The First World War and European Integration

The importance of the First World War in European integration history has been understated. Before 1914, intensifying economic integration had not brought corresponding political integration. But once hostilities broke out, Germany pursued indirect economic and military domination over its neighbours and a Central European economic association based on agreements with Austria-Hungary. The drive for the latter had little success, because of Germany's own uncertainties as well as Austria-Hungary's resistance. From 1916 the French government also pursued the goal of border buffer states, together with a permanent inter-Allied economic bloc, but was likewise unsuccessful. Nonetheless, the wartime experience helped to shape later integration initiatives during the inter-war years and even beyond.     

Profiteering in Australia during the First World War

The effect of domestic profiteering on Australia’s war effort and economy is a field still under-represented in historical research. This paper discusses how Australian governments struggled to come to grips with profiteering and public perception of the problem during the First World War. It is also a plea for military historians and others to move beyond the Gallipoli and Anzac perspective that still dominates this field and to look at other issues that were important during the war but which remain under-studied.     

The politics of memory: Commemorating the centenary of the First World War

This symposium examines how the centenary of the First World War has been marked in five countries: Australia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. Given their distinctive national historical experiences and political cultures, the metanarratives of the war in these countries differ; as does the relationship between the state and sub-state actors in memory making. However, in each case the commemorations of the war have been shaped by a negotiation between the state and other agents of memory at the sub-state level. National memory has also been consciously projected into international relations, through carefully orchestrated anniversary ceremonies and performative memorial diplomacy. But, despite these transnational commemorative practices, the centenary of the war remains predominantly framed within local and national imaginings.

这次研讨会议论了一战百年在奥地利、法国、德国、英国、美国这五个国家是如何庆祝的。考虑到各国不同的历史经验以及政治文化,这些国家关于一战的元叙事各不相同,国家与次国家主体关系的记忆也是如此。不过,每个国家的战争纪念,都是国家与其他次国家层面主体协商的结果。通过精心策划的纪念仪式日以及表演性纪念外交,国家记忆被有意识地投射到了国际关系之中。除了这些跨国纪念活动,一战的记忆主要是在地方以及国家的想象框架内形成的。     

The Politics of Provisioning: Feeding South Asian Prisoners During the First World War

During the First World War, the German and British Governments supplied culturally appropriate rations and secured special facilities for food preparation and consumption for South Asian prisoners of war whose loyalty both governments sought. The food provided in POW camps to South Asians serves as an index of the political status of colonial subjects at a moment when the future of European empires was far from certain. The British Government’s approach to feeding its South Asian servicemen held by the enemy thus reveals this population’s place within Britain’s wartime national and imperial imaginary and in its post-war planning.     

The Holy War in Syria: Cemal Pasha and the Ottoman Plan to conquer Egypt in the First World War

This article aims to analyse the importance of the Egyptian campaign to Ottoman policy in the First World War. It seeks to add to our knowledge of the Ottoman war experience by putting the focus on the empire’s preparations for conquering Egypt and by giving priority to understand the aims of the expedition. The expedition itself is placed within the context of the jihad policy adopted at the beginning of the war and which sought to put an end to the Entente’s colonial domination of Muslim countries. The Ottomans’ propaganda initiatives in support of the measures were meant to motivate support among the Syrian population through the idea of holy war.     

Disease,Microbiology, and the Construction of a Colonial Space: Romania and the Central Powers in the First World War

Microbiology, developed in the decades before the First World War, encouraged a particular vision of disease and human social relationships. Some of the consequences of that can be seen in the way in which the Central Powers engaged with Romania during combat operations and during the occupation. Much as with colonial approaches to disease in tropical Africa, parasitology encouraged Germans to focus on bacteria and vectors of disease rather than on social relations or indigenous humans. As a consequence, medical care was segregated: it focused on protecting occupiers, and encouraged Germans to construct Romania and Romanians as colonial.     

德国史学家关于第一次世界大战战争责任问题的争论

在德国史学界,关于第一次世界大战战争责任问题一直是有争议的。20世纪20-30年代,主要针对《凡尔赛和约》的相关宣判,一部分德国史学家编辑出版了大量外交档案,极力为德国开脱责任,从而在国际上引起激烈争论。20世纪50年代末、60年代初,汉堡史学家弗里茨.菲舍尔以其论述德国战争目标的论文,对德法两国一度达成的一致意见提出质问,再次引发激烈争论。这些争论既与国际国内政治局势的变化密切联系,也与参与者的政治态度和民族情感息息相关。时至今日,不同观点依然存在,只是研究重点发生了明显转移,研究方法也出现了较大更新。     

Tangible Patriotism during the First World War: Individuals and the Nation in British Propaganda

This article explores several propaganda campaigns aimed at British civilians during 1917. Through examples from campaigns for War Savings, Food Economy and National Service, it argues that propaganda in this crisis year was as much about identifying small, tangible, contributions that individuals could make to the war effort as about more sensational accounts of enemy wrongdoing. Propagandists targeted all sections of society, offering children and some women new status through war work, promoting attractive working conditions for others, and reminding the wealthy of the social responsibilities that their greater economic freedom carried in wartime. The article suggests that the consensual, voluntarist approaches promoted during 1917 remained an important precursor to possible forms of compulsion.     

Sir Edward Grey,Germany, and the Outbreak of the First World War: A Re-Evaluation

ABSTRACT

Historians have variously condemned British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey for contributing to the escalation of the July Crisis of 1914, and praised him as an heroic advocate of peace. Addressing this conundrum, this article first assesses historiographical debates around the significance of Grey's policy towards Germany in the events that led to the outbreak of the First World War. It then traces Grey's foreign policy vis-à-vis Germany on the one hand, and the Entente on the other. Finally, it provides an innovative analysis of Grey's policy from the vantage point of Berlin, arguing that in July 1914 decisions taken by the governments of other countries escalated the crisis and were taken regardless of Grey's position. The article concludes that current historiography overestimates British agency in July 1914 and that Grey was not as important to the outcome of the crisis as both his critics and his defenders have claimed. His actions could not change the minds of those on the continent who were bent on war.     

Introduction: Marginalised Histories of the Second World War1

This special issue, stemming out of the AHRC-funded Teaching and Learning War Research Network (2017–2020), is published at an important juncture in cultural memory: as the focus of public commemorative events in Britain and the Commonwealth shifts from the First to the Second World War, including the Holocaust. Not only does it showcase exciting and cutting-edge research, but it also aims to stimulate conversation and ‘forward-thinking’ about commemorative cycles over the next two-and-a-half decades (2025–2045). The three research articles and four provocations focus, in different ways, on the question of ‘hidden histories’ in the expectation of a need to ensure that diversity, multi-perspectivity, complexity, and contention remain at the heart of ‘national’ commemorative processes (whether in Britain or elsewhere).     

The Excavation of a World War II Army Camp at Mortonhall,Edinburgh

Abstract

Archive material relating to Mortonhall, Edinburgh, indicates that there was a World War I army camp within the grounds of the estate, which was occupied by the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. However, excavations carried out by CFA Archaeology Ltd during Scottish Water’s Edinburgh Drinking Water Project revealed physical remains which relate to a later World War II army camp. This appears to have been initially occupied by the 16th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry in 1940, who were billeted in tents, with the permanent camp being constructed by private contractors from 1942. Archive material suggests that the camp largely consisted of Nissen huts. This evidence is supported by the limited archaeological excavations which uncovered a number of concrete hut bases of the size pertaining to the standard dimensions of Nissen huts. However, there was also evidence of different architectural styles with a number of the buildings having been constructed from brick and asbestos. Reports that Mortonhall was a POW camp were probably unfounded, but it seems to have functioned as a camp for displaced Eastern Europeans. The exact date of closure is unknown, but the size of the camp was clearly being scaled down by the 1950s.     

Eye in the sky: visual geographies and emotional topographies of First World War airmen

Although the First World War highlighted human vulnerability through the terrors of a mechanised warfare ravaging the male body in new ways, it also fostered moments of intimacy and tenderness that privileged commonality, mutuality, and generosity, and encouraged friendship and comradeship as cornerstones of martial masculinities. This article explores such intimacies through analysis of letters and diaries written by British Royal Flying Corps airmen during combat on the Western Front. Informed by history of emotions approaches, I discuss the ways the sensual geographies of aerial combat and their promise of mastery and expanded vision shaped the emotional topographies of airmen’s combat lives. Following Santanu Das’s scholarship on the claustrophobic haptic geographies of trench warfare, this article addresses the following question: If the claustrophobia of the trenches and the impoverishment of visual experience facilitated certain geographies of senses that shaped male intimacies, what might similar emotional terrains look like for airmen exposed to more expansive visual practices?     

Keeping the Spiritual Home Fires Burning: Religious Belonging in Britain during the First World War

The religious impact of the First World War on the home front in Britain is assessed in terms of churchgoing and church membership and affiliation. Church attendance rose briefly at the start of the war but fell away thereafter in the Protestant tradition, accelerating a pre-existing trend, which was not reversed after 1918. The disruption caused by the war to the everyday life of organized religion probably accounts for the decrease, rather more than loss of faith. Church membership also declined during the war in the Anglican and mainstream Free Churches, albeit not for other denominations and faiths, but it temporarily revived after the war. This was not the case for non-member adherents and Sunday scholars whose reduction was more continuous.     

HMS Falmouth: addressing the significance of a light cruiser lost in the First World War off the coast of Yorkshire

HMS Falmouth is the only known wreck of a Town Class light cruiser, which were ‘arguably the best cruisers of the First World War’ (Lyon, 1977c: 49). This article reports on a project to better understand the significance of the wreck and to raise public awareness of the heritage of the First World War at sea. Although the wreck is heavily degraded it is still of considerable importance, raising methodological questions about the role of multibeam survey and 3D visualization, access to archival material, and the characteristics of archaeology as applied to 20th‐century warships.     

Austria-Hungary,Unrestricted Submarine Warfare,and the United States' Entrance into the First World War

This study shows that Austro-Hungarian policy toward the United States of America was in winter 1917 not primarily dictated by its German ally but by the sober evaluation of its own interests. The separate peace, which was offered by the Wilson administration, was not a realistic foreign-policy option for the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Therefore, this article shows why Austria-Hungary did not accept US peace feelers. On the other hand, it also demonstrates that in the winter of 1917 Washington did not treat Germany and Austria-Hungary as equals, with the latter being in a better position. But the monarchy's acceptance of the German course in the submarine war strengthened the perception of the monarchy as an appendage of the stronger Germany in the United States, and finally caused great damage to its reputation across the Atlantic.     

Blurring the Borders. How the Central Banks of the European Neutrals During the First World War Became Part of the State Machinery: Examining the Case of Norway

Abstract

This article analyses the relationship between the central banks and governments in the neutral countries during the First World War, with focus on the Norwegian development. It examines how independence was challenged, and the framework is a concept of central bank independence, which regards non-lending to the state as vital to the functioning of the central banks. This is a novel approach to the development during the war as the perspective has barely been discussed in the literature in Norway, and also seems to be disregarded in the standard international literature on central bank development. From this perspective the article argues that the Norwegian central bank’s pre-war independence was substantial compared to other central banks. Moreover, the distinct borders between central bank and government also safeguarded Norges Bank’s autonomy longer than in comparable countries after the outbreak of war. However, by the end of the war, Norges Bank had become one of the neutral central banks most interwoven with the state. Based on the historical development in different countries, the article questions the notion of the standard literature that lending to the state in a crisis was a central bank duty.     

Modern witnesses: foreign correspondents, geopolitical vision, and the First World War

The First World War was the first modern, mediated conflict. In this paper I argue that British correspondents on the Western front attempting to accurately witness the war encountered a crisis of representation and visuality. They occupied a particularly unstable position between the many sites and points of view within a cubist landscape of shattered geographies and unstable boundaries. Their writings, though rich in masculinist and nationalistic accounts of heroism, also contain a newer perspective characterized by the failure to fit these older narratives into the inhuman, incomprehensible spaces of modern war.     

Gettysburg and the Great War

Fifty years after the conclusion of the Civil War, the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania faced the challenge of another war. From 1914 to 1917, the townspeople followed events in Europe closely, becoming vehement supporters of the American entry into the war by April 1917. In 1918, the Gettysburg Battlefield became inundated with American soldiers for the second time in its history, as doughboys trained for overseas service on the site of Pickett’s Charge. This paper considers the way the town of Gettysburg reacted to and mobilized for the First World War. It explores the notion of a ‘forgotten’ American war in a place that is perpetually haunted by war memories.