The Ethics of War and War-Making: A Philosophical Interrogation of African Involvement in the World Wars and Their Exclusion From War Monuments and Memorials

2021 ◽  
pp. 002190962110549
Author(s):  
Chidozie J. Chukwuokolo
Keyword(s):  
Racial Identity ◽  
World War ◽  
Common Humanity ◽  
The World ◽  
Ethics Of War ◽  
Analytical Assessment ◽  
Global Peace ◽  
Monuments And Memorials ◽  
Mind Set ◽  
Global War

Wars are cataclysmic events that inflict horrendous damage on people and society. In the case of the two World Wars whose magnitudes were global, and manners of prosecution total, this assertion pales in logic. The dangers that a future global war could pose for humanity given the tremendous leaps forward in the science and technology of warfare and weapons since the last World War are tremendous. This paper aims to use the examination of the ethics of war and warfare as backdrop on the analytical assessment of the implications of the exclusion of Africans from both the memorial and monuments that honor soldiers and their service in the two World Wars, even though their service and sundry contributions are salient and tremendous. The paper calls up the issue of racial identity in both Wars in puzzles: Do African soldiers in the Wars share a common humanity with their White counterparts? If they do, another puzzle is the following: Why then is their service still being commodified, to the extent of exclusion in memorials and monuments to soldiers that served and died in both Wars? The damning extrapolation from these puzzles is that there is still the belief albeit erroneous, in the establishment circles that regardless of the facts of history about the Wars, Africans are still viewed as lacking in contributions to the resolution of the threats that the World Wars represented to global peace. To reposition that under laying mind-set, the paper recommends the inclusion of African values of complementarity and inclusiveness in the quest for lasting global peace and the prevention of future Wars.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Vanda Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Global War ◽  
First World

Italy’s First World War is usually remembered and studied as a national conflict from 1915 to 1918. Instead, this book proposes an imperial framework to examine Italian aims, policies, and actions from 1911 to 1923. In particular, it traces four key strands through this period: Italy’s imperial and colonial aims in its wars against the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary; combat operations within its colonies; the global war effort including Italian emigrants around the world; and the Italian racial and colonial mentalities which underpinned these war efforts. After summarizing the key historiographical debates, particularly over liberal and fascist foreign policy and imperialism, this chapter outlines the structure and organization of the book.

The Russo-Japanese War and the German Wars for Hegemony, 1890–1939

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale C. Copeland
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Determinants ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Global War ◽  
First World

This chapter explores the origins of three of the four most important wars of the first half of the twentieth century: the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, World War I, and World War II in Europe. These three wars had more than just a chronological connection to one another. The Russo-Japanese War helped solidify the diplomatic and economic alignments of the great powers in the decade before 1914, while the disaster of the First World War clearly set the stage for the rise of Nazism and the outbreak of yet another global war a generation later. This chapter focuses on providing a fairly comprehensive account of the causes of the Russo-Japanese War, confining the discussion of the world wars to the economic determinants of those conflicts.

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...

scholarly journals Historical Memory and Practices of Monumental Commemoration of World War I in Australia (Part 1)

2020 ◽  
pp. 208-224
Author(s):  
O. Zernetska ◽  
O. Myronchuk
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Visual Memory ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
World War ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
Australian State ◽  
The World ◽  
Post War ◽  
Monuments And Memorials

The authors’ research attention is focused on the specifics of the Australian memorial practices dedicated to the World War I. The statement is substantiated that in the Australian context memorials and military monuments formed a special post-war and post-traumatic part of the visual memory of the first Australian global military conflict. The features of the Australian memorial concept are clarified, the social function of the monuments and their important role in the psychological overcoming of the trauma and bitter losses experienced are noted. The multifaceted aspects of visualization of the monumental memory of the World War I in Australia are analyzed. Monuments and memorials are an important part of Australia’s visual heritage. It is concluded that each Australian State has developed its own concept of memory, embodied in various types and nature of monuments. The main ones are analyzed in detail: Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne (1928–1934); Australian War Memorial in Canberra (1941); Sydney Cenotaph (1927-1929) and Anzac Memorial in Sydney (1934); Desert Mounted Corps Memorial in Western Australia (1932); Victoria Memorials: Avenue of Honour and Victory Arch in Ballarat (1917-1919), Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial (2004), Great Ocean Road – the longest nationwide memorial (1919-1932); Hobart War Memorial in the Australian State of Tasmania (1925), as well as Villers-Bretonneux Australian National Memorial in France dedicated to French-Australian cooperation during the World War I (1938). The authors demonstrate an inseparable connection between the commemorative practices of Australia and the politics of national identity, explore the trends in the creation and development of memorial practices. It is noted that the overwhelming majority of memorial sites are based on the clearly expressed function of a place of memory, a place of mourning and commemoration. It was found that the representation of the memorial policy of the memory of Australia in the first post-war years was implemented at the beginning at the local level and was partially influenced by British memorial practices, transforming over time into a nationwide cultural resource.

Olwid, Or the Beginnings of Polish Postcolonialism

2016 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 446-460
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Szewczyk-Haake
Keyword(s):  
Human Values ◽  
World War ◽  
Common Humanity ◽  
German Expressionism ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Postcolonial Criticism ◽  
The World ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
The Difference ◽  
New Interpretation

Summary This article presents a postcolonial interpretation of Olwid’s (Witold Hulewicz’s) book of poems Flame in Hand (Płomień w garści, 1921). His poetic ‘fragments’ describing the experience of the World War are remarkably similar to the poetry of German expressionism. Whereas previous critics treated this similarity as a proof of the derivative, unoriginal nature of the Poznań expressionism, this article claims that Olwid’s was a deliberate attempt to start a rapprochement between the Polish and the German culture. After decades of colonial dependence the breakthrough of 1918 the two cultures had a chance to resume a dialogue of equals with the expressionist poetics as a new footing. Hulewicz tones down the difference between the hegemon and the victim in the spirit of the expressionistic search for common humanity. To that end he also develops a new interpretation of the Polish Romantic tradition. His endeavours mark him out as a precursor of postcolonial criticism, and more specifically that type of postcolonialism which uses the emancipatory strategy as a means to the creation of a ‘truly free man’. That high goal is pursued not because of a commitment to cosmopolitanism but in the name of absolute human values.

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.

scholarly journals Historical Memory and Practices of Monumental Commemoration of World War I in Australia (Part 2)

2021 ◽  
pp. 203-221
Author(s):  
O. Zernetska ◽  
O. Myronchuk
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Visual Memory ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
World War ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
Australian State ◽  
The World ◽  
Post War ◽  
Monuments And Memorials

The authors’ research attention is focused on the specifics of the Australian memorial practices dedicated to the World War I. The statement is substantiated that in the Australian context memorials and military monuments formed a special post-war and post-traumatic part of the visual memory of the first Australian global military conflict. The features of the Australian memorial concept are clarified, the social function of the monuments and their important role in the psychological overcoming of the trauma and bitter losses experienced are noted. The multifaceted aspects of visualization of the monumental memory of the World War I in Australia are analyzed. Monuments and memorials are an important part of Australia’s visual heritage. It is concluded that each Australian State has developed its own concept of memory, embodied in various types and nature of monuments. The main ones are analyzed in detail: Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne (1928–1934); Australian War Memorial in Canberra (1941); Sydney Cenotaph (1927-1929) and Anzac Memorial in Sydney (1934); Desert Mounted Corps Memorial in Western Australia (1932); Victoria Memorials: Avenue of Honour and Victory Arch in Ballarat (1917-1919), Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial (2004), Great Ocean Road – the longest nationwide memorial (1919-1932); Hobart War Memorial in the Australian State of Tasmania (1925), as well as Villers-Bretonneux Australian National Memorial in France dedicated to French-Australian cooperation during the World War I (1938). The authors demonstrate an inseparable connection between the commemorative practices of Australia and the politics of national identity, explore the trends in the creation and development of memorial practices. It is noted that the overwhelming majority of memorial sites are based on the clearly expressed function of a place of memory, a place of mourning and commemoration. It was found that the representation of the memorial policy of the memory of Australia in the first post-war years was implemented at the beginning at the local level and was partially influenced by British memorial practices, transforming over time into a nationwide cultural resource.

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