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In this, the first fully documented study of British and Irish popular reactions to the outbreak of the First World War, Catriona Pennell explores UK public opinion of the time and successfully challenges the myth of British 'war enthusiasm'. A Kingdom United explores what people felt, and how they acted, in response to an unanticipated and unprecedented crisis. It is a history of both ordinary people and elite figures in extraordinary times. Dr Pennell demonstrates that describing the reactions of over 40 million British and Irish people to the outbreak of war as either enthusiastic in the British case, or disengaged in the Irish, is over-simplified and inadequate. Emotional reactions to th...
In A World At War, 1911-1949, leading and emerging scholars of the cultural history of the two world wars begin to break down the traditional barriers between the historiographies of the two conflicts, identifying commonalities as well as casting new light on each as part of a broader mission, in honour of Professor John Horne, to expand the boundaries of academic exploration of warfare in the 20th century. Utilizing techniques and approaches developed by cultural historians of the First World War, this volume showcases and explores four crucial themes relating to the socio-cultural attributes and representation of war that cut across both the First and Second World Wars: cultural mobilization, the nature and depiction of combat, the experience of civilians under fire, and the different meanings of victory and defeat. Contributors are: Annette Becker, Robert Dale, Alex Dowdall, Robert Gerwarth, John Horne, Tomás Irish, Heather Jones, Alan Kramer, Edward Madigan, Anthony McElligott, Michael S. Neiberg, John Paul Newman, Catriona Pennell, Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, Daniel Todman, and Jay Winter. See inside the book.
With chapters on both military and cultural history, this book highlights how the first total war of the twentieth century changed social, cultural and military perceptions to an untold extent."--BOOK JACKET.
World War I and Propaganda offers a new look at a familiar subject. The contributions to this volume demonstrate that the traditional view of propaganda as top-down manipulation is no longer plausible. Drawing from a variety of sources, scholars examine the complex negotiations involved in propaganda within the British Empire, in occupied territories, in neutral nations, and how war should be conducted. Propaganda was tailored to meet local circumstances and integrated into a larger narrative in which the war was not always the most important issue. Issues centering on local politics, national identity, preservation of tradition, or hopes of a brighter future all played a role in different forms of propaganda. Contributors are Christopher Barthel, Donata Blobaum, Robert Blobaum, Mourad Djebabla, Christopher Fischer, Andrew T. Jarboe, Elli Lemonidou, David Monger, Javier Pounce,Catriona Pennell, Anne Samson, Richard Smith, Kenneth Andrew Steuer, María Inés Tato, and Lisa Todd.
Saving the Children analyzes the intersection of liberal internationalism and imperialism through the history of the humanitarian organization Save the Children, from its formation during the First World War through the era of decolonization. Whereas Save the Children claimed that it was "saving children to save the world," the vision of the world it sought to save was strictly delimited, characterized by international capitalism and colonial rule. Emily Baughan's groundbreaking analysis, across fifty years and eighteen countries, shows that Britain's desire to create an international order favorable to its imperial rule shaped international humanitarianism. In revealing that modern humanitarianism and its conception of childhood are products of the early twentieth-century imperial economy, Saving the Children argues that the contemporary aid sector must reckon with its past if it is to forge a new future.
By training his eye on the ways that people outside the halls of power reacted to the rapid onset and escalation of the fighting in 1914, Neiberg dispels the notion that Europeans were rabid nationalists intent on mass slaughter. He reveals instead a complex set of allegiances that cut across national boundaries.
This book seeks to place children and young people centrally within the study of the contemporary British home front, its cultural representations and its place in the historical memory of the First World War. This edited collection interrogates not only war and its effects on children and young people, but how understandings of this conflict have shaped or been shaped by historical memories of the Great War, which have only allowed for several tropes of childhood during the conflict to emerge. It brings together new research by emerging and established scholars who, through a series of tightly focussed case studies, introduce a range of new histories to both explore the experience of being young during the First World War, and interrogate the memories and representations of the conflict produced for children. Taken together the chapters in this volume shed light on the multiple ways in which the Great War shaped, disrupted and interrupted childhood in Britain, and illuminate simultaneously the selectivity of the portrayal of the conflict within the more typical national narratives.
A comprehensive account of how British race patriotism shaped the defense partnership between Britain and the dominions before the Great War.
The common explanation for the outbreak of World War I depicts Europe as a minefield of nationalism, needing only the slightest pressure to set off an explosion of passion that would rip the continent apart. But in a crucial reexamination of the outbreak of violence, Michael S. Neiberg shows that ordinary Europeans, unlike their political and military leaders, neither wanted nor expected war during the fateful summer of 1914. By training his eye on the ways that people outside the halls of power reacted to the rapid onset and escalation of the fighting, Neiberg dispels the notion that Europeans were rabid nationalists intent on mass slaughter. He reveals instead a complex set of allegiances ...
Nearly fourteen million people died during the First World War. But why, and for what reason? Already many contemporaries saw the Great War as a "pointless carnage" (Pope Benedict XV, 1917). Was there a point, at least in the eyes of the political and military decision makers? How did they justify the losses, and why did they not try to end the war earlier? In this volume twelve international specialists analyses and compares the hopes and expectations of the political and military leaders of the main belligerent countries and of their respective societies. It shows that the war aims adopted during the First World War were not, for the most part, the cause of the conflict, but a reaction to it, an attempt to give the tragedy a purpose - even if the consequence was to oblige the belligerents to go on fighting until victory. The volume tries to explain why - and for what - the contemporaries thought that they had to fight the Great War.