scholarly journals Matthew's Legs and Thomas's Hand: Watching Downton Abbey as a First World War Historian

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-93
Author(s):  
Jessica Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Psychological Trauma ◽  
First World War ◽  
British Society ◽  
Past Century ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Historical Accuracy ◽  
War Experience ◽  
First World

From its first series in 2010, the ITV television drama Downton Abbey laid claim to representing early twentieth-century British society with great historical accuracy while being lambasted by critics for presenting a sanitised version of modern British social history. This article looks at how the programme was drawn, over the course of its broadcast between 2010 and 2015, into a wider discussion of the representation and commemoration of the First World War and debates about accuracy and authenticity in fictional depictions of the war which date back at least to 1915. Locating the discussion in the historiography of the cultural commemoration of the war in Britain, it will examine three particular military medical storylines – Matthew's paralysis, Thomas's self-mutilation of his hand, and the servants' reactions to Archie's psychological trauma – to examine how the drama reflects both the historic reality of the war's impact and the myths of war experience which have developed within British culture over the past century. In doing so, it will argue that Downton demonstrates both the advantages and drawbacks of invoking historical accuracy and authenticity to locate representations within historic narratives of the First World War in Britain.

scholarly journals ASSISTING MRS TOMMY ATKINS: GENDER, CLASS, PHILANTHROPY, AND THE DOMESTIC IMPACT OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR, 1899–1902

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 745-769 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELIZA RIEDI
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
First World War ◽  
British Society ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
South African War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Experience ◽  
First World ◽  
Domestic Impact

AbstractDespite the well-established historiography examining the South African war's impact upon British society, little attention has been paid to the plight of British soldiers’ families or to the charitable efforts mobilized to maintain them in the absence of adequate state support. This article, focusing on the key charity in the field, the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association (SSFA), examines the SSFA's wartime policies and considers how the Association's actions influenced subsequent state policy-making. It explores the motivations and attitudes of its middle-class, mostly female, volunteers, on whose sustained commitment the work of the SSFA depended. In analysing the sources of the SSFA's funding, it considers how class and regionality shaped public giving to patriotic philanthropy. Finally, it investigates how perceptions of soldiers’ wives and mechanisms for their support in the First World War were affected by the South African war experience. Overall, the article aims both to demonstrate the importance of philanthropic aid to soldiers’ families in understanding the domestic impact of this imperial war, and to trace the longer-term effects on the development of policies towards servicemen's dependants.

The Short Career of the Indian Labour Corps in France, 1917–1919

2015 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 27-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radhika Singha
Keyword(s):  
Military Personnel ◽  
First World War ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
One Dimension ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Status ◽  
War Experience ◽  
Social Agendas ◽  
First World

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.

scholarly journals Podatek od zysków wojennych w polskim systemie danin jako źródło finansowania kosztów wojny polsko-bolszewickiej

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-406
Author(s):  
Dobrosława Antonów
Keyword(s):  
Social Function ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Additional Burden ◽  
History Of ◽  
War Experience ◽  
First World

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.

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 Secret of Efficiency? Social Relations and Patronage in the British Army in the Era of the First World War*

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aimée Fox
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
First World War ◽  
British Army ◽  
Hierarchical Systems ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

Abstract In recent years, the social history of armed forces has done much to reconstruct the experience of soldiering. However, remarkably few studies focus explicitly upon the social and political relations that play a central role in how armies behave. This article aims to understand the British Army in the era of the First World War in terms of its informal and formal organisation, exploring and interrogating the connections and relationships between individuals and the structures within which they operate. Using the concept of patronage as a lens, it will demonstrate how social relationships were able to offer alternatives to purely hierarchical systems of administration. Rather than simple favouritism, for a variety of reasons these processes functioned along meritocratic lines, enabling the Army to adopt pragmatic and innovative solutions to the challenges of the First World War.

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