The Coolie's Great War

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radhika Singha
Keyword(s):  
World Wide ◽  
Domestic Service ◽  
Construction Workers ◽  
The Political ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
The World ◽  
Global War ◽  
Complicated Nature

Though largely invisible in histories of World War one, over 550,000 men in the ranks of the Indian Army were followers or non-combatants. From porters and construction workers in the ‘Coolie Corps’, to ‘menial’ servants and those who maintained supply lines and removed the wounded from the battlefield, Radhika Singha draws upon their story to give the sub-continent an integral rather than ‘external’ place in this world –wide conflict. The labor regimes built on the backs of these 'coolies' had long sustained imperial militarism. This was particularly visible in the border infrastructures put in place by combinations of waged work, corvee, and, tributary labor.These work regimes, and the political arrangements which sustained them, would be bent to the demands of global war. This amplified trans-border ambitions and anxieties and pulled war zones closer home. Manpower hunger unsettled the institutional divide between Indian combatants and non-combatants. The ‘higher’ followers benefitted, less so the ‘menial’ followers, whose position recalled the dependency of domestic service and who included in their ranks the ‘untouchables’ consigned to stigmatised work. The book explores the experiences of the Indian Labor Corps in Mesopotamia and France and concludes with an exploration of the prolonged, complicated nature of the ‘end of the war’ for the sub-continent. The Coolie's Great War views the conflict unfolding over the world through the lens of Indian labor, bringing new social, spatial, temporal and sensory dimensions to the narrative.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Kaushik Roy
Keyword(s):  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Real ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global War

Before the onset of global war in 1941, the war that engulfed the world between 1914 and 1918 was known as the World War or Great War. For example, The Real War, 1914–1918 was published by B.H. Liddell Hart in 1930 and expanded as A History of the World War 1914–1918...

Roads and Railway Lines in Serbia after the Balkan Wars

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 175
Author(s):  
Miloš Jagodić
Keyword(s):  
Balkan Peninsula ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
Balkan Wars ◽  
The World

This paper deals with Kingdom of Serbia’s plans on roads and railways construction in the regions annexed 1913, after the Balkan Wars. Plans are presented in detail, as well as achievements until 1915, when the country was occupied by enemy forces in the World War One. It is shown that plans for future roads and railways network were made according to the changed geopolitical conditions in the Balkan Peninsula, created as the consequence of the Balkan Wars 1912-1913. The paper draws mainly on unpublished archival sources of Serbian origin.

Tautai

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia O'Brien
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
British Empire ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
Indigenous Resistance ◽  
World Government ◽  
Pacific History ◽  
The World

This is a biography of Ta’isi O. F. Nelson, the Sāmoan nationalist leader who fought New Zealand, the British Empire and the League of Nations between the world wars. It is a richly layered history that weaves a personal and Pacific history with one that illuminates the global crisis of empire after World War One. Ta’isi’s story weaves Sweden with deep histories of Sāmoa that in the late nineteenth century became deeply inflected with colonial machinations of Germany, Britain, New Zealand and the U. S.. After Sāmoa was made a mandate of the League of Nations in 1921, the workings and aspirations of that newly minted form of world government came to bear on the island nation and Ta’isi and his fellow Sāmoan tested the League’s powers through their relentless non-violent campaign for justice. Ta’isi was Sāmoa’s leading businessman who was blamed for the on-going agitation in Sāmoa; for his trouble he was subjected to two periods of exile, humiliation and a concerted campaign intent on his financial ruin. Using many new sources, this book tells Ta’isi’s untold story, providing fresh and intriguing new aspects to the global story of indigenous resistance in the twentieth century.

Building Power to Change the World

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Muldoon
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
European Politics ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
The World ◽  
First World ◽  
Rosa Luxemburg

The German council movements arose through mass strikes and soldier mutinies towards the end of the First World War. They brought down the German monarchy, founded several short-lived council republics, and dramatically transformed European politics. This book reconstructs how participants in the German council movements struggled for a democratic socialist society. It examines their attempts to democratize politics, the economy, and society through building powerful worker-led organizations and cultivating workers’ political agency. Drawing from the practices of the council movements and the writings of theorists such as Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek, and Karl Kautsky, this book returns to their radical vision of a self-determining society and their political programme of democratization and socialization. It presents a powerful argument for renewed attention to the political theories of this historical period and for their ongoing relevance today.

The Experience of the World War One

1989 ◽  
pp. 134
Author(s):  
Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau ◽  
Jay M. Winter
Keyword(s):  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
The World

The Italian Empire and the Great War

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanda Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Italian Experience ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Global Status ◽  
Global War ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World

The Italian Empire and the Great War brings an imperial and colonial perspective to the Italian experience of the First World War. Italy’s decision for war in 1915 built on its imperial ambitions from the late 19th century onwards and its conquest of Libya in 1911–12. The Italian empire was conceived both in conventional terms as a system of settlement or exploitation colonies under Italian sovereignty, and as an informal global empire of emigrants; both were mobilized in support of the war in 1915–18. The war was designed to bring about ‘a greater Italy’ both literally and metaphorically. In pursuit of global status, Italy endeavoured to fight a global war, sending troops to the Balkans, Russia, and the Middle East, though with limited results. Italy’s newest colony, Libya, was also a theatre of the Italian war effort, as the anti-colonial resistance there linked up with the Ottoman Empire, Germany, and Austria to undermine Italian rule. Italian race theories underpinned this expansionism: the book examines how Italian constructions of whiteness and racial superiority informed a colonial approach to military occupation in Europe as well as the conduct of its campaigns in Africa.

Community Purpose and the Nazi Lesson

Philosophy ◽  
1944 ◽  
Vol 19 (74) ◽  
pp. 195-215
Author(s):  
J. W. Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideology ◽  
World Wide ◽  
The Political ◽  
War Machine ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Contemplating the catastrophic course of the Nazi Revolution we may well find it all too easy to see nothing in the spectacle but the nether darkness made visible; and if we are advised that it is not merely permissible but highly advisable to learn from the enemy, we may be tempted to think that whatever the Nazi war-machine has to teach the strategist and the technician, the political history of Germany in the last decade, and in particular the political ideology that has imposed itself upon the German mind with such apparent thoroughness, can yield only the negative lesson of a warning, by displaying upon the world-wide stage the doomful consequences of wrong principles ruthlessly pushed to their extreme. But it is certainly an error to deny that nothing of more positive value has emerged out of the revolutionary cauldron: and indeed it would be more than strange, where such whole-hearted energies of mind are being enlisted in the evil cause of Nazism, if none of its votaries had ever stumbled for a time into wisdom.

The Realist–Pacifist Summit Meeting of March 1942 and the Political Reorientation of Ecumenical Protestantism in the United States

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hollinger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Summit Meeting ◽  
The World ◽  
Institutional Forces ◽  
First Moment

This chapter analyzes the consolidation in 1942 of the two major, religiously defined institutional forces of the entire period from World War II to the present. The Delaware Conference of March 3–5, 1942, was the first moment at which rival groups within the leadership of ecumenical Protestantism came together and agreed upon an agenda for the postwar world. The chapter addresses the following questions: Just what did the Delaware Conference agree upon and proclaim to the world? Which Protestant leaders were present at the conference and/or helped to bring it about and to endow it with the character of a summit meeting? In what respects did the new political orientation established at the conference affect the destiny of ecumenical Protestantism?

The Political Economy of the Anglosphere: Geography Trumps History

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-119
Author(s):  
John Ravenhill ◽  
Jefferson Huebner
Keyword(s):  
Economic Integration ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Preferential Trade Agreements ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Total Trade ◽  
Trade Patterns ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Second World

Economic integration among Anglosphere economies peaked during the period from 1870 to 1960. Maintenance of Imperial Preferences and the Sterling Area ensured that Britain remained the dominant market for most colonies and Dominions in the early post-Second World War period. Britain’s entry into the EEC, the ending of Commonwealth preferences, and the rapid growth of Asian economies caused the UK’s share in Anglosphere economies’ exports to decline rapidly. Growth in the US market share offset some of this decline until the financial crisis of 2007–8 reversed this trend. The significance of intra-Anglosphere trade has declined substantially – from approximately two-thirds of countries’ total trade in 1913 and in 1947 to just over one-third in 2016. Contemporary trade patterns are shaped more by geography than history. The world economy remains substantially regionalised, especially for manufacturing. Many preferential trade agreements (PTAs) are regional in scope: Anglosphere economies have been prominent participants in these arrangements but their partners are typically neighbouring countries rather than other Anglosphere economies. The EU has been the most active negotiator of PTAs: the challenge for a post-Brexit UK will be to negotiate access to markets equivalent to that currently enjoyed through membership of EU PTAs.

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