Manpower Mobilization and Indian Society

Author(s):  
Kaushik Roy

This chapter analyses the course and consequences of combatant and non-combatant manpower mobilization for the Indian Army during the First World War. The quantum of manpower mobilization by British India has been put in a proper context, by comparing it with other colonies and metropolitan powers. Recruitment of the combatants and the non-combatants is studied within the overall political, social, and military contexts. The pre-combat and in-combat motivations of the recruits have also been taken into consideration. This chapter is a fusion of both social history (which communities were recruited and why) and organizational aspects (changing mechanisms of military recruitment). At times, this chapter also takes on the colour of an exercise in the history of ideas, as the ideological roots of British recruitment policy are analysed.

Author(s):  
Christopher Houston

Abstract: Despite the ceaseless efforts of what its supporters name the “Atatürk Cumhuriyeti” (Atatürk Republic), Kemalism is seen by many as a discredited ideology and an oppressive political practice. This chapter explores the social history of Kemalism since 1923 and the background to its now decades-long crisis of legitimacy. It compares the orthodox narrative concerning the Kemalist project with its various deconstructive accounts, many of which zero in on the years after the First World War and the 1920s and 1930s as foundational in present-day conflicts. These orthodox and heterodox histories, allied to the interests of different groups, do politics by another means. The chapter then traces how the power struggle over Kemalism’s futures is developing. Rather than pontificate about what the state or civil society should do, it concludes by drawing attention to emerging lineaments of change in existing civil society and social conditions.


Rusin ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 99-114
Author(s):  
A.V. Sushko ◽  
◽  
D.I. Petin ◽  

The article examines an understudied aspect of religious life in Omsk during the First World War, associated with mass conversion to the Orthodoxy of Rusin prisoners of war – former soldiers and officers of the Austro-Hungarian army. The research is based on the materials from the journal Omskie Eparkhialnye Vedomosti and the registration records of the birth books of Omsk Orthodox churches for 1915–1917. The combination of the anthropological approach with the problem-chronological and historicalcomparative methods allowed a thorough investigation of the phenomenon of mass conversion of Rusin prisoners of war to Orthodoxy, linking it with the specific historical situation and the personalities of church hierarchs who served in Siberia. The authors argue that the “Omsk phenomenon” of Rusins’ joining Orthodoxy was conditioned by the ascetic activity of the missionaries from the Omsk and Pavlodar dioceses, lead by Bishop Sylvester (Olshevsky). However, it should be emphasized that the dynamic development of this process was ensured by the official ideology based on Orthodox values, which dominated in the Russian Empire. The ideological factor of the conversion to Orthodoxy was decisive for the Rusins, who were attracted by the Orthodox empire, the “state of the Russian people”. The fall of the monarchy as a result of the Russian Revolution changed the paradigm of the country’s development and immediately put an end to the massive conversions of Rusins to Orthodoxy in Omsk. The article may be of interest to researchers of the history of Rusins, military and social history, as well as national and religious politics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-472
Author(s):  
Nicole A. N. M. Van Os

Archival sources, but also self-narratives, newspapers, and periodicals, have been im- portant sources for political and military historians of the last two decennia of the Ot- toman Empire in general and the First World War in particular. In recent years, an increasing number of historians have become interested in more than the political and military history of the period. The field has been broadened to include social history. Conventional sources have been reread to get a better understanding of the effects of the War on the social domains and everyday life. Self-narratives have proven to be in- valuable sources for social historians working on the period. These self-narratives were not only produced by the men in charge, but by people from all walks of life: soldiers and civilians, men and women noted down their wartime experiences in their diaries or letters home and in memoirs and autobiographies. In most cases, the self-narratives used by historians were, however, those written by men in which women were objecti- fied. In this paper, the self-narratives of women living in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War are preliminarily explored to give them a voice and turn them into subjects rather than objects.


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