|
|
Books > History > World history > From 1900 > First World War
This is an important reassessment of British and Italian grand
strategies during the First World War. Stefano Marcuzzi sheds new
light on a hitherto overlooked but central aspect of Britain and
Italy's war experiences: the uneasy and only partial overlap
between Britain's strategy for imperial defence and Italy's
ambition for imperial expansion. Taking Anglo-Italian bilateral
relations as a special lens through which to understand the
workings of the Entente in World War I, he reveals how the
ups-and-downs of that relationship influenced and shaped Allied
grand strategy. Marcuzzi considers three main issues - war aims,
war strategy and peace-making - and examines how, under the
pressure of divergent interests and wartime events, the
Anglo-Italian 'traditional friendship' turned increasingly into
competition by the end of the war, casting a shadow on
Anglo-Italian relations both at the Peace Conference and in the
interwar period.
Originally published in 1994, This Working-Day World is lively
collection of essays presenting a social, political and cultural
view of British women's lives in the period 1914-45. The volume
describes women's activities in many different areas, ranging from
the weekly wash to the rescue of child refugees. Each essay, from
an international list of contributors, is based on new research
which will complement existing studies in a range of disciplines by
adding information on, among other topics, women's teacher training
colleges, and women in the BBC, in medical laboratories and in Art
schools. The book does not, however, idealise women: the militarism
and racism of the period infected women too, and this is revealed
in the account of women in the British Union of Fascists, and the
analysis of the Pankhursts' merging of patriotism and gender
issues. Through studies and personal accounts, This Working-Day
World reveals past issues that are still pertinent to debates in
today's society. As we read the chapter on the recently discovered
Diary of Doreen Bates which outlines possibly the first female
civil servant campaign for rights as a single mother, we hear
echoes of issues being discussed today. Indeed, as we approach the
end of the century it is a good moment to look back and re-evaluate
areas and degrees of progress - or the reverse - in society, and in
British women's lives in particular. With its unusual photographs,
this accessible and informative collection provides a rich resource
for students in twentieth century social and cultural history, and
women's studies courses, and an enlightening volume for general
readers.
First published in 1914, this is a systematic treatment of the
people whose contribution to civilization of the Nile Valley was
for so long a source of controversy.
In 1914, the Associated Newspapers sent correspondent Herbert Corey
to Europe on the day Great Britain declared war on Germany. During
the Great War that followed, Corey reported from France, Britain,
and Germany, visiting the German lines on both the western and
eastern fronts. He also reported from Greece, Italy, Switzerland,
Holland, Belgium, and Serbia. When the Armistice was signed in
November 1918, Corey defied the rules of the American Expeditionary
Forces and crossed into Germany. He covered the Paris Peace
Conference the following year. No other foreign correspondent
matched the longevity of his reporting during World War I. Until
recently, however, his unpublished memoir lay largely unnoticed
among his papers in the Library of Congress. With publication of
Herbert Corey's Great War, coeditors Peter Finn and John Maxwell
Hamilton reestablish Corey's name in the annals of American war
reporting. As a correspondent, he defies easy comparison. He
approximates Ernie Pyle in his sympathetic interest in the American
foot soldier, but he also told stories about troops on the other
side and about noncombatants. He is especially illuminating on the
obstacles reporters faced in conveying the story of the Great War
to Americans. As his memoir makes clear, Corey didn't believe he
was in Europe to serve the Allies. He viewed himself as an
outsider, one who was deeply ambivalent about the entry of the
United States into the war. His idiosyncratic, opinionated, and
very American voice makes for compelling reading.
The Politics of Wounds explores military patients' experiences of
frontline medical evacuation, war surgery, and the social world of
military hospitals during the First World War. The proximity of the
front and the colossal numbers of wounded created greater public
awareness of the impact of the war than had been seen in previous
conflicts, with serious political consequences. Frequently referred
to as 'our wounded', the central place of the soldier in society,
as a symbol of the war's shifting meaning, drew contradictory
responses of compassion, heroism, and censure. Wounds also stirred
romantic and sexual responses. This volume reveals the paradoxical
situation of the increasing political demand levied on citizen
soldiers concurrent with the rise in medical humanitarianism and
war-related charitable voluntarism. The physical gestures and
poignant sounds of the suffering men reached across the classes,
giving rise to convictions about patient rights, which at times
conflicted with the military's pragmatism. Why, then, did patients
represent military medicine, doctors and nurses in a negative
light? The Politics of Wounds listens to the voices of wounded
soldiers, placing their personal experience of pain within the
social, cultural, and political contexts of military medical
institutions. The author reveals how the wounded and disabled found
culturally creative ways to express their pain, negotiate power
relations, manage systemic tensions, and enact forms of 'soft
resistance' against the societal and military expectations of
masculinity when confronted by men in pain. The volume concludes by
considering the way the state ascribed social and economic values
on the body parts of disabled soldiers though the pension system.
How the Great War came to the cinema screen
Everyone familiar with motion picture footage of the First World
War on the Western Front will certainly have witnessed the talent,
daring, uniquely invaluable and enduring work of the author of this
book, Geoffrey Malins. Malins was one of two 'Official War Office
Kinematographers' authorised to film the allied armies in action in
France. There have been comments detrimental to Malins' character,
he might have been guilty of embellishment as regards his own
actions (no strange phenomenon in a military memoir) and he
certainly downplayed the role of his colleague J. B. McDowell to
the point of invisibility, but it is pointless to concentrate on
the imperfections of the man when balanced against his indisputable
achievements. One thing is certain, our knowledge of the Great War
would be poorer without Malins. Here was a 'movie man' prepared to
go into the danger zone to record the reality of the war of wire,
the blood and trenches the ordinary 'Tommy' knew, while dragging
around the most cumbersome equipment. His most famous film, 'The
Battle of the Somme, ' filmed in 1916 and considered to be
excessively graphic by many at the time, was viewed by over 20
million people and is shown on television to the present day.
Despite producing some now well known fake 'over the top'
sequences, Malins was responsible for the iconic footage of the
blowing of the Hawthorn Crater and anyone interested in the Great
War and the earliest days of war cinematography will be fascinated
to read the story of how it came about. The exploits of Malins and
his colleagues make no less gripping reading.
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.
On a summer morning in Sarajevo a hundred years ago, a teenage
assassin named Gavrilo Princip fired not just the opening shots of
the First World War but the starting gun for modern history, when
he killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Yet the events Princip
triggered were so monumental that his own story has been largely
overlooked, his role garbled and motivations misrepresented. The
Trigger puts this right, filling out as never before a figure who
changed our world and whose legacy still has an impact on all of us
today. Born a penniless backwoodsman, Princip's life changed when
he trekked through Bosnia and Serbia to attend school. As he
ventured across fault lines of faith, nationalism and empire, so
tightly clustered in the Balkans, radicalisation slowly transformed
him from a frail farm boy into history's most influential assassin.
By retracing Princip's journey from his highland birthplace,
through the mythical valleys of Bosnia to the fortress city of
Belgrade and ultimately Sarajevo, Tim Butcher illuminates our
understanding both of Princip and the places that shaped him. Tim
uncovers details about Princip that have eluded historians for a
century and draws on his own experience, as a war reporter in the
Balkans in the 1990s, to face down ghosts of conflicts past and
present. The Trigger is a rich and timely work that brings to life
both the moment the world first went to war and an extraordinary
region with a potent hold over history.
This is the first ever major study examining of the views of the
Conservative Party towards the key aspects of Anglo-German
relations from 1905 to 1914. Drawing on a wide variety of original
sources, it examines the Conservative response to the German
threat, and argues that the response of the Conservative Party
towards Germany showed a marked absence of open hostility towards
Germany. Overall, this important new study provides a powerful and
overdue corrective to the traditional depiction of the Conservative
Party in opposition as 'Scaremongers' and the chief source of
Germanophobic views among the British political parties.
The war of the French volunteers
This book does not concern the Battle of Verdun in 1916--widely
considered to be the largest battle in world history, rather it
positions the action geographically for the reader. Written during
wartime this account concerns the personal experiences of a young
officer of the French infantry from the earliest days of the Great
War through a period of comparative fluidity of movement before the
stalemate of trench warfare. The fighting concerns the actions
about the Meuse and the Marne in the first year of the war from a
French perspective and concludes as the 'armies go to earth' in the
early part of 1915. Genevoix takes the reader into the heart of his
enthusiastic young group of comrades and soldiers on campaign to
provide valuable insights into the opening phases of the great
conflict the French infantry knew. Available in soft cover and hard
cover with dust jacket.
This is the compelling story of West Belfast's involvement fighting
on the Western Front throughout the First World War. This is the
story of men from either side of West Belfast's sectarian divide
during the Great War. This dramatic book tells the story of the
volunteers of the 36th and 16th divisions who fought on the Somme
and side-by-side at Messines. Grayson also brings in forgotten West
Belfast men from throughout the armed forces, from the retreat at
Mons to the defeat of Germany and life post-war. In so doing, he
tells a new story which challenges popular perceptions of the war
and explains why remembrance remains so controversial in Belfast
today.
Why, despite the appalling conditions in the trenches of the
Western Front, was the British army almost untouched by major
mutiny during the First World War? Drawing upon an extensive range
of sources, including much previously unpublished archival
material, G. D. Sheffield seeks to answer this question by
examining a crucial but previously neglected factor in the
maintenance of the British army's morale in the First World War:
the relationship between the regimental officer and the ordinary
soldier.
The Remembered Dead explores the ways poets of the First World War
- and later poets writing in the memory of that war - address the
difficult question of how to remember, and commemorate, those
killed in conflict. It looks closely at the way poets struggled to
meaningfully represent dying, death, and the trauma of witness,
while responding to the pressing need for commemoration. The
authors pay close attention to specific poems while maintaining a
strong awareness of literary and philosophical contexts. The poems
are discussed in relation to modernism and myth, other forms of
commemoration (such as photographs and memorials), and theories of
cultural memory. There is fresh analysis of canonical poets which,
at the same time, challenges the confines of the canon by
integrating discussion of lesser-known figures, including
non-combatants and poets of later decades. The final chapter
reaches beyond the war's centenary in a discussion of one
remarkable commemoration of Wilfred Owen.
|
|