Frenemy Aliens. The National and Transnational Considerations of Independent Contingents in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, 1914-1918

Itinerario ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 119-138
Author(s):  
Steve Marti
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
First World War ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
South Slavs ◽  
War Effort ◽  
First World

The Allied expedition to Salonika was a controversial campaign of the First World War that diverted French and British resources away from the Western Front. To sustain this expedition without depleting existing forces, the Colonial Office approached the High Commissioners of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand and requested that each dominion consider raising a Serbian military contingent for service in Salonika. In the decades preceding the outbreak of war, South Slavs had settled in each of the dominions and the War Office hoped to exploit nationalist aspirations for a pan-Slavic state and mobilise South Slavs in the dominions. In raising these contingents, dominion governments weighed between fulfilling a demand of the Imperial war effort and jeopardising domestic stability by empowering a culturally-distinct minority that was the object of public paranoia. This article will examine how the legal status of South Slavs changed in the three dominions as a result of these recruiting efforts along with the conditions under which South Slavs were able to volunteer for service in Salonika. A comparative approach reveals how Southern Slavs were defined and how they defined themselves as they navigated the categories of enemy aliens, friendly allies, and subjects of the British Empire.

scholarly journals The Finest Feats of the War? The Captures of Baghdad and Jerusalem during the First World War and Public Opinion throughout the British Empire

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Fantauzzo
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Press ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Post War ◽  
First World

In March and December 1917 the British Empire won two much-needed victories in Mesopotamia and Palestine: Baghdad and Jerusalem. Both cities were steeped in biblical and oriental lore and both victories happened in a year that had been otherwise disastrous. Throughout the British Empire the press, public, and politicians debated the importance of the two successes, focusing on the effect they would have on the empire’s prestige, the Allies’ war strategy, and the post-war Middle East. Far from being overwhelmed by the ‘romance’ of the fighting in the Middle East, the press’s and public’s response reveals a remarkably well-informed, sophisticated, and occasionally combative debate about the empire’s Middle Eastern war effort.

Australian and New Zealand women teachers in the First World War

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-45
Author(s):  
Kay Morris Matthews ◽  
Kay Whitehead
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
First World War ◽  
Women Teachers ◽  
Secondary Source ◽  
World War ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
First World ◽  
At Home

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to highlight the contributions of women teachers to the war effort at home in Australia and New Zealand and in Egypt and Europe between 1914 and 1918. Design/methodology/approach Framed as a feminist transnational history, this research paper drew upon extensive primary and secondary source material in order to identify the women teachers. It provides comparative analyses using a thematic approach providing examples of women teachers war work at home and abroad. Findings Insights are offered into the opportunities provided by the First World War for channelling the abilities and leadership skills of women teachers at home and abroad. Canvassed also are the tensions for German heritage teachers; ideological differences concerning patriotism and pacifism and issues arising from government attitudes on both sides of the Tasman towards women’s war service. Originality/value This is likely the only research offering combined Australian–New Zealand analyses of women teacher’s war service, either in support at home in Australia and New Zealand or working as volunteers abroad. To date, the efforts of Australian and New Zealand women teachers have largely gone unrecognised.

‘Our Old World Diff’rences are Dead’: The Scottish Migrant Military Tradition in the British Dominions during the First World War

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Allan ◽  
David Forsyth
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Old World ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Military Units ◽  
Military Tradition ◽  
First World

Scottish volunteer corps were an established feature of the defence forces of the British Dominions in the decades before the First World War. Displaying and performing the essentials of traditional identity associated with the British army’s Scottish regiments, these military units constituted one form of associational culture for migrant Scots and their descendants. But when, in 1914, the British Dominions joined the imperial war effort, these identities transferred only partially into the expeditionary forces mobilised for overseas service. This chapter considers why it was that, with emigrant Scottish units prominent in the war iconography of Canada and South Africa, the overseas forces of Australia and New Zealand did not similarly embrace the Scottish tradition. The differences are found to lie in administrative arrangements for mobilisation, including conscription, as much as in the relative degrees of Dominion nationalism through which the war was represented and commemorated.

Crusoe's Books

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bill Bell
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
British Empire ◽  
First World War ◽  
Robinson Crusoe ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

This book examines the role of books and reading in relation to five itinerant constituencies in the long nineteenth century. It provides a critique of influential approaches to the history of reading within the context of the British empire. Beginning with the figure of the ‘hermeneutic castaway’ in Robinson Crusoe, it moves on to explore this and other phenomena as they were manifest among shipboard emigrants, Australian convicts, Scottish settlers in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, among polar explorers, and in the trenches of the First World War. In each instance, it explores the tensions between official prescriptive reading cultures and the everyday responses of ordinary readers themselves. Far from demonstrating the confidence and coherence of a British imperial project during this period, the evidence provided by a myriad reading experiences suggests an underlying disruption and tension in the way that reading subjects saw themselves and their political masters throughout the empire. Using archival, official, and other printed sources, the book sets out to show the diversity of readerly response in this period and what it can tell us about the complexity of the mentalities of ordinary subjects in an age of empire.

The role of nitrogen in transforming British agricultural productivity production prior to and during the First World War

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 583-609
Author(s):  
John Martin
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Production ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Coal Gas ◽  
Major Threat ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Food Shortages ◽  
War Effort ◽  
First World

This paper explores the reasons why artificial or mineral sources of nitrogen, which were more readily available in Britain than in other European countries, were only slowly adopted by farmers in the decades prior to and during the First World War. It considers why nitrogen in the form of sulphate of ammonia, a by-product of coal-gas (town-gas) manufacture, was increasingly exported from Britain for use by German farmers. At the same time Britain was attempting to monopolise foreign supplies of Chilean nitrate, which was not only a valuable source of fertiliser for agriculture but also an essential ingredient of munitions production. The article also investigates the reasons why sulphate of ammonia was not more widely used to raise agricultural production during the First World War, at a time when food shortages posed a major threat to public morale and commitment to the war effort.

The “Caliphate Question”

2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saad Omar Khan
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Arab World ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
British Foreign Policy ◽  
The First World War ◽  
British Policy ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
First World

This paper examines British approaches to the caliphate from the beginning of the First World War to the aftermath of its dissolution in 1924. Background will be given as to how the Islamic conception of the caliphate shifted over time. British use of the caliphate as a political tool in the nineteenth century is also examined, especially with regards to how strong British-Ottoman ties prior to the First World War affected India’s Muslims. The primary focus, however, will be on British ties with King Hussein of the Hejaz. British suggestions of an Arab caliphate encouraged the idea that Hussein should assume the title of caliph, which would later be a cause of agitation and concern for British policy in the British Empire. This is especially true with regards to India, as fear of Indo-Muslim opinion would deeply influence British policy when it came to the Ottoman Empire’s position in the post-bellum period. With the creation of the Turkish Republic and the subsequent disestablishment of the Ottoman caliphate, Hussein, sharif of the Hejaz, would officially announce his claim to the title. This dismayed the British foreign policy establishment, which strove to avoid suggestions of complicity lest further anti-British activity be encouraged in India. Eventually, the end of Hussein would come from Ibn Saud, his principle rival in the Arab world. Despite Hussein’s status as a British ally, the widespread anger against him in the Islamic world over the caliphate would persuade the British to distance themselves from him and his religious pretensions.

Early photographers encounter Tongans

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne L. Kaeppler
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Modern Equipment ◽  
Cultural Information ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Original Photographs ◽  
Natural Historian ◽  
First World

Four early photographers are examined here in relation to their encounters with Tongans and Tonga. These photographers are Andrew Garrett, Gustav Adolph Riemer, Clarence Gordon Campbell and Walter Stanhope Sherwill. Garrett, an American natural historian who specialized in shells and fish, took two ambrotypes of Tongans in Fiji in 1868, which are two of the earliest Tongan photographs known. Riemer, born in Saarlouis, Germany, was a marine photographer on S.M.S. Hertha on an official diplomatic visit and took at least 28 photographs in Tonga in 1876. Campbell, a tourist from New York, took 25 culturally important photographs in 1902. Sherwill, a British subject born in India, moved to Tonga about the time of the First World War. He probably took many photographs with more modern equipment, but only two have been identified with certainty. This article presents information about the photographers and those depicted, where the original photographs can be found and the research that made it possible to glean cultural information from them. These early photographers are placed in the context of other more well-known early photographers whose works can be found in archives and libraries in New Zealand, Australia, Hawai‘i and Germany. In addition, summary information about two Tongan-born photographers is presented, as well as where their photographs/negatives can be found.

scholarly journals Saints and Sinners: Arthur Espie Porritt

2013 ◽  
Vol 95 (8) ◽  
pp. 274-275
Author(s):  
Wyn Beasley
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Royal College ◽  
First World War ◽  
First Year ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Future ◽  
First World

Arthur Porritt, whose adventures, accolades and achievements spanned the globe, was both a surgeon himself and the son of a surgeon. His father, Ernest Edward Porritt, qualified in Edinburgh, became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1898, and practised in Wanganui in new zealand, where Arthur was born on 10 August 1900. His mother, Ivy McKenzie, died in 1914, when Arthur was in his first year at Wanganui Collegiate School; and when his father shortly went overseas to serve in the First World War, the boy became a boarder. The future Olympian distinguished himself as athletics champion, a member of the First XV and a prefect; and for a year after leaving school himself, he taught at a boys' school.

scholarly journals British Right-Wing Anti-semitism, 1918-1930.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Oliver Brown
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
World War ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Right ◽  
First World

This thesis investigates the prevalence of anti-Semitism in the British right-wing between the years of 1918 and 1930. It aims to redress the imbalance of studies on interwar British right-wing anti-Semitism that are skewed towards the 1930s, Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. This thesis is the first to focus exclusively on the immediate aftermath of the First World War and the rest of the 1920s, to demonstrate how interwar British right-wing anti-Semitism was not an isolated product of the 1930s. This work shows that anti-Semitism was endemic throughout much of the right-wing in early interwar Britain but became pushed further away from the mainstream as the decade progressed. This thesis adopts a comparative approach of comparing the actions and ideology of different sections of the British right-wing. The three sections that it is investigating are the “mainstream”, the “anti-alien/anti-Bolshevik” right and the “Jewish-obsessive” fringe. This comparative approach illustrates the types of anti-Semitism that were widespread throughout the British right-wing. Furthermore, it demonstrates which variants of anti-Semitism remained on the fringes. This thesis will steer away from only focusing on the virulently anti-Semitic, fringe organisations. The overemphasis on peripheral figures and openly fascistic groups when historians have glanced back at the 1920s helped lead to an exaggerated view that Britain was a tolerant haven in historiographical pieces, at least up until the 1980s. This thesis is using a wide range of primary sources, that are representative of the different sections of the British right-wing.

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