Family, Class, Honor, Manhood: Lieutenant Edmond de Lotbinière Joly in India, Paris, and Crimea, 1850–1857

Abstract

During the relatively short period when he was a junior officer in the British colonial army, Edmond Joly served in the recently annexed Punjab, at the siege of Sebastopol, and in the effort to rescue his regiment in Lucknow where he was mortally wounded at the age of twenty-four. Earlier that same year, the young Canadian had spent four months in Paris immersed in the social whirl of the aristocratic elite. Beyond describing those eventful years in intimate detail, Joly’s hitherto-unexamined personal letters, memoir, and journal reveal that his chief motivation in becoming a soldier and repeatedly risking his life after a rebellious youth was to gain the respect of his demanding father. The themes of emerging manhood and family honor are therefore central to this article, which also provides an intimate example of the clash between traditional aristocratic values and those of the rising middle class in the modernizing Victorian era.