The year 1916 has recently been identified as "a tipping point for the intensification of protests, riots, uprisings and even revolutions." Many of these constituted a challenge to the international pre-war order of empires, and thus collectively represent a global anti-imperial moment, which was the revolutionary counterpart to the later diplomatic attempt to construct a new world order in the so-called Wilsonian moment. Chief among such events was the Easter Rising in Ireland, an occurrence that took on worldwide significance as a challenge to the established order. This is the first collection of specialist studies that aims at interpreting the global significance of the year 1916 in the decline of empires.

War Girls reveals the fascinating story of the British women who volunteered for service in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry during the Great. Examining their experiences on the Western Front with the Belgian, British and French Armies, this book shows how the FANY worked as nurses and ambulance driver-mechanics, inspiring stories of female heroism and solidarity. The FANY created skilled gendered performances against the cultural myths of the time, and in concert with their emerging legend. Coming from privileged backgrounds, they drew upon and subverted traditional arrangements, crafting new and unconventional identities for themselves. The author shares the stories of the FANY - a fascinating, quirky and audacious group of women - and illustrates the ways the Great War subverted existing gender arrangements. It will make fascinating reading for those working in the field of gender and war, as well as those who wish to find out more about this remarkable group of women. -- .

Irvin's story captures a penetrating and epic look at a young Texas boy, whose young years were spent on a small farm near Bradshaw, Texas. In a defining decision, he struck out for California in search of a better life. The unsettled abusive home environment seems to have guided Walter away from home. Walter was gifted with an inspiring mind-a person with potential to be. His mother, knowing his difficult stormy life, wanted better for her son and signed for him to enlist in the military. Walter's diary helps to put a face on the World War I "Battle at Sea" and life of a "Pharmacist Mate." He served six years and nine months in the navy, sailing with the fair winds of the sea aboard the USS Saranac. During World War I, Walter served on the Saranac during a dangerous mission that kept all ship crew alert on the United States Mine-Squadron One, North Sea, in fog and bad weather, a task never before done in the world. Walter's enlistment and subsquent struggle will fill one with awe of a young man with a passion of proficiency with a deep love of sports.

The Shelf2Life WWI Memoirs Collection is an engaging set of pre-1923 materials that describe life during the Great War through memoirs, letters and diaries. Poignant personal narratives from soldiers, doctors and nurses on the front lines to munitions workers and land girls on the home front, offer invaluable insight into the sacrifices men and women made for their country. Photographs and illustrations intensify stories of struggle and survival from the trenches, hospitals, prison camps and battlefields. The WWI Memoirs Collection captures the pride and fear of the war as experienced by combatants and non-combatants alike and provides historians, researchers and students extensive perspective on individual emotional responses to the war.

"This book by Vahakn Dadrian and Taner Akcam, one Armenian, one Turkish, both noted scholars of the Armenian Genocide] stands as a monument of original scholarship on the facts of the Genocide. The wealth of specific citations, the multiplicity of sources surveyed make this volume an invaluable and fundamental source for any future study." . The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

Turkey's bid to join the European Union has lent new urgency to the issue of the Armenian Genocide as differing interpretations of the genocide are proving to be a major reason for the delay of the its accession. This book provides vital background information and is a prime source of legal evidence and authentic Turkish eyewitness testimony of the intent and the crime of genocide against the Armenians. After a long and painstaking effort, the authors, one an Armenian, the other a Turk, generally recognized as the foremost experts on the Armenian Genocide, have prepared a new, authoritative translation and detailed analysis of the Takvim-i Vekayi, the official Ottoman Government record of the Turkish Military Tribunals concerning the crimes committed against the Armenians during World War I. The authors have compiled the documentation of the trial proceedings for the first time in English and situated them within their historical and legal context. These documents show that Wartime Cabinet ministers, Young Turk party leaders, and a number of others inculpated in these crimes were court-martialed by the Turkish Military Tribunals in the years immediately following World War I. Most were found guilty and received sentences ranging from prison with hard labor to death. In remarkable contrast to Nuremberg, the Turkish Military Tribunals were conducted solely on the basis of existing Ottoman domestic penal codes. This substitution of a national for an international criminal court stands in history as a unique initiative of national self-condemnation. This compilation is significantly enhanced by an extensive analysis of the historical background, political nature and legal implications of the criminal prosecution of the twentieth century's first state-sponsored crime of genocide.

Vahakn N. Dadrian was director of a large Genocide Study Project with sustained support by the National Science Foundation and the H. F. Guggenheim Foundation. The project's first major achievement was the publication of an extensive volume, "The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus" (Berghahn Books 1995), now in its 8th edition, which has been translated into Arabic, French, Greek, Italian, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. In 2005, he received four separate awards for his lifetime contribution to genocide studies. He taught at the State University of New York (SUNY) system (1970-1991) and has been Director of Genocide Research at the Zoryan Institute since 1999.

Taner Akcam was born in the province of Ardahan in the northeast of Turkey. As the editor-in-of a political journal, he was arrested in 1976 and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment. One year later, he escaped and fled to Germany as a political refugee. He is the first Turkish scholar to have drawn attention to the historicity of the Armenian Genocide and has been persecuted by the Turkish state for it. In April 2006, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts presented him with a distinguished award for his outstanding work in human rights and fighting genocide denial. Currently, he is Associate Professor of History and the Kaloosdian/Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University"

After the Great War, some texts by British Army veterans portrayed the Anglican chaplains who had served with them in an extremely negative light. This book examines the realities of Anglican chaplains' wartime experiences and presents a compelling picture of what it meant to be a clergyman-in-uniform in the most devastating war in modern history.

In recent years, and in light of U.S. attempts to project power in the world, the presidency of Woodrow Wilson has been more commonly invoked than ever before. Yet "Wilsonianism" has often been distorted by a concentration on American involvement in the First World War. In "Woodrow Wilson and the Great War: Reconsidering America's Neutrality, 1914-1917," prominent scholar Robert Tucker turns the focus to the years of neutrality. Arguing that our neglect of this prewar period has reduced the complexity of the historical Wilson to a caricature or stereotype, Tucker reveals the importance that the law of neutrality played in Wilson's foreign policy during the fateful years from 1914 to 1917, and in doing so he provides a more complete portrait of our nation's twenty-eighth president.

By focusing on the years leading up to America's involvement in the Great War, Tucker reveals that Wilson's internationalism was always highly qualified, dependent from the start upon the advent of an international order that would forever remove the specter of another major war. World War I was the last conflict in which the law of neutrality played an important role in the calculations of belligerents and neutrals, and it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that this law -- or rather Woodrow Wilson's version of it -- constituted almost the whole of his foreign policy with regard to the war. Wilson's refusal to find any significance, moral or otherwise, in the conflict beyond the law and its violation led him to see the war as meaningless, save for the immense suffering and sense of utter futility it fostered.

Treating issues of enduring interest, such as the advisability and effectiveness of U.S.interventions in, or initiation of, conflicts beyond its borders, "Woodrow Wilson and the Great War" will appeal to anyone interested in the president's power to determine foreign policy, and in constitutional history in general.

War from the air-war from beneath the waves
For thousands of years warfare had been the business of armies of foot and horse soldiers whilst the seas and oceans were contested by the collision of navies propelled by wind, sail and oars. The industrial age of the mid-nineteenth century brought in a new era where technology would find its way into every aspect of the life of mankind. Predictably that did not exclude the business of killing. In the development of the aircraft and the submarine new, hitherto impossible dimensions were attained and their influence removed the limitations of warfare confined only to the surface of our planet. This excellent and substantial book charts the development and wartime proving of submarines and aircraft in the most detailed way, up to and including, in some detail, their operational use during the First World War. This account includes many diagrams, illustrations and photographs which are sure to captivate anyone interested in the Great War of the machines.

This study, first published in 1986, examines the evolution and application of the policies of wartime governments designed to deal with the danger to national security thought to be posed by enemy alien residents, and considers the social and political forces which helped shape these policies. The scope of the powers assumed by the authorities to regulate the entry, departure, movement, employment, business activities and many other facets of the lives of aliens were unprecedented in war or peace. This book will be of interest to students of history.

John Galsworthy -- recipient of the 1932 Nobel Prize for literature -- was one of the best-selling authors of the twentieth century. His literary reputation overshadows what he achieved during the Great War, which was his humanitarian support for and his compositions about soldiers disabled in the conflict. "John Galsworthy and Disabled Soldiers of the Great War" represents the most comprehensive study published to date about this literature of the "war to end all wars." It makes available for the first time in a single edition the most significant of his compositions about disabled soldiers, recovering them from scholarly neglect, examining their value as historical documents and connecting them to iconic images and artifacts of the period. This study will be of interest to a wide academic audience, to readers interested in the history of the Great War, to policymakers associated with veterans' issues, and to medical professionals in the fields of physical medicine and rehabilitation.

Fought between 1914 and 1918, World War One - The Great War - was the most titanic and devastating conflict the world had yet seen. Detailing the course of the war week-by-week and the intimate accounts and experiences of soldiers and civilians alike, As We Were offers insight like no other into a war that impacted generations the world over. BOOK ONE As We Were, We Shall Be Changed: 4 August 1914 - 30 August 1915 'You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees' Kaiser Wilhelm II, August 1914 BOOK TWO As We Were, That Rich Earth: 31 August 1915 - 2 October 1916 'There is a great deal after all to be said for the existence of evil; it might almost be held to prove the existence of God' Raymond Asquith, May 1916 BOOK THREE As We Were, Help Me to Die: 3 October 1916 - 15 October 1917 'The strikes and disturbances in the city are beyond provocative... little boys and girls running about shouting they have no bread, simply in order to create excitement...' The Tsarina of Russia, March 1917 BOOK FOUR As We Were, All My Sons: 16 October 1917 - 11 November 1918 'As they bound him... he turned his blindfolded face up to mine and said in a voice which wrung my heart, "Kiss me, Sir, kiss me" ' The Rev Julian Bickersteth, December 1917

This lively book re-evaluates six salient aspects of Lloyd George's role in the "lost peace" of Versailles. In a reexamination of six controversial episodes 1919-1940, it reviews his protean role at the Paris Peace conference, 1919, his strategy on reparations, his abortive guarantee treaty to France, and the emergence at the Conference of Appeasement. It then reassesses his controversial visit to Hitler, and his bids to halt WWII after the fall of Poland and France.

The introduction of chemical warfare during the First World War was a major event in the history of military technology. It not only posed an unusual challenge to military thinking of the day, which was largely conventional and wholly unfamiliar with science; it also created a heated moral controversy surrounding the new weapon that did not discriminate between soldiers and civilians. This study, based on a previously unavailable range of archival material and statistical data, explores the military role of chemical warfare as well as its effects on people, industries and administration on both sides. The book also fully examines the complex issues raised by this new technology, which were debated endlessly between the wars and have led to recent agreements among the powers to curb their use of chemical or biological warfare. This study was planned in close cooperation with Sir Harold Hartley, who became head of British chemical warfare in 1918.

The Shelf2Life WWI Memoirs Collection is an engaging set of pre-1923 materials that describe life during the Great War through memoirs, letters and diaries. Poignant personal narratives from soldiers, doctors and nurses on the front lines to munitions workers and land girls on the home front, offer invaluable insight into the sacrifices men and women made for their country. Photographs and illustrations intensify stories of struggle and survival from the trenches, hospitals, prison camps and battlefields. The WWI Memoirs Collection captures the pride and fear of the war as experienced by combatants and non-combatants alike and provides historians, researchers and students extensive perspective on individual emotional responses to the war.

The dawn of combat in the air
Today everyone is so familiar with aircraft, air travel and the fact that virtually every nation's defence force includes an aerial component, so it is easy to forget that there are many people still alive whose parents were born before any practical form of working aircraft. The Wright Brothers had achieved sustained heavier than air flight in 1903-just over 100 years ago; that was only eleven years before the outbreak of the First World War, the first war in which combat took to the the skies. During the four years of the conflict the potential for aircraft in all their various forms and in all their viable tactical roles was pursued and exploited as much as the technology of the time would allow. This change in the nature of warfare (which added the first new dimension to conflict in millennia) was seen as incredible to many at the time. Certainly the impetus given to the development of powered flight by the First World War cannot be overestimated. A number of books were written during those early days of air warfare, though their number remains comparatively few, some were written by aviators themselves and some were general or unit histories. Others gathered incidents, experiences and anecdotes into anthologies which enabled an eager readership to understand what combat in the skies actually involved. This is one of those books. It covers pilot training and includes, among other things, accounts of aerial warfare from the allied perspective including night flights, bombing, Zeppelin hunting, raids, dog fights and sea-plane activity. 'The Way of the Air' concludes with an interesting hypothesis of how manned flight could have developed in the post-war period. This interesting First World War 'reader' will be a welcome addition to the libraries of all those interested in the early days of aerial warfare.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.