018.
E. O'Keeffe, "Musicians against Napoleon: British Drummers and Bands in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars", Redcoats, Tommies, and Dusty Warriors: Britain's Soldiers c.1650 to the present, University of Leeds, 10-11 July 2018.
E. O'Keeffe, "Instruments of War: Military Music during the Napoleonic Wars", Instruments of the Eighteenth Century Seminar, Oxford University Music Faculty, 1 November 2017.
Prizes and Grants
Runner-up, Nicholas Temperley Student Paper Prize, North American British Music Studies Association (2022)
Michael Burden Award for best graduate paper on musicology, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (2022)
First Prize in the Three Minute Military Thesis Competition, run by the British Commission for Military History (2020)
Conrad Russell Prize (Merton College, Oxford) for best thesis in History (2017)
Second Place, Society for Army Historical Research Essay Prize (2016)
