Colonial Servicemen and their British ‘War Brides’: First World War Marriages in the British Empire

This article uses the phenomenon and failure of war marriages between British women and ‘colonial’ servicemen, mostly from the settler dominions, to explore the gendered, classed and racialised conditions of migration after the First World War. Positioning this migration of British war brides as part of the continued normalisation of settler occupation, the article demonstrates the patriarchal social expectations to which white women were subject. Fears of ‘khaki fever’ were extended to the protection of naïve ‘colonial’ soldiers from the manipulative sexuality of white, particularly working-class, women and girls. At the same time, ‘respectable’ women were prepared for frontier life and protected from the indignities of bigamy and desertion. The emphasis on their role as ‘daughters of Empire’ meant ‘undesirable’ matches and marital failure, as reported by the press, had consequences for the closeness of the imperial family and the maintenance of white superiority. The mediation of mobility in cases of mixed-race marriage indicate a more explicit, and sometimes violent, policing of the sexual independence of women and Black and indigenous men of colour. In doing so, the article makes an important contribution to understandings of the legacies of global mobilisation and colonial encounters during the First World War.     

Women and War in the British Empire

This provocation stimulates reflection on the Eurocentricity of Second World War histories and reflects on how new work can extend the boundaries of the subjects of the war. It argues that women in the British Empire were affected by the war in ways which have, thus far, been under-appreciated.     

The War Munitions Supply Company of Western Australia and the Popular Movement to Manufacture Artillery Ammunition in the British Empire in the First World War

Among the nations that comprised the British Empire, the First World War has generally either been forgotten, as in India, as irrelevant to the achievement of political independence, or remembered, as in Canada, as the catalyst for developing a separate national identity. This article argues that both these historical interpretations ignore the extent to which the First World War was a shared British Empire experience. The article examines the establishment of the War Munitions Supply Company of Western Australia as an example of the popular movement to make artillery ammunition that swept many parts of the British Empire in 1915. The munitions movement provided an outlet for the patriotic surge that occurred in April–May 1915 in reaction to the German use of poison gas and the sinking of the Lusitania. It was also an attempt to overcome wartime economic disruption by creating a new local industry. The practicalities of cost and shipping meant that by 1917 artillery ammunition production was continued only in Britain, Ireland, and Canada, but in 1915 the Western Australian company was part of an Empire-wide movement to make munitions and support the war.     

Controlling Civilian Volunteering: Canada and Australia During the Second World War

Abstract

Uncontrolled and undirected people, in their patriotic exuberance, started to create a host of patriotic organizations. They all needed money and proceeded to try and get it from the public in a variety of ways. The public soon began to exhibit impatience and the Government realised that it had a problem which had to be solved.     

第二次世界大战与澳苏建交

第二次世界大战是澳大利亚外交和防务发展的分水岭。二战前,澳英传统关系以及大英帝国的保护意识使澳大利亚外交一直处于边缘状态,第二次世界大战却改变了这种传统的外交格局。澳苏建交是这一变革过程中的重要事件之一。澳苏关系的正常化既是两国政治家和外交家站在战略的高度去审视双边关系并为之做出不懈努力的结果,又是英苏关系一定程度上改善的体现。澳苏建交反映了国家利益尤其是安全利益始终是国际关系发展的一个主要线索和动力,同时也说明了在战争的特殊背景下国际关系的复杂和微妙。     

The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and the Shaping of National Identities in the Second World War

This article explores the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP), the RAF's major scheme for training airmen during the Second World War. Through this training programme, the dominions of Canada, Australia and New Zealand provided an indispensable contribution to the generation of British air power, a necessary condition for eventual victory. The article first considers the precise ways in which the BCATP extended British air strength, through an analysis of the output of graduates in the UK and the dominions. This is followed by an examination of how the governments of Australia and Canada attempted to ensure the continued national identification of their personnel once these airmen were serving within the RAF, reflecting the increasing political independent-mindedness of the dominions. Although Canada pursued a bolder and more successful policy of ‘Canadianization’, the mixed reception that this initiative received from airmen demonstrated the fact that the importance of national identification to Canadian airmen in Europe varied widely depending on individual experiences; indeed, national political currents were moving ahead of any broad consensus among servicemen.