Displaying marginalised and ‘hidden’ histories at the Imperial War Museum London: The Second World War gallery regeneration project

Using Imperial War Museums’ redeveloped Second World War Galleries as a case study, this provocation discusses the ways in which refocussing outmoded British narratives to a transnational viewpoint and using the interpretive framework of ‘total war’ can help us to deliver new, authoritative and multifaceted narratives where ‘hidden’ histories can be displayed, and scrutinised, in plain sight.     

The American war: Italian culture and Hollywood movies on the Second World War

Abstract

This article deals with the reception of American narratives on the Second World War in Italy, assuming the key role that myths and memories about the conflict played in post-war Europe and the importance of transcultural exchanges in the mass-media age. Such narratives were not imported to Italy by official US propaganda, but were mainly conveyed by Hollywood war movies, which were centred on the ideas of the righteousness of the conflict and of the fight between good and evil. The article focuses on a specific sector of the Italian audience, that of critics and film reviewers, who played a key role in interpreting the films and in fostering their acceptance – or refusal. Through the analysis of cinema magazines and newspapers, the research outlines how the reception of such movies was influenced by multiple elements, the different political and ideological allegiances, the cultural gap between elite and popular periodicals, and the interactions with Italian myths and memories about the war. Finally, the article compares the results of the inquiry with the rare sources about the reception of American narratives among a mass audience, and underlines the importance of a transnational approach to the study of cultural issues in contemporary history.     

Spectres of Pan-Islam: Methodological Nationalism and British Imperial Policy after the First World War

In the aftermath of the First World War, British officials were forced to contend with a threat that seemed to undermine their empire from India to Egypt. The anti-colonial revolts that spread across the world in this moment were caused by many factors from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to far more local concerns. However, many British officials imagined these contemporaneous revolts to be caused by a pan-Islamic conspiracy. The threat of pan-Islam was inflated in the minds of these officials in large part because it fundamentally contradicted their conception of how politics should be ordered on a global scale. This article suggests that the spectre of pan-Islam helped to crystallise a methodological nationalism in imperial policies over Muslim populations. The amorphous spatiality of pan-Islam redoubled a growing commitment to bounded national spaces as a natural unit of political activity. To those officials obsessed with pan-Islam, it was so frightening precisely because it questioned the spatial paradigm through which they understood the world. Other officials saw pan-Islam as a minor nuisance, because they believe that such transnational politics could not possibly survive in a world inherently ordered into contiguous nations. The threat of pan-Islam helped to push both sets of officials into a methodological nationalism, but some saw nationalism as inevitable while others feared that Islam was a compelling threat to a European-dominated inter-national order.     

Marching to the Beat of an Imperial Drum: Contextualising Australia's Military Effort During the First World War

When war erupted in 1914, Britain embarked on its prewar plans of mobilising resources from its vast Empire, and created an imperial coalition which fought within a wider coalition with France, Russia and, later, the United States of America. This article examines the limited role performed by Australian naval and military forces within this wider imperial effort and assesses the extent to which Australian forces relied on British command, technology, and logistic support. It challenges common assumptions about Australia’s wartime performance, including the degree to which Australian forces and commanders contributed to tactical innovation and wider planning and operational thought.