scholarly journals To be truly British we must be anti-German New Zealand, Enemy Aliens and the Great War experience, 1914-1919

Author(s):  
Steven Loveridge

'To be truly British we must be Anti-German' was a statement voiced by Mrs Ida Boeufve to the Women's Anti-German League at a 1916 rally in Napier.  The attitudes and social forces backing that declaration form the subject of Andrew Francis's recent book on the treatment of New Zealand's German-speaking settlers during the First World War.  Adapted from his PhD research, 'To Be Truly British We Must Be Anti-German' approaches the period not simply to catalogue wartime anti-Germanism in its own right, but to consider the extent to which larger developments - immigration patterns, conceptions of collective identity and citizenship - set the tone for wartime reaction.  This effort tocontextualize anti-alienism in New Zealand's war effort and larger history is taken one step further by considering the subject within a comparative context.  

2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-388
Author(s):  
Wolfram Dornik

Abstract Due to the permanent shift between mobile and trench warfare as well as conquest and occupation, the soldiers of the First World War in Eastern Europe were brought into more intense relationship to the surrounding space and the local population than on other theatres of war. This article focuses on cultural interpretation of space on the Eastern Front by German-speaking Austro-Hungarian soldiers. Using eleven diaries and unpublished memoirs of subaltern officers, non-commissioned officers and ordinary soldiers, it seeks to analyse the perceptions of cultural space, Kriegslandschaften (Kurt Lewin) and the image of the »East«. It is shown to what extent the specific war experience shaped the cultural images of the soldiers during the war, and which interpretations they offered in their writings.


Author(s):  
Fionnuala Walsh

This chapter examines the participation of Irish women in the war effort during the First World War, exploring the role of war service as an outlet and focus for southern loyalist identity. It analyses the motivations behind women’s war service and the relationship between religion and loyalism, examining for instance the wartime actions of Anglican organisations such as the Mothers’ Union and Girls Friendly Society, together with the partitionist arrangement of war work. The chapter subsequently discusses the post-war experience of southern loyalist women during the War of Independence and Civil War. Drawing upon applications to the Irish Grants Committee, it explores women’s everyday experiences of trauma during the political upheaval and the links between service in the Great War and isolation and intimidation in the war’s aftermath.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 583-609
Author(s):  
John Martin

This paper explores the reasons why artificial or mineral sources of nitrogen, which were more readily available in Britain than in other European countries, were only slowly adopted by farmers in the decades prior to and during the First World War. It considers why nitrogen in the form of sulphate of ammonia, a by-product of coal-gas (town-gas) manufacture, was increasingly exported from Britain for use by German farmers. At the same time Britain was attempting to monopolise foreign supplies of Chilean nitrate, which was not only a valuable source of fertiliser for agriculture but also an essential ingredient of munitions production. The article also investigates the reasons why sulphate of ammonia was not more widely used to raise agricultural production during the First World War, at a time when food shortages posed a major threat to public morale and commitment to the war effort.


2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 276-289
Author(s):  
Luc Vandeweyer

Het wordt in de historiografie van de Vlaamse beweging aanvaard dat Hendrik Conscience door de Brusselse progressieve vereniging ‘De Veldbloem’ in 1872 werd gevraagd om te kandideren voor de parlementaire verkiezingen. Conscience zou dat geweigerd hebben. Dit is uiteraard geen onbetekenend feit in de biografie van de man die ‘zijn volk leerde lezen’.Dit gegeven is terug te voeren op de geschriften van Antoon Jacob (°1889) van na de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Jacob werd beschouwd als een autoriteit inzake Conscience. Maar waar is het bewijs? Hij verwees daarbij naar “uitvoerige correspondentie” maar die is niet te vinden. Het ADVN slaagde erin om de archivalische nalatenschap van de in 1947 gestorven Jacob te verwerven. Daarin bleken heel wat brieven van en aan Conscience te zitten. De briefwisseling met ‘De Veldbloem’ was onderwerp van deze bijdrage. Daarin is geen spoor te vinden van de poging om Conscience op het politieke strijdtoneel te brengen in Brussel. Daarbij moet de vraag gesteld worden hoe Jacob deze archiefstukken verzamelde en wat ermee is gebeurd tijdens zijn turbulente leven en talrijke omzwervingen. Het is best mogelijk dat er een en ander is verloren gegaan. Toch is deze nalatenschap een belangrijke aanwinst voor de studie van de geschiedenis van de Vlaamse beweging en die van Conscience in het bijzonder. ________ The Brussels association ‘De Veldbloem’ seeks contact with Hendrik Conscience. Two recently discovered letters It is an accepted fact in the historiography of the Flemish Movement that the Brussels progressive Association ‘De Veldbloem’ [=the Wildflower] asked Hendrik Conscience in 1872 to be their candidate for the parliamentary elections. It is said that Hendrik Conscience refused the request. This is of course a very significant fact in the biography of the man ‘who taught his people to read.’ This information may be inferred from the writings of Antoon Jacob (°1889) from the period after the First World War. Jacob was regarded as an authority on Conscience. But where is the evidence of this? In his claim, he referred to ‘extensive correspondence’, but that correspondence is not extant. The ADVN managed to acquire the archival legacy of Jacob who died in 1947. It turned out that it included quite a number of letters to and from Conscience. The exchange of letters with ‘De Veldbloem’ was the subject of this contribution. It contains no trace of the attempt to bring Conscience into the political arena in Brussels. It raises the question how Jacob collected these archival documents and what happened to them during his turbulent life and his many peregrinations.  It is certainly possible that some documents have been lost. However, this legacy is still an important acquisition for the study of the history of the Flemish Movement and of Conscience in particular.


Author(s):  
Alison Carrol

In 1918 the end of the First World War triggered the return of Alsace to France after almost fifty years of annexation into the German Empire. Enthusiastic crowds in Paris and Alsace celebrated the homecoming of the so-called lost province, but return proved far less straightforward than anticipated. The region’s German-speaking population demonstrated strong commitment to local cultures and institutions, as well as their own visions of return to France. As a result, the following two decades saw politicians, administrators, industrialists, cultural elites, and others grapple with the question of how to make Alsace French again. The answer did not prove straightforward; differences of opinion emerged both inside and outside the region, and reintegration became a fiercely contested process that remained incomplete when war broke out in 1939. The Return of Alsace to France examines this story. Drawing upon national, regional, and local archives, it follows the difficult process of Alsace’s reintegration into French society, culture, political and economic systems, and legislative and administrative institutions. It connects the microhistory of the region with the macro levels of national policy, international relations, and transnational networks, and with the cross-border flows of ideas, goods, people, and cultural products that shaped daily life in Alsace. Revealing Alsace to be a site of exchange between a range of interest groups with different visions of the region’s future, this book underlines the role of regional populations and cross-border interactions in forging the French Third Republic.


2015 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 27-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radhika Singha

AbstractThis essay adds the story of the Indian Labour Corps (ILC) to the narratives of the various “coloured” units brought in to France to deal with the manpower crisis that had overtaken that theater of the First World War in 1916. The label “coloured” or “native labour” justified inferior care and a harsher work and disciplinary regime than that experienced by white labor. However, official reports and newspaper coverage also expose a dense play of ethnographic comparison between the different colored corps. The notion was that to “work” natives properly, the managerial regimes peculiar to them also had to be imported into the metropolis. The register of comparison was also shaped by specific political and social agendas which gave some colored units more room than others to negotiate acknowledgement of their services. One dimension of the war experience for Indian laborers was their engagement with institutional and ethnic categorizations. The other dimension was the process of being made over into military property and the workers own efforts to reframe the environments, object worlds, and orders of time within which they were positioned. By creating suggestive equivalences between themselves and other military personnel, they sought to lift themselves from the status of coolies to that of participants in a common project of war service. At the same time, they indicated that they had not put their persons at the disposal of the state in exactly the same way as the sepoy.


1967 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith G. Robbins

James Bryce considered that 1914 would be a satisfying year. He had just been created a viscount and, at the age of seventy-six, could look back on a career of distinction in university life, politics and diplomacy. He could continue to write books and indulge in correspondence with his friends. In fact, the books were not written and his correspondence became very practical. The tension in Europe in the summer of 1914 caused many people to ask him for advice on the best course of action. What, in particular, were Liberals to do? Some M.P.s were talking of peace demonstrations to keep Britain out of European war, but Bryce hesitated. On the evening of 31 July, the matter was discussed with J. A. Spender who noted that ‘… Bryce … strongly advised not to join this demonstration. He agreed that violation of Belgium would be casus belli.’ When Belgium was violated, Bryce was committed to the war but his commitment was reluctant, hesitant and with foreboding. The consequences of his decision are the subject of this article.


Author(s):  
Vanda Wilcox

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.


Author(s):  
Kirill V. Vertyaev ◽  

The article develops the stadial formation thesis of the proto-statehood among the Iraqi Kurds. The concept of national identity of the Iraqi Kurds remains the subject of a complex and long-lasting discussion. The main obstacle for the emergence of the Kurdish integral nationalism is still the fact that the Kurds speak different dialects of Kurdish language, and still maintain political and inter-clan conflicts over the distribution of power (not to mention the futility of any attempts to define political boundaries of Iraqi Kurdistan). Ironically, Great Britain faced practically the same contradictions during its occupation of Mesopotamia at the end of the WWI (following the Mudros armistice in October 1918), when British attempts to create an independent Kurdish state failed for a number of reasons, which are discussed in the article. In our opinion, this period was responsible for the formation of proto-statehood in Kurdish area (Kingdom of Kurdistan, for example, obtained classic characteristics of a chiefdom, but at the same time had a vivid anti-colonial, anti-imperialist orientation). The phenomenology of the British government’s political relations with such ‘quasi-states’ presents the subject for this article’s analysis.


2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-406
Author(s):  
Dobrosława Antonów

The paper draws attention to one of the emergency taxes in the history of the Polish Treasury, i.e. a tax on war profits. It was levied under the Decree of 5 February 1919 on the Establishment of a Tax on War Profits. This levy introduced a concept which was developed in Europe and built on the First World War experience. In the reborn Poland, the tax was supposed to have two functions: fiscal — as a source of financing the extraordinary expenditure arising from the war against the Soviets and a social function — as an additional burden on those taxpayers who were able to accumulate wealth and earn substantial profits as a result of the First World War.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document