"De-humanised females and Amazonians": British wartime fashion and its representation in Home chat, 1914-1918

Popular representations of the fashionably dressed female body between 1914 and 1918 were highly contradictory and, as this essay will show, were sharply delineated in Home Chat, one of a growing number of relatively new women's magazines which addressed the needs of an expanding skilled working-class and lower-middle-class female readership. Aiming to provide women with practical advice about all aspects of their daily lives, from the traditional concerns of fashion and beauty, marriage and children, to the more contentious issue of women's aspirations beyond the home, Home Chat was uniquely placed to reflect shifting gender and class relations.     

护国运动时期梁启超"革命"概念剖析--"告别革命"谈何容易

梁启超在护国运动时期的政论中,不但不承认护国运动是一次革命,反而称袁世凯为“革命”。这一现象生动地反映出改良派在理论上一贯反对革命,而在实践上由于顽固保守派的逼迫又不得不走向革命的痛苦历程,这种自相矛盾的境地迫使梁启超提出一个似是而非的革命概念来自圆其说。通过对这一概念及其历史背景的剖析。可以深刻揭示出在保守势力强大顽固的近代中国,改良的道路实际上寸步难行。当前学界颇为流行的否定革命的思潮中存在着对复杂历史作简单化理解的倾向,坚决反对革命的梁启超尚且发动护国革命,可见告别革命并不容易。     

Infanticide and infant abandonoment in the new South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865-1915

The Civil War and Reconstruction and the South's postbellum industrialization produced economic dislocation on a tremendous scale. One product of that economic upheaval was an increasing problem of infanticides and infant abandonments. This case study of Richmond, Virginia, examines patterns of abandonment and neonaticide as documented in records of the city almshouse and the city coroner. It demonstrates that race shaped the options available to women with problem pregnancies in that African American women had access to fewer social welfare unstitutions such as maternity homes. As a result, unmarried black women kept their out-of-wedlock babies more often than did whites, but they also committed infanticide at higher rates than did whites. Moreover, racial trends in infanticides and infant abandonment suggest that Ricomond's white working class experienced economic advancements at the turn of the twentieth century, while the city's black working class continued to live in depression-like conditions throughout the period.     

Death-Agony and Birth Pangs: Inheritors of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania under German Occupation 1915–1918

ABSTRACT

The Ober-Ost administration instated in 1915 covered a fragment of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania; a territory contested by Germany and Russia, inhabited by a nationally and religiously diverse society, with the Polish-Jewish city of Wilno as its central point. The German policies exploited the national aspirations of both the Lithuanians and the Belarusian leaders to dissolve the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Contrary to the Belarusian leaders focused on short-term benefits, the Lithuanian politicians proved more resourceful in using the seemingly pro-Lithuanian and pro-Belarusian policies towards obtaining their own nation state. The Germans discriminated the Lithuanian Poles in terms of rights to political activity, even when conducted without subsidies from the occupier. The disunity with the local society progressed and benefited the supporters of Polish national policies, however few in Wilno in 1915. The German authorities successfully pushed the Lithuanian Poles, so far seeking consensus with other local communities, towards merging with the post-war Polish state announced by the Act of 5th November 1916. The Germans backed the creation of small, interdependent Lithuanian and Belarusian states. The Lithuanians however issued a second declaration of independence (16.02.1918), thus becoming the only ones to benefit from Germany's military defeat.     

The Forging of the Polish Army, 1918-1919

ABSTRACT

With the regaining of independence by Poland in November 1918 it was essential to create a unified homogenous army, the more so that Poland was faced by conflict from its neighbours at a time when the borders of Poland were by no means formed let alone finalised. There were at least four seperate Polish armies and a plethora of local formations springing up all over the country. From these four formations: the Polish Military Organisation, the Polnische Wermacht, the Greater Poland Army and the Polish “Blue” Army in France. Moreover, the officer and NCO corps came from four distinct traditions. Those of the wartime Legions (Polish tradition) and of the three partitioning powers. All had different military traditions and training. An important factor was also that many of the them had only a rudimentary knowledge of the Polish language having served in garrisons far from the Polish lands. Faced with wars with the Ukrainians for Lwów and the south eastern lands, with the Germans over the Province of Greater Poland, Pomerania and Silesia, with the Czechs over Teschen and above all with Bolshevik russia in the east it was essential that the Polish Army unified as quickly as possible. That this was done within the year and eventually resulted in Poland winning the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1919-1920 and securing its borders and independence was in no small measure a result of the rapid unification and creation of an homogenous Polish Army with a single command structure and organisation. The binding glue was the deep rooted sense of national pride and desire to live and work in a free Poland.     

The Reichswehr, the Republic and the Primacy of Foreign Policy, 1918-1923

This article contends that the relationship between the Reichswehrand the Republic was shaped by the primacy of foreign policybetween 1918 and 1923. In this period the major concern of theofficers was the stabilization of the German Reich, which wouldpreserve Germany as a Machtfaktor in Europe and serve as thebasis for a revisionist and militarized foreign policy. Foreignpolicy matters and aims shaped their attitude to domestic politics.Cooperation with the Republic enabled the officers to achievethe stabilization of the Reich by 1923. They were also ableto introduce important reforms in the military structure ofthe Reich, which showed that cooperation with the Republic couldpay dividends. In terms of the substance of foreign policy theReichswehr followed a pragmatic, unideological approach by developinglinks with the Red Army. By examining the relationship betweenthe Reichswehr and the Republic from the perspective of theprimacy of foreign policy, it is possible to come to a fullerunderstanding of the shifting nature of civil-military affairsin the Weimar Republic.