Cavalry since 1500

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Gerges
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
World War ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
Military Revolutions ◽  
A Charge ◽  
True Measure

Cavalry, one of the three principal combat branches, has long been known as “the combat arm of decision.” This view, of a horse-mounted cavalry soldier delivering a charge at a gallop and turning a battlefield victory into a rout, is the idealized view of supporters. The role of cavalry, and whether it could continue to play a role on a battlefield dominated by firearms, has been the central debate since the 16th century. After cavalry forces lost their unquestioned battlefield dominance during the medieval period, the next four centuries witnessed a reevaluation and readjustment of their role. Others refused to admit to these changes, arguing for an unaltered role. The heyday of the mounted arm’s effectiveness came during the Napoleonic era (1799–1815), when a general equality among the various branches allowed cavalry its last true measure of shock effect as its principal mission. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the successive improvements in firearms technology threatened cavalry’s continued relevance on the battlefield. This professional debate climaxed in the period prior to World War I, as the most powerful nations discussed the experiences of the Boer War and Russo-Japanese War. World War I witnessed limited use of cavalry in the major theater, but large-scale use of horse cavalry in secondary theaters provided evidence for the supporters of animal-powered cavalry. World War II was the final large-scale use of horse cavalry, but this was due more to necessity than to continued relevance on the battlefield. As a field, the study of cavalry has been looked at by two camps of writers—one looking at the flashing swords and tales of glory, and the other looking at the arm as an adjunct to the major armies. Few scholarly works discuss cavalry across the breath of the period or how cavalry dealt with the issues of modernization or societal change. Recently, the historical community has reawakened to the debates concerning the proper role and missions of cavalry. Beginning in the early 1990s, the examination of the phenomenon of military revolutions and reemergence of disciplined infantry as the dominant arm on the battlefield has led to a number of works looking into the changes this caused in the cavalry, not only in its role on the battlefield but also as the purview of society’s elites.

scholarly journals The role of Anglo-German Naval Agreement in escalation of crisis trends of the Versailles system (based on the materials of new archival documents)

2020 ◽  
pp. 75-84
Author(s):  
Alexander Naumov
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
World War ◽  
Systemic Mechanism ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The World ◽  
Archival Documents

This article reviews the role of Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 in escalation of crisis trends of the Versailles system. Leaning on the British Russian archival documents, which recently became available for the researchers, the author analyzes the reasons and consequences of conclusion of this agreement between the key European democratic power and Nazi Reich. Emphasis is placed on analyzing the moods within the political elite of the United Kingdom. It is proven that the agreement became a significant milestone in escalation of crisis trends in the Versailles model of international relations. It played a substantial role in establishment of the British appeasement policy with regards to revanchist powers in the interbellum; policy that objectively led to disintegration of the created in 1919 systemic mechanism, and thus, the beginning of the World War II. The novelty of this work is substantiated by articulation of the problem. This article is first within the Russian and foreign historiography to analyze execution of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement based on the previously unavailable archival materials. The conclusion is made that this agreement played a crucial role in the process of disintegration of interbellum system of international relations. Having officially sanctioned the violation of the articles of the Versailles Treaty of 1919 by Germany, Great Britain psychologically reconciled to the potential revenge of Germany, which found reflection in the infamous appeasement policy. This launched the mechanism for disruption of status quo that was established after the World War I in Europe. This resulted in collapse of the architecture of international security in the key region of the world, rapid deterioration of relations between the countries, and a new world conflict.

The Impact of Military Service in World War I on Africans: the Nandi of Kenya

1978 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 495-507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis J. Greenstein
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Military Service ◽  
The United States ◽  
Veterans Administration ◽  
World War ◽  
Civilian Life ◽  
Popular Films ◽  
The Impact

It is widely believed that old soldiers are a problem. At least since the beginning of this century, western governments have been concerned with the issue of ‘helping’ veterans to readjust to civilian life upon their return from campaigning. It is assumed that these men would, if left to their own devices, find it difficult or impossible to ‘pick up from where they had left off’, and might, therefore, become a subversive element in the general population. Hence, one of the largest bureaucracies in the United States is the Veterans Administration which is charged with fitting ex-soldiers back into society. To a certain extent the concerns over whether they would be satisfied after their demobilisation have proved to be justified. The dislocations experienced by returned American servicemen after World War II were illustrated by popular films like ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’. More recently, the American press paid considerable attention to the rôle of the black veterans of Vietnam in the violence which destroyed much of Newark, Detroit, and Watts in the late 1960s.

Strange Birds: Ornithology and the Advent of the Collared Dove in Post-World War II Germany

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Lachmund
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
Single Species ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Asian Origin ◽  
Cultural Image ◽  
The Social

ArgumentIn this paper I study the engagement of German ornithologists with the Collared Dove, a bird species of Asian origin that spread massively throughout Central Europe in the 1940s and 1950s. Never before had the spread of a single species attracted so much attention from European ornithologists. Ornithologists were not only fascinated by the exotic origin of the bird, but even more so by the unprecedented rapidity of its expansion. As it is argued in the paper, the advent of the bird created an outstanding opportunity for ornithologists to study the process of biogeographic range expansion. The paper traces how knowledge on the dove's expansion took shape in the social, discursive, and material practices of a large-scale observation campaign of German ornithologists (both amateurs and academics). The paper also argues that ornithologists’ observation practices have contributed to the construction of a benevolent cultural image of the Collared Dove. This sets the case of the Collared Dove apart from many recent debates in which newly arriving species have been framed as a threat to biodiversity. The paper contributes both to a historical understanding of scientific fieldwork as well as of the role of scientific knowledge in the shaping of cultural meanings of animals.

Prva svetovna vojna in Slovenci: 1994–2014

2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-171
Author(s):  
Petra Svoljšak
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Gender Studies ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
The Church

WORLD WAR I AND SLOVENIANS: 1994–2014The paper examines the Slovenian historiographic production about the topic of World War I from 1994 to 2014 and represents a continuation of a commented bibliography, which encompassed the period from 1918 to 1993. The time between 1994 and 2014 was characterised by enormous production and a shift of the contents from the »Yugoslav« themes, which had tailored the statehood remembrance after World War I; the decline of the World War I themes as the focus shifted to the historiographic examination of World War II; and the very diversified research in the last period. The central theme of the historical writings is the Soča/Isonzo Front, but not merely as a military process: the focus shifted on the level of the soldiers’ experience, gender studies, the role of the Church, fatalities among soldiers, and remembrance of World War I. All of these issues have been subjected to historical research as well.

The Émigré Walt Whitman: Songs of Mourning, 1943–1948

2021 ◽  
pp. 229-239
Author(s):  
Lawrence Kramer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Paul Hindemith ◽  
Collective Trauma ◽  
World War ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Musical Settings ◽  
The Us

Musical settings of Walt Whitman’s poetry were ‘beyond the nation’ from the very beginning. The first of them was composed in 1880 by an Alsatian immigrant to the US, Frédéric Louis Ritter, and until around 1930 the majority of Whitman settings came from German and British composers. The majority of those settings, in turn, dealt with war and its aftermath in mourning. Whitman’s poetry of the American Civil War provided a template for grappling musically with later conflicts, from the Boer War to World War I to World War II. The years 1942 and 1948 saw major war-themed settings from four German and German-émigré composers: Kurt Weill and Paul Hindemith in America, and Hans Werner Henze and Karl Amadeus Hartmann in Germany. A common thread among these pieces, exemplified most explicitly in Weill’s setting of ‘Come Up from the Fields, Father’, is the question of whether and how the act of transposed mourning can make the collective trauma of war ‘livable’ – in a sense of the term derived from T. W. Adorno and Judith Butler, for whom ‘livability’ is measured by the power of publicly avowed mourning to integrate trauma into the symbolic systems on which social life depends.

War, Trauma, Displacement, Diaspora

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuire Valkeakari
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
War Trauma ◽  
World War ◽  
Middle Passage ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
Modern Warfare ◽  
Diasporic Subjectivity

This chapter examines Toni Morrison’s and Caryl Phillips’s portraits of African American troops in World War I, World War II, and Vietnam. These authors’ stories of African American soldiers and veterans bring together two topic areas that may, at first glance, seem to have little to do with each other: war and diaspora. This chapter interrogates the complex relationship between diasporic subjectivity and national citizenship. Utilizing Caruthian trauma theory, it reveals how Morrison, in Sulaand Tar Baby, and Phillips, in Crossing the River, subtly link their narratives of temporary traumatic displacement on foreign battlefields with the historical ur-trauma of diasporic dislocation. In these novels, the wounds that the Middle Passage and slavery inflicted on black diasporic bodies and psyches metaphorically bleed into, and coalesce with, traumas and post-traumatic conditions resulting from black participation in modern warfare—participation that both Morrison and Phillips depict in terms of young black men being sent abroad to fight destructive and traumatizing wars that are not theirs to fight. The literal and metaphorical connections that Morrison and Phillips forge between war and diaspora in various ways call attention to the greed and large-scale violence that have all too often accompanied the Western project of modernity.

The Rank and File of the Colonial Army in Nigeria, 1914–18

1977 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Barrett
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
South African ◽  
Relative Size ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
World War ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Administrative Control ◽  
Local Impact

In the first full-scale fighting between white forces on African territory, the Boer War, Africans had been cast by the opponents in the rôle of an animated geographical background.3. When, however, the European struggle of 1914–18 was projected onto the continent, Africans were enrolled by both sides into the dramatis personae of the conflict. World War I resulted in a European mobilisation of African manpower on a scale unknown until that time,4 with the possible exception of the South African mines. The Nigerian Administration alone recruited 13,980 troops,5 and supplied approximately 10,000 carriers,6 so that the British armed forces in this period even outpaced the tin mines and railways as an employer of Nigerian manpower.7 Indeed, given the relative size of the population and degree of British administrative control it is arguable that the effect of this scale of recruitment was equivalent in its local impact to the later military mobilisation of 10,000 Nigerians during World War 11.8

scholarly journals TRANSFORMATION OF THE JAPANESE MEMORY POLITIC IN THE II HALF OF XX-XXI CENTURIES IN THE CONTEXTS OF PAN-ASIAN AMBITIONS

Skhid ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 27-32
Author(s):  
OLEKSANDRA BIBIK
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
Japanese History ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Strategies ◽  
The One ◽  
Further Development

The article is devoted to the analyses of the role of Pan-Asianism in the formation of the Japanese policy of memory in the period after World War II. Since the Meiji period, Japan has had a dual relationship with Asia: on the one hand, as a region of high spirituality and culture, on the other, as a region lagging behind the West or Europe in terms of economic, political and technological development. In the 1950s, when Japan was experiencing a period of economic crisis caused by the defeat of the war, the occupation regime, and the formation of military memory, we see a trend of Japanese intellectuals classifying Japan as "Asia". If during World War I Pan-Asian ideology was used to correct imperial ideology and colonialism, modern Pan-Asian concepts tend to create a union of Southeast Asian countries for support and mutual development. The further development of these sentiments depends on the implementation of existing ASEAN projects and the specifics of the adopted political and economic strategies of the Asian Commonwealth. The articles provide the first comprehensive analysis of the constitutional documents, editions and speeches of Japanese politicians, which show the transformations of Japanese memory politic. The main terms of development of this policy, which consist in patient orientation and gradual formation of new Asianism, are separated. Discussions around Yasukuni-jinja and Japanese history textbooks as examples of these trends in Japanese politics are analyzed. Provided that Japan's pacifist position is enshrined in the constitution, there are conservative and nationalist views on the Japanese war in Asia. As part of Japan's policy of remembrance, Pan-Asianism fosters an ambivalent attitude toward Japanese expansion in Asia. Subject to Japan's official admission of guilt to neighbouring countries, condemnation of expansionism and colonialism, and the transition to pacifism, there are conservative and nationalist views on the Japanese war in Asia. Within the conservative position, Japanese guilt is questioned and the need to recognize the heroic participants in the war is proclaimed, the "Great East Asian War" is interpreted as a war of self-defence, or the correctness and truth of Pan-Asian ideals of Taisho and Showa Japan are recognized.

scholarly journals Effects of Chemical Weapons on Cancer Development in Human

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belal A. Muhammad
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Cancer Development ◽  
Chemical Weapons ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
World War ◽  
Carcinogenic Effects ◽  
Low Probability ◽  
Scale Usage

Although use of chemical weapons has low probability, it can cause a large scale casualties among exposed people if it is used. These kind of weapons have been used by human being since ancient history. However, the first large scale usage started with World War I followed by World War II. Several regulations and guidelines have been set by different organizations such as North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to limit the usage of these weapons. However, till the present time the world is not free from the risk of these weapons on human life.While the effects of chemical weapons on certain human systems including respiratory and immune systems as well as the dermatological complications have been extensively studied, the relation between chemical weapons and cancer development has not been fully understood. This review addresses the definition and usage of chemical weapons in addition to the types of chemical agents used in their production. Evidences about the chemical weapons and cancer development have also been thoroughly discussed. In summary, it appears that data regarding carcinogenicity of chemical weapons in human are both limited and contradictory. Accordingly, any claim about the carcinogenic effects of these kind of weapons in the exposed victims need to be properly validated.

The Role of Technology

2020 ◽  
pp. 54-72
Author(s):  
David Barno ◽  
Nora Bensahel
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Effective Communication ◽  
World War ◽  
Institutional Level ◽  
Us Army ◽  
Acquisition Processes

This chapter explores the role of technology in military adaptation, and the markedly different challenges of technological adaptability at the tactical and institutional levels. At the tactical level, technological adaptability requires leaders and soldiers to approach problems with creativity, manufacture solutions on the battlefield, and disseminate solutions rapidly across the force. At the institutional level, technological adaptability requires effective communication with soldiers on the battlefield, and overcoming bureaucratic hurdles within established acquisition processes. The chapter includes case studies of French tank development during World War I and US Army tank development and battlefield modifications during World War II in Europe.

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