Empires of Antiquities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Billie Melman
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
World War ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Mandate System ◽  
First World

Empires of Antiquities is a history of the rediscovery of the imperial civilizations of the ancient Near East in a modern imperial order that evolved between the outbreak of the First World War and the decolonization of the British Empire in the 1950s. It explores the ways in which near eastern antiquity was redefined and experienced, becoming the subject of imperial regulation, modes of enquiry, and international and national politics. A series of globally publicized spectacular archaeological discoveries in Iraq, Egypt, and Palestine, which the book follows, made antiquity material visible and accessible as never before. The book demonstrates that the new definition and uses of antiquity and their relations to modernity were inseparable from the emergence of the post-war international imperial order, transnational collaboration and crises, the aspirations of national groups, and collisions between them and the British mandatories. It uniquely combines a history of the internationalization of archaeology and the rise of a new “regime of antiquities” under the oversight of the League of Nations and its institutions, a history of British attitudes to, and passion for, near eastern antiquity and on-the-ground colonial policies and mechanisms, as well as nationalist claims on the past. It points to the centrality of the new mandate system, particularly mandates classified A in Mesopotamia/Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan, formerly governed by the Ottoman Empire, and of Egypt, in the new archaeological regime. Drawing on an unusually wide range of materials collected in archives in six countries, as well as on material and visual evidence, the book weaves together imperial, international, and national histories, and the history of archaeological discovery which it connects to imperial modernity.

Historical and Global Perspectives

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-49
Author(s):  
Stefan Manz ◽  
Panikos Panayi
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Global Perspectives ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
First World

This chapter places the incarceration of Germans in the British Empire during the First World War into global and historical context. It looks back to the birth of the practice of internment in imperial wars involving Britain, the USA, and Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It traces the path to the use of British incarceration during the First World War and demonstrates how this conflict acted as a key turning point in the history of civilian confinement, making it normal wartime practice. Civilian incarceration continued in the post-war period, especially in the fall-out from the Second World War and the collapsing colonial empires, while by the twenty-first century camps have become a weapon against refugees. The chapter demonstrates how the British Empire globalized and normalized civilian incarceration during the Great War and therefore argues that it played a key role in the normalization of this process.

The Practice of Socialist Internationalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Talbot Imlay
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
World War ◽  
National Politics ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Issues ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Post War ◽  
First World

The Practice of Socialist Internationalism examines the efforts of British, French, and German socialist parties to cooperate with one another on concrete international issues. Drawing on archival research in twelve countries, it spans the years from the First World War to the early 1960s, paying particular attention to the two post-war periods (1918 to the late 1920s and 1945 to the mid-1950s), during which national and international politics were recast. During these years, European socialists operated simultaneously in national and transnational spaces, and the book explores the ways in which these two spaces overlapped. In addition to highlighting a neglected dimension of twentieth-century European socialism, it provides novel perspectives on two related subjects: the history of internationalism and the history of international politics. Scholars of internationalism focus either on state or on non-state actors (INGOs), but socialist parties constituted something of a hybrid: rooted more firmly in national politics than most INGOs, they were also more self-consciously internationalist than state actors. Just as importantly, European socialists sought to forge a new practice of international relations, one that would emerge from their collective efforts to work out ‘socialist’ approaches to pressing issues of European politics such as post-war reconstruction, European integration, and decolonization. While the extent of their success is debatable, the efforts of European socialists to identify distinct approaches act as a spotlight, illuminating obscure yet vital aspects of an issue.

scholarly journals ‘Weeping tears of blood’: exploring Italian soldiers' emotions in the First World War

Modern Italy ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanda Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
War Experience ◽  
First World

Emotion plays a vital role in any rounded history of warfare, both as an element in morale and as component in understanding the soldier's experience. Theories on the functioning of emotions vary, but an exploration of Italian soldiers' emotions during the First World War highlights both cognitive and cultural elements in the ways emotions were experienced and expressed. Although Italian stereotypes of passivity and resignation dominated contemporary discourse concerning the feelings and reactions of peasant conscripts, letters reveal that Italian soldiers vividly expressed a wide range of intense emotions. Focusing on fear, horror and grief as recurrent themes, this article finds that these emotions were processed and expressed in ways which show similarities to the combatants of other nations but which also display distinctly Italian features. The language and imagery commonly deployed offer insights into the ways in which Italian socio-cultural norms shaped expressions of personal war experience. In letters that drew on both religious imagery and the traditional peasant concerns of land, terrain and basic survival, soldiers expressed their fears of death, isolation, suffering and killing in surprisingly vigorous terms.

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.

scholarly journals groot Nederlander

2020 ◽  
pp. 131-148
Author(s):  
Maarten J. Aalders
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
First World War ◽  
Personal History ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
First World

This article dives into a part of the life and personal history of J.P.Ph. Clinge Fledderus (1870-1946), consul of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, who played a crucial role in organizing relief for Hungary in the Interbellum and the organization of the possibilities for Hungarian children to recover from the effects of post-war famine and malaise after the First World War by giving them a holiday of some months in the Netherlands. A commemorative marble plaque for him still can be found on the front of the building at the Üllői út 4 in Budapest.

War and Economic Development: Settlers in Kenya, 1914–1918

1986 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Overto
Keyword(s):  
Economic Decline ◽  
World War ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
European Settlement ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Plantation Crops ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
First World

The First World War is perhaps the least studied period in the historiography of European settlement in Kenya. This paper reverses the previously held view of settler economic decline and disarray. Despite apparent problems of shipping shortages, closure of markets and loss of white manpower, settler products were grown and exported in ever-increasing quantities during the war years. The grain and livestock industries were stimulated by new wartime markets whilst plantation crops, chiefly sisal and coffee, continued the impetus of pre-war activity and substantial new planting took place. Prosperity and development, not reversal and decline, were the keynotes of the settler wartime economy. With this new evidence and understanding, it is possible to re-interpret much of the early history of colonial Kenya. The fundamental vulnerability and stuttering growth of white settlement before 1914 gave way to the gradual assertion of the settler economy over the African, with state support, during and after the war. But this assertion and growth was founded upon abnormal economic circumstances: on cheap and available labour, insatiable markets and a pre-occupied colonial state. The post-war crises of labour and market contraction, and the pre-eminence of the settler sector after 1920, therefore must be traced to this accelerated and artificial growth in the settler economy in 1914–18.

scholarly journals The centenary of World War I in Serbia: A war of monuments

2020 ◽  
pp. 127-149
Author(s):  
Alexey Y. Timofeev
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Republika Srpska ◽  
Memorial Sites ◽  
The Military ◽  
First World

The anniversary of the First World War in Serbia has become an oc-casion for exacerbating public discussion and drawing attention to the rise of revisionism in NATO countries. Fear of a revision of the history of World War I infl uenced Serbian society and elites on the eve of the centenary. The concerned Serb elites responded with a wide range of events organized in Serbia and Republika Srpska. Within the framework of the commemorative events dedicated to the anniversary, monuments, installed and restored by the Serbian authorities and their foreign part-ners, have received special signifi cance. These were monuments to the Serbian patriot G. Princip, to the famous Iron Regiment, to the woman volunteer-soldier Milunka Savic. They are traditional fi gures of the Ser-bian memory of the First World War. At the same time, Serbian authori-ties did not succeed in their attempt to perpetuate in monumental forms the head of the Serbian military intelligence D. Dimitrievic-Apis, the leader of the Serbian nationalist organization Black Hand, which patron-ized the Mlada Bosna organization that prepared the assassination on Franz Ferdinand. The Russian-Serbian monuments of the First World War in Serbia presenting Nicholas II and the military brotherhood of the two peoples were of special signifi cance. All new monuments have become memorial sites and at the same time attractive points for vari-ous political forces expressing their sympathies and antipathies through symbolic gestures towards them.

Ideas of Nationhood

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Holbrook
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Democratic Rights ◽  
Nationalist Sentiment ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
First World

This chapter describes the principal ideas of nationhood that have operated during the European history of Australia. It describes how late Enlightenment beliefs in liberty and progress and their expression in revolutionary France and North America informed campaigns for democratic rights in Australia. While some activists were influenced by republican sentiment, most sought to claim what they believed to be their British birthright. The independent nationalism of the late nineteenth century, with its secular and socialist inflections, dissipated as geopolitical uncertainty drove Australians more deeply into the arms of the British Empire. Federation was driven by a progressive and idealistic nationalism, less radical than the late-nineteenth century version, which was soon snuffed out by the geopolitical ructions that resulted in the First World War. Contemporary Australians are more likely to source their nationalist sentiment from the Anzac mythology than from the literal moment at which the nation was created, leaving Australian ideas of nationhood curiously detached from the civic apparatus of the nation state.

Imperialism in Decline? Tendencies in British Imperial policy between the wars

1980 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 657-679 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Darwin
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Separate Identity ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

The inter-war years are a nomansland in the history of British decolonization. Conventional as it is to see the first World War as a great watershed in British imperial history, separating the era of strength and success from the age of decline and dissolution, it remains difficult to show conclusively that the disintegration of the imperial system had become inevitable before the second World War. Yet historians have felt instinctively that after 1918 much of the crude self-confidence had drained out of British imperialism. The age when Curzon could proclaim heroically that ‘efficiency of administration is in my view a synonym for the contentment of the governed’; when Cromer could lecture the khedive of Egypt like a schoolboy; or when Milner could set out to demolish everything that preserved a separate identity to the Afrikaners, appears in striking contrast to the post-war era when statesmen spoke the language of trusts and mandates, genuflected before the image of self-determination and claimed that self-government was the ultimate purpose of colonial rule. But for all the piety of its new principles, post-war imperial policy seemed strangely reluctant to liberate Britain's dependencies or hold out firm promises of independence; and the imperial government periodically repressed its recalcitrant subjects with a vigour and efficiency that would have impressed Lord Kitchener.

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