Conservative women and the Primrose League’s struggle for survival, 1914–32

Author(s):  
Matthew C. Hendley

This chapter examines the adaption of the Primrose League, an extra-parliamentary organization allied to the Conservative Party and having a large female membership, to the aftermath of the First World War. Founded in 1883, the Primrose League was an important vehicle for women’s participation in politics before they held the national franchise. While most historians have downplayed the Primrose League’s accomplishments after 1914, this chapter argues that the League re-made itself for its female members between 1914-1932. This chapter will show how the Primrose League deftly survived the deluge of the First World War by focusing on wartime hospitality and philanthropy and rebranding itself as a political educator of citizens newly enfranchised by the 1918 Representation of the People Act (especially women). It will also show how the League continued to be relevant in the postwar period through a combination of anti-socialism and a consumerist version of popular imperialism. In these ways, the Primrose League did not become redundant but was able to remain a useful political weapon for the Conservative Party and an important part of Conservative political culture throughout the 1920s.

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 564-583
Author(s):  
Allison Schmidt

AbstractThis article investigates interwar people-smuggling networks, based in Germany and Czechoslovakia, that transported undocumented emigrants across borders from east-central Europe to northern Europe, where the travelers planned to sail to the United States. Many of the people involved in such networks in the Saxon-Bohemian borderlands had themselves been immigrants from Galicia. They had left a homeland decimated by the First World War and subsequent violence and entered societies with limited avenues to earn a living. The “othering” of these Galician immigrants became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as those on the margins of society then sought illegal ways to supplement their income. This article concludes that the poor economic conditions and threat of ongoing violence that spurred migrant clients to seek undocumented passage had driven their smugglers, who also faced social marginalization, to emigration and the business of migrant smuggling.


2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-41
Author(s):  
Gülsüm Polat

This article compares and contrasts state-society relations during wartime, first under the Ottoman government during the First World War and, secondly, under the Ankara government during the National War of Liberation, and concludes that while the Ottoman government did attempt to address the great hardships faced by the population in this period, the Ankara government placed more emphasis both on the importance of the people, the halk, and on the development of a social state.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-182
Author(s):  
Rashid A. Nadirov ◽  

This article addresses the problem of socio-economic status of the Austro-Hungarian capital Vienna in the second period of the First World War - 1916-1918. Much attention is paid to the consequences of the war: the food crisis, the deficit, the rise in prices for basic necessities, speculation, protests, etc. It shows the transformation of the mood of the Viennese society in the conditions of the growing economic crisis. The food issue directly affected the quality of life of the residents of the capital, who were in difficult wartime conditions, and largely influenced their attitude to the current government. In this study, the task was to analyze the relationship between the government and the people and to find out why the people of Vienna, who had initially been patriotic and united around the monarchy, had joined the opposition by 1916. The author concludes that the food crisis, against the backdrop of the inaction of the government, which has used only the practice of prohibitions and restrictions on the civilian population, has become a key factor in exacerbating protests and leading to the overthrow of the political regime and the collapse of the monarchy.


1976 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-295
Author(s):  
John D. Fair

The women's suffrage movement in Great Britain has suffered from the misconception that it was through the urgings, exertions, and sacrifices of women exclusively prior to 1918 that the vote was finally achieved. Such writers as the Pankhursts and Millicent Garrett Fawcett, who were also participants in the struggle, have set the tone of historical interpretation by describing their success in such titular terms asMy Own Story,…The Story of How We Won the Vote, andWomen's Victory…, a lead dutifully followed by others who have written since the passage of the Reform Bill. Almost without exception these accounts, which include Roger Fulford'sVotes For Women, stress the more exciting prewar aspects of the story, thereby conveying the mistaken impression that the conferral of the suffrage was the natural consequence of feminist agitation. Those more enlightened authors who recognize the adverse effect which the militant suffragists had on their own cause and the absence of any kind of solicitation during the war have subscribed to the equally misleading explanation that it was women's participation in the war which won the vote. Such is the perspective gained from readingMonstrous Regimentby David Mitchell. A close examination of the politics of the reform question, an approach heretofore eschewed by nearly every writer of the period, reveals that the extension of the suffrage to women did not “just happen” as a result of the manifold conversions in political and public spheres, for whatever reason. Indeed the question of giving women the vote would never have arisen during the war had Parliament not been confronted with the urgency of granting the vote to soldiers and sailors on active duty.


2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID THACKERAY

ABSTRACTThis article reconsiders the culture of popular Conservatism in Edwardian Britain, when it has often been claimed that the Unionist parties underwent a profound crisis. According to Ewen Green, for example, in the immediate years before the First World War, Conservative leaders failed to offer policies that could unite their party or enable it to develop an effective popular appeal. Consequently, the party appeared to be drifting towards potential disaster and disintegration. Whilst historians are correct to argue that deep divisions emerged within the Unionist ranks, inhibiting their electoral prospects, the vibrancy of rank-and-file Conservatism in Edwardian Britain nevertheless tends to be underestimated. By embracing a variety of populist causes in 1913–14, the Conservative party appeared to have found a way to overcome its electoral malaise. Moreover, by taking important steps to widen their social appeal, the Conservatives laid the foundations for post-war success during these years of supposed ‘crisis’.


2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW SCHEIN

Abstract:This study examines the type and quality of institutions in Palestine and the correlation between the institutions and economic growth in Palestine from 1516 to 1948. Initially in the 16th century, with the Ottoman conquest of the area, institutions in Palestine involved de facto private user-rights. The level of expropriation by elites was low, and this enabled the people to develop the lands that they had acquired the right to cultivate. In the 17th and 18th centuries, with the exception of the Galilee in the middle of the 18th century, institutions became extractive due to tax farming, rapacious governors and Bedouin raids. From the middle of the 19th century until 1948, there was a second reversal back to private property institutions, first slowly until the First World War, and then more rapidly under the British Mandate after the First World War. When there were private property institutions the economy prospered, while when there were extractive institutions, the economy stagnated.


1947 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 170-174
Author(s):  
Karl Keller-Tarnuzzer

Although Switzerland and its population had the good fortune to be spared from the second as from the first world war, it was not possible to continue archaeological research from 1939–1945 on a peace-time footing. The mobilisation of the people for guarding the frontiers, the closing of the foreign markets and the drive for greater production absorbed so many men and women, that cultural pursuits had of necessity to be curtailed. Foremost in the efforts to maintain a certain level of research were the Swiss Prehistoric Society and the Swiss National Museum, but in this work they were assisted by local museums of all grades.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-365
Author(s):  
Tatiana A. Ponomareva

The article deals with the traditions of N.V. Gogol in the prose of S.A. Klychkov. The absence of generalizing works that examine the work of Novokrestyansk writers in the context of the traditions of Russian classics, determines the relevance of the topic. The purpose of the work is to identify and analyze common images and motifs in the prose of Gogol and Klychkov. The task of the research is to find out what caused the creative interchange of these writers. In the works of both writers presented the motive of Russian heroism and Russian force. But in S. Klychkov's novel “Sugar German”, the events of which take place in the First World War, the motive of heroism is transformed into the motive of the death of the Russian people. The iron “German civilization” not only destroys the natural utopia, but also morally cripples the person, makes him the servant of the devil. The image of the “the deceptive city”, which is ruled by the devil, in prose of S.A. Klychkov is projected onto the “Saint Petersburg stories” by N.V. Gogol. In “Sugar German” there are plot rolls with “Nevsky Prospect”. Material for comparison is the theme of the relationship between man and the devil in the works of Gogol and Klychkov. The results of the research show that in S.A. Klychkov's prose there are typological convergences with the works of N.V. Gogol, conditioned by conceptual ideas about the Russian national character, the fate of the people and Russia, as well as a conscious orientation to Gogol's poetics.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-66
Author(s):  
Lattee Wisam

Abstract The paper focuses on the Sadomasochism of the Lebanese novelist, poet and diplomat Tawifq Yusuf Awwad, due to the horrible childhood which has shaped his character. When the First World War broke out he was three years old, and when the terrible famine killed two-thirds of the people of Mount Lebanon in 1916 he witnessed these scenes of death, I attempt to investigate how such scenes affected on his life and depicted in his early writings.


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