While a plethora of studies have discussed why so many men decided to volunteer for the army during the Great War, the experiences of those who were called up under conscription have received relatively little scrutiny. Even when the implementation of the respective Military Service Acts has been investigated, scholars have usually focused on only the distinct minority of those eligible who expressed conscientious objections. It is rare to see equal significance placed on the fact that substantial numbers of men appealed, or were appealed for, on the grounds that their domestic, business, or occupational circumstances meant they should not be expected to serve. David Littlewood analyses the processes undergone by these men, and the workings of the bodies charged with assessing their cases, through a sustained transnational comparison of the British and New Zealand contexts.

The Routledge History of the First World War is a work which, in a single volume, covers a range of major themes and issues relating to that conflict. Providing a comprehensive but readily accessible reference work examining the First World War, in accordance with a broad range of themes, this book presents the many ways in which study of the First World War can take place and introduces readers to new areas of research, often untouched in other studies of the war. With a scholarly Introduction and 60 chapters by specialist authors who come from 14 different countries, across four continents, the book is also intended to open lines of further inquiry from its solid base of academic knowledge. The volume demonstrates the war’s global and total nature, examining the conflict in all major theatres and through the lens of the key combatants and neutrals. It also fully engages with issues of race, gender, ideology, and society during the war. This book will appeal to students of all levels, scholars, and general readers alike interested in the First World War from several different perspectives and research areas. The 60 chapters cover topics from numerous angles and provide detailed information about all aspects relating to the First World War.

This book is an international comparative study of the British, German and French military chaplains during the First World War. It describes their role, position and daily work within the army and how the often conflicting expectations of the church, the state, the military and the soldiers effected these. This study seeks to explain similarities and differences between the chaplaincies by looking at how the pre-war relations between church, state and society influenced the work of these army chaplains.

Eric Bogle has written many iconic songs that deal with the futility and waste of war. Two of these in particular, ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ and ‘No Man’s Land (a.k.a. The Green Fields of France)’, have been recorded numerous times in a dozen or more languages indicating the universality and power of their simple message. Bogle’s other compositions about the First World War give a voice to the voiceless, prominence to the forgotten and personality to the anonymous as they interrogate the human experience, celebrate its spirit and empathise with its suffering. This book examines Eric Bogle’s songs about the Great War within the geographies and socio-cultural contexts in which they were written and consumed. From Anzac Day in Australia and Turkey to the ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland and from small Aboriginal communities in the Coorong to the influence of prime ministers and rock stars on a world stage, we are urged to contemplate the nature and importance of popular culture in shaping contemporary notions of history and national identity. It is entirely appropriate that we do so through the words of an artist who Melody Maker described as ‘the most important songwriter of our time’.

The Great War of 1914-1918 was fought on the battlefield, on the sea and in the air, and in the heart. Museums Victoria’s exhibition World War I: Love and Sorrow exposed not just the nature of that war, but its depth and duration in personal and familial lives. Hailed by eminent scholar Jay Winter as "one of the best which the centenary of the Great War has occasioned", the exhibition delved into the war’s continuing emotional claims on descendants and on those who encounter the war through museums today. Contributors to this volume, drawn largely from the exhibition’s curators and advisory panel, grapple with the complexities of recovering and presenting difficult histories of the war. In eleven essays the book presents a new, more sensitive and nuanced narrative of the Great War, in which families and individuals take centre stage. Together they uncover private reckonings with the costs of that experience, not only in the years immediately after the war, but in the century since.

This volume synthesises the latest scholarship on First World War veterans in post-war Britain and Ireland, investigating the topic through its political, social and cultural dynamics. It examines the post-war experiences of those men and women who served and illuminates the nature of the post-war society for which service had been given. Complicating the homogenising tendency in existing scholarship it offers comparison of the experiences of veterans in different regions of Britain, including perspectives drawn from Ireland. Further nuance is offered by the assessment of the experiences of ex-servicewomen alongside those of ex-servicemen, such focus deeping understanding into the gendered specificities of post-war veteran activities and experiences. Moreover, case studies of specific cohorts of veterans are offered, including focus on disabled veterans and ex-prisoners of war. In these regards the collection offers vital updates to existing scholarship while bringing important new departures and challenges to the current interpretive frameworks of veteran experiences in post-war Britain and Ireland.

Although civilian internment has become associated with the Second World War in popular memory, it has a longer history. The turning point in this history occurred during the First World War when, in the interests of ‘security’ in a situation of total war, the internment of ‘enemy aliens’ became part of state policy for the belligerent states, resulting in the incarceration, displacement and, in more extreme cases, the death by neglect or deliberate killing of hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world. This pioneering book on internment during the First World War brings together international experts to investigate the importance of the conflict for the history of civilian incarceration.

The First World War’s centenary generated a mass of commemorative activity worldwide. Officially and unofficially; individually, collectively and commercially; locally, nationally and internationally, efforts were made to respond to the legacies of this vast conflict. This book explores some of these responses from areas previously tied to the British Empire, including Australia, Britain, Canada, India and New Zealand. Showcasing insights from historians of commemoration and heritage professionals it provides revealing insider and outsider perspectives of the centenary. How far did commemoration become celebration, and how merited were such responses? To what extent did the centenary serve wider social and political functions? Was it a time for new knowledge and understanding of the events of a century ago, for recovery of lost or marginalised voices, or for confirming existing clichés? And what can be learned from the experience of this centenary that might inform the approach to future commemorative activities? The contributors to this book grapple with these questions, coming to different answers and demonstrating the connections and disconnections between those involved in building public knowledge of the ‘war to end all wars’.

The fullest account yet of the British home front in the First World War and how war changed Britain forever.

The International Society for First World War Studies’ ninth conference, ‘War Time’, drew together emerging and leading scholars to discuss, reflect upon, and consider the ways that time has been conceptualised both during the war itself and in subsequent scholarship. War Time: First World War Perspectives on Temporality, stemming from this 2016 conference, offers its readers a collection of the conference’s most inspiring and thought-provoking papers from the next generation of First World War scholars. In its varied yet thematically-related chapters, the book aims to examine new chronologies of the Great War and bring together its military and social history. Its cohesive theme creates opportunities to find common ground and connections between these sub-disciplines of history, and prompts students and academics alike to seriously consider time as alternately a unifying, divisive, and ultimately shaping force in the conflict and its historiography. With content spanning land and air, the home and fighting fronts, multiple nations, and stretching to both pre-1914 and post-1918, these ten chapters by emerging researchers (plus an introductory chapter by the conference organisers, and a foreword by John Horne) offer an irreplaceable and invaluable snapshot of how the next generation of First World War scholars from eight countries were innovatively conceptualising the conflict and its legacy at the midpoint of its centenary.