This book tackles cultural mobilization in the First World War as a plural process of identity formation and de-formation. It explores eight different settings in which individuals, communities and conceptual paradigms were mobilized. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it interrogates one of the most challenging facets of the history of the Great War, one that keeps raising key questions on the way cultures respond to times of crisis. Mobilization during the First World War was a major process of material and imaginative engagement unfolding on a military, economic, political and cultural level, and existing identities were dramatically challenged and questioned by the whirl of discourses and representations involved.

This is a volume of comparative essays on the First World War that focuses on one central feature: the political and cultural "mobilization" of the populations of the main belligerent countries in Europe behind the war. It explores how and why they supported the war for so long (as soldiers and civilians), why that support weakened in the face of the devastation of trench warfare, and why states with a stronger degree of political support and national integration (such as Britain and France) were ultimately successful.

The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War examines how the Ottoman Empire tried to cope with the challenges of permanent mobilization and how this process reshaped state-society relations in 1914-1918, focusing mainly on Anatolia and the Muslim population.

Because all wars in the twenty-first century are potentially global wars, the centenary of the first global war is the occasion for reflection. This volume offers an unprecedented account of the lives, stories, letters, games, schools, institutions (such as the Boy Scouts and YMCA), and toys of children in Europe, North America, and the Global South during the First World War and surrounding years. By engaging with developments in Children’s Literature, War Studies, and Education, and mining newly available archival resources (including letters written by children), the contributors to this volume demonstrate how perceptions of childhood changed in the period. Children who had been constructed as Romantic innocents playing safely in secure gardens were transformed into socially responsible children actively committing themselves to the war effort. In order to foreground cross-cultural connections across what had been perceived as ‘enemy’ lines, perspectives on German, American, British, Australian, and Canadian children’s literature and culture are situated so that they work in conversation with each other. The multidisciplinary, multinational range of contributors to this volume make it distinctive and a particularly valuable contribution to emerging studies on the impact of war on the lives of children.

"Throughout its history, the United States has fought its major wars by mobilizing large numbers of citizen-soldiers. While the small, peacetime, regular army provided trained leadership and a framework for growth, the citizen-soldier, from the minuteman of the American Revolution to Civil War volunteers and the draftees of World War II, have successfully prosecuted the nation's major wars. But the Army, and the nation, have never fully resolved the myriad problems surrounding the mobilization and employment of reserve troops. National Guard divisions in World War II suffered from neglect during the interwar period and Great Depression, and regular Army commanders often replaced or relieved National Guard officers, which generated lingering resentment. At the same time, draftees from across the nation diluted the regional affiliations of many units, with a corresponding effect on morale and esprit de corps. Chris Rein's study of one division, recruited from the Gulf South and employed in the Southwest Pacific Theater in 1944 and 1945, highlights the challenges of reserve mobilization, training, and the combat deployment of National Guard units. His account demonstrates the still-strong connections between the local communities that hosted and supported National Guard companies before the war, even after an influx of new personnel nationalized the units and they shipped overseas. The 31st Division, reorganized after combat deployment in World War I, consisted primarily of infantry regiments from Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and, until 1942, Louisiana. Mobilized for federal service in late 1940, the division participated in the critical Louisiana and Carolina Maneuvers in 1941, but then languished for the next two years as a training organization, though it provided trained cadres and replacements for other divisions the Army deployed to Europe and the Pacific. In 1944, the division finally shipped overseas, enduring the brutal conditions in the Southwest Pacific, but successfully conducting landings on the New Guinea coast in support of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's "island hopping" campaign directed at liberating the Philippines. After a change in leadership, on the second day of the amphibious assault on Morotai, the division supported the liberation of Mindanao, the southernmost major island in the archipelago, before redeploying for demobilization at the end of 1945. Rein's study traces the division's decades of duty from the interwar period, when it contended with a series of devastating natural disasters, through its mobilization and combat deployment. However, within the 31st Division's story, there are several significant issues that remain highly relevant for reserve deployment today. The first centers on the issue of World War II-era National Guard leadership. The Army implemented a "purge" of overage and less competent National Guard division commanders in order to replace them with younger officers of the regular Army. Maj. Gen. John C. Persons, a pre-war Birmingham resident and Alabama National Guard officer, commanded the division throughout the peacetime mobilization and training and the first operation in New Guinea, only to be summarily fired on the second day of the Morotai landings, an action not adequately explained in the existing literature. The second issue concerns the Army's "nationalization" of regional units. While this policy has the benefit of spreading any casualties across the nation, rather than duplicate the horrific losses of the "Bedford Boys" of the 29th Infantry Division that devastated one small Virginia community, it also erodes regional identity and esprit de corps. This work is a case study of the strength and weaknesses of units with a regional identity and explores the connections with the home front once that identity erodes. It also examines the Dixie Division's operational and strategic evolution, but just as importantly details drawn from soldiers' correspondence and oral histories to show how their exposure to a larger world, including service alongside African-American and Filipino units, changed their views on race and post-war society"--

The processes of political mobilization and identity formation in the rural regions of Bombay Presidency between 1934 and 1947 are the major focus of this work. Studying the politics of the masses, their aspirations and demands—both within the formal institutional frameworks of the colonial `public space` as well as outside it—this book provides insights into political and social change in 20th century India. Emphasizing micro-level revolts—which, rather than subaltern militancy, express a collective endeavour by the people to solve their local problems by wresting immediate and tangible concessions—this book: - Details the multiple forms of mobilization and resistance among various groups—women, peasants, elites, lower castes and tribals. - Explores issues such as the nature of social conditions, leadership and participants; the development of mass consciousness; the moralities and methods of mobilization; and, the role of religious symbols and popular culture in such mobilizations. - Delineates various facets of peasant mobilization over 1934–47, including the peasants` response to political processes and their relationship with political associations, and the nature of agrarian conflicts as well as that of peasants` identity. - Studies both the collective action of tribals—in the form of crimes for survival, religious reform and politically motivated struggle—and Dalit mobilization around the issue of untouchability. - Contributes to the theoretical debate on nationalism and identity while critiquing the three main strands of nationalist thought as represented by Ernest Gellner, Anthony D Smith and Benedict Anderson.

This volume engages diverse topics such as art, music, and radio broadcasting in the development of modern Jewish nationalism by leading scholars in their respective fields. It contains richly detailed studies that challenge existing historiography--from personal struggles with nationalism, to the lesser-known origins of the Balfour Declaration, from boisterous demonstrations on the streets of pre-World War I Galicia, to skirmishes between Jews in present-day Jerusalem. It examines how nationalism has worked in theory and practice for Jews and at times been fiercely resisted. Beginning with the memory of Theodor Herzl and his cohort at the London Zionist Congress of 1900, this book revisits the wider scene of Zionism's emergence, as we explore the imagination of, and the attempted national mobilization of Jewry throughout the twentieth century. Contributors include: Delphine Bechtel; Nachman Ben-Yehuda; Michael Berkowitz; Inka Bertz; Philip Bohlman; John M. Efron; Richard A. Freund; Francois Guesnet; Michael Löwy; Barbara Mann; Derek Penslar; James Renton; Aviel Roshwald; Joshua Shanes.

This fascinating collection of essays charts, for the first time, the range of responses by scholars on both sides of the conflict to the outbreak of war in August 1914. The volume examines how biblical scholars, like their compatriots from every walk of life, responded to the great crisis they faced, and, with relatively few exceptions, were keen to contribute to the war effort. Some joined up as soldiers. More commonly, however, biblical scholars and theologians put pen to paper as part of the torrent of patriotic publication that arose both in the United Kingdom and in Germany. The contributors reveal that, in many cases, scholars were repeating or refining common arguments about the responsibility for the war. In Germany and Britain, where the Bible was still central to a Protestant national culture, we also find numerous more specialized works, where biblical scholars brought their own disciplinary expertise to bear on the matter of war in general, and this war in particular. The volume's contributors thus offer new insights into the place of both the Bible and biblical scholarship in early 20th-century culture.

Germany, 1914-1933: Politics, Society and Culture takes a fresh and critical look at a crucial period in German history. Rather than starting with the traditional date of 1918, the book begins with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, and argues that this was a pivotal turning point in shaping the future successes and failures of the Weimar Republic. Combining traditional political narrative with new insights provided by social and cultural history, the book reconsiders such key questions as: How widespread was support for the war in Germany between 1914 and 1918? How was the war viewed both ‘from above’, by leading generals, admirals and statesmen, and ‘from below’, by ordinary soldiers and civilians? What were the chief political, social, economic and cultural consequences of the war? In particular, did it result in a brutalisation of German society after 1918? How modern were German attitudes towards work, family, sex and leisure during the 1920s? What accounts for the extraordinary richness and experimentalism of this period? The book also provides a thorough and comprehensive discussion of the difficulties faced by the Weimar Republic in capturing the hearts and minds of the German people in the 1920s, and of the causes of its final demise in the early 1930s.

A compendium of original essays and contemporary viewpoints on the 1917 Revolution The Russian revolution of 1917 reverberated throughout an empire that covered one-sixth of the world. It altered the geo-political landscape of not only Eurasia, but of the entire globe. The impact of this immense event is still felt in the present day. The historiography of the last two decades has challenged conceptions of the 1917 revolution as a monolithic entity— the causes and meanings of revolution are many, as is reflected in contemporary scholarship on the subject. A Companion to the Russian Revolution offers more than thirty original essays, written by a team of respected scholars and historians of 20th century Russian history. Presenting a wide range of contemporary perspectives, the Companion discusses topics including the dynamics of violence in war and revolution, Russian political parties, the transformation of the Orthodox church, Bolshevism, Liberalism, and more. Although primarily focused on 1917 itself, and the singular Revolutionary experience in that year, this book also explores time-periods such as the First Russian Revolution, early Soviet government, the Civil War period, and even into the 1920’s. Presents a wide range of original essays that discuss Brings together in-depth coverage of political history, party history, cultural history, and new social approaches Explores the long-range causes, influence on early Soviet culture, and global after-life of the Russian Revolution Offers broadly-conceived, contemporary views of the revolution largely based on the author’s original research Links Russian revolutions to Russian Civil Wars as concepts A Companion to the Russian Revolution is an important addition to modern scholarship on the subject, and a valuable resource for those interested in Russian, Late Imperial, or Soviet history as well as anyone interested in Revolution as a global phenomenon.