Thesis advisor: James Cronin / Thesis advisor: Devin O. Pendas / All efforts after the First World War to found — or reform — government on a democratic basis embraced the abstract concept that democratic legitimacy derived from the consent of the people. In this new age of national self-determination, however, the practical predicament became defining who constituted “the people” and how minorities would be managed. While historians have analyzed this issue in the “new” states of central and eastern Europe, this dissertation argues that it also plagued the supposedly more mature democracies of the Western European victors — Britain, France, and Italy. An analysis of the domestic population policies of those victors demonstrates that a new conception of democracy — based on both liberalism and nationalism — led them to pursue illiberal policies of population engineering with, paradoxically, the best of intentions: the preservation and stability of democracy itself. In an era in which people were becoming more involved in choosing their governments, governments were becoming more involved in choosing their people. While the victors sought to craft a more ethical — or at least more legalistic — form of population engineering than the often violent and ad hoc versions employed further east, the result nevertheless remained at odds with the ethical foundations of liberal democracy. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

A história do século XX teve como grande divisor de águas a Primeira Guerra Mundial. Por mais que o conflito tenha devastado apenas partes do Velho Mundo, este foi seguido do que Eric Hobsbawm chamou de um tipo de colapso verdadeiramente mundial, sentido pelo menos em todos os lugares em que homens e mulheres se envolviam ou faziam uso de transações impessoais de mercado. A militarização da economia e a crise do fim da guerra foram fenômenos mundiais, assim como o acirramento das lutas sociais. A Argentina, como uma das principais economias da América do Sul, não ficou imune à estas perturbações, transformando a cidade de Buenos Aires durante este período em um importante palco de mobilizações operárias. Este trabalho, que tem como principal objeto de investigação a trajetória da Federación Obrera Regional Argentina IXª e sua interação com o Estado, patronais e outras agrupações operárias e de esquerda, pretende realizar uma análise desse período, relacionando os efeitos das flutuações econômicas desencadeadas pela guerra com a ascensão e o refluxo das mobilizações operárias naquela cidade / The history of the twentieth century had as its great watershed the First World War. As the conflict had devastated only some parts of the Old World, it was followed by what Eric Hobsbawm has called \"a kind of truly global collapse, felt at least everywhere where men and women were involved or were using the impersonal transactions of market\". The militarization of the economy and the war crisis were a global phenomenon, as well as the intensification of social struggles. Argentina, as one of the leading economies in South America, was not immune to these disorders, transforming the city of Buenos Aires during this period into an important stage for workers mobilizations. This work, which has as its main object the investigation of the trajectory of the Federación Obrera Regional Argentina IXth and its interaction with the state, employers and other workers and leftist groups, intends to conduct an analysis of this period, in which the effects of the economic fluctuations triggered by war relate to the rise and flow of workers mobilizations in that city

Le déclenchement de la Grande Guerre change l’équilibre politique mondial, y compris en Europe centrale et orientale. L’écroulement des empires russe et austro-hongrois favorise la naissance des nouveaux États-nations, en particulier de l’Ukraine. Le jeune pays, tiraillé pendant quelques siècles, apparaît sur les décombres de deux puissances. Le nouveau régime s’oppose alors à des adversaires puissants : l’Armée Volontaire et l’Armée Rouge. Les décisionnaires du Gouvernement Provisoire russe, présidé par Alexandre Kerenskij et les bolcheviks, conduits par Vladimir Lénine, se prononcent défavorablement à la construction de l’État ukrainien indépendant et veulent le conserver sous la tutelle russe. Dans ces conditions, l’Ukraine sollicite l’appui des puissances étrangères pour lutter contre ses ennemis intérieurs. Les dignitaires ukrainiens demandent le concours militaire de deux camps belligérants : des Alliés et des Empires Centraux. En France, il y a deux groupes politiques. Le premier est favorable à la reconstruction de la Russie seule et indivisible. Ses représentants estiment que les pays soumis au pouvoir russe doivent lutter avec la Russie et les Alliés contre les Puissances Centrales. Il faut ainsi reconnaître le droit de ces pays à l’auto-détérmination. Le regroupement des forces militaires repose sur le principe des nationalités. La seconde tendance présentée par Jean Pélissier privilégie la lutte avec la jeune Ukraine contre le bolchévisme et ne considérait pas le mouvement ukrainien comme germanophile. Au début du XXième siècle, les camps politiques des Puissances Centrales et des pays de l’Entente jouent la carte ukrainienne pour atteindre leurs buts dans la Première Guerre Mondiale. / The I World War’s bursting changes the political balance in the central and oriental Europe. The collapse of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires favours new state-nations’ birth, in particulary the one of Ukraine. The young country torn during some centuries appears on two empires’ ruins. The new Ukrainian government confronts powerful opponents: the Volunteer Army and the Red Army. On the Ukrainian politicians’ mind, Provisional Government’s politics contrary to the principle of self-determination of nations. The Russian Provisory Government’s leaders headed by Alexander Kerensky and Bolsheviks headed by Vladimir Lenin protest against the Ukrainian independent state’s constitution. Their aim consists to conserve Ukraine under the Russian guardianship. In these conditions, Ukraine is searching for the military assistance of two adverse warring camps: those of Allied nations and Central Powers. There are two political tendencies in France. Some dignitaries consider that former Russian colonies should fight with Allied countries and Russia against Central Powers. This group of politicians is favorable to the reconstruction of the one and indivisible Russian empire. Military forces’ gathering is based on the self-determination principle. Their aim is to create a permanent body to promote the cause of national self-determination. The second tendency represented by Jean Pélissier privileged the fight against bolshevist forces with the young Ukrainian country. This political camp didn’t consider Ukrainian politicians to be germanophile. At the beginning of the XX th century, two adversary camps: those of Central Powers and Allied countries use the Ukrainian political asset to achieve their aims during the First World War.

This study explores how young people's engagement with history outside of the classroom shapes the development of their historical consciousness. Drawing on public discourses around the First World War (WW1), I address the implications of this engagement for history teachers and young peoples' learning. Recognising the active and dynamic construction of memory and meaning by young people, I develop the concept of social remembering. Building on socio-cultural perspectives, I examine the 'lived experience' of young people's memory work. Using WW1 as a context, and adopting an innovative mixed methods approach, the research was conducted over two stages. The first stage of the research used a quiz and survey to explore the extent and nature of young people's social remembering. In the second stage of the study I examined young people's memory work outside the classroom. I worked with several small groups of students to construct their own ethnographic accounts of societal and familial remembering and their emerging historical consciousness, fashioning these into ethnographic portraits. The research highlights the role that social remembering plays in young people's identities, including the ways in which they value and use history, attribute historical significance to events and orientate themselves in time. It shows how different forms of social remembering can both include or exclude young people and impact positively or negatively on young people's historical consciousness. An understanding of social remembering outside the classroom can support history teachers in the development of pedagogies that build on students' meaning making associated with public events such as commemorations. I argue that teachers can use the intersections between social remembering and disciplinary history to engage and support students in their study of history. Although the study originated within the context of history education, it has wider value, offering a ground breaking methodological approach to exploring young people's understandings of the past and in contributing to the historiography of historical memory.

In terms of the British Army in the Great War, the study of whether or how the army learned has become the dominant historiographical theme in the past thirty years. Previous studies have often viewed learning and institutional change through the lens of the 'learning curve', a concept which emphasises that the high command of the British Army learned to win the war through a combination of trial and error in battle planning, and through careful consideration of their collective and individual experiences. This thesis demonstrates that in order to understand the complexities of institutional change in the Great War, we must look beyond ill-defined concepts such as the learning curve and adopt a more rigid framework. This thesis examines institutional change in the British First Army in the 1915 campaign on the western front. It applies concepts more commonly found in business studies, such as organisational culture, knowledge management and organisational memory, to understand how the First Army developed as an institution in 1915. It presents a five-stage model - termed the Organisational Development Model - which demonstrates how the high command of the First Army considered their experiences and changed their operational practices in response. This thesis finds that the 'war managers' decision-making was affected by a number of institutional and personal 'inputs' which shaped their approach to understanding warfare. This thesis examines the manner in which new knowledge was created and collated in the immediate post-battle period, before studying how the war managers considered new information, disseminated it across the force and institutionalised it in the organisation's formal practices, structures and routines. In a broad sense, this thesis does three things. First, by examining how the army learned it moves beyond standard narratives of learning in the British Army in the Great War and highlights the complex interplay between personal and institutional learning processes. Second, by focusing on institutional change in the 1915 campaign, it sheds new light on an understudied yet crucial part of the British war experience. Finally, in creating the Organisational Development Model, it provides a robust platform on which future research can be built.

This thesis – ‘Cinema on the Front Line: A History of Military Cinema Exhibition and Soldier Spectatorship during the First World War’ - provides an overview and examination of an element of British cinema history that remains largely undocumented within the disciplines of Film Studies and military history. Built upon highly original and extensive research, the thesis documents how the cinema intersected with the lives of British and dominion soldiers at practically every stage of their military career: from recruitment drives to the front line and, finally, in the convalescent hospitals and camps that attempted to rehabilitate an entire generation. By bringing this largely unknown history to light, the thesis dismantles many previously held assumptions regarding British cinema exhibition during the First World War, documenting how a significant percentage of the cinema-going public – British soldiers – still engaged with cinema entertainment outside of the commercial theatrical venue. As a study of historical exhibition, it documents the scale and orchestration of the British Expeditionary Force’s implementation of cinema entertainment on the Western front between 1914 and 1918. Significantly, it is also argued that, as a historically specific demographic, British soldiers represented an actively discerning and uniquely positioned body of wartime spectators, particularly in relation to the output of topical films and newsreels which purported to document the realities of the conflict. Accounting for this hidden history of wartime film spectatorship within extraordinary and unconventional sites of exhibition, the thesis challenges established ideas regarding the practices and concerns of film exhibitors, the behaviour and preferences of wartime audiences, and the significance and impact of the material conditions in which films were exhibited.

abstract: In 1916, in the middle of the First World War, Britain developed and deployed the first military tanks on a battlefield, signifying a huge step forward in the combination of mechanization and the military. Tanks represented progress in technical and mechanical terms, but their introduction to military goals and military environments required the men involved to develop immaterial meanings for the tanks. Tactically, tanks required investment from tank commanders and non-tank commanders alike, and incorporating tanks into the everyday routine of the battlefront required men to accommodate these machines into their experiences and perspectives. Reporting the actions of the tanks impelled newspapers and reporters to find ways of presenting the tanks to a civilian audience, tying them to British perspectives on war and granting them positive associations. This thesis sought to identify major concepts and ideas as applied to the British tanks deployed on the Western Front in the First World War, and to better understand how British audiences, both military and civilian, understood and adopted the tank into their understanding of the war. Different audiences had different expectations of the tank, shaped by the environment in which they understood it, and the reaction of those audiences laid the foundation for further development of the tank. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis History 2018

The Church of England was at a crossroads in 1914 as the First World War began. The war was seen as an opportunity to revitalize it and return it to its role of prominence in society. In comparison to other areas of study, the role of the Church of England during this time period is inadequately examined. Primary sources including letters, diaries, contemporary newspaper accounts and pastors' sermons were used. Also secondary sources provided background and analysis about the people, events and movements of the time. A handful of papers and journal articles that specifically dealt with a particular aspect of the research provided some analysis. This thesis examines the Anglican Church as the war began and during the war both domestically and at the front in order to judge the response it made to the war.

130,000 Canadian soldiers were wounded or made ill in the First World War and this is reflected in Canadian fiction of the interwar years. The portrayal of wounded servicemen in fiction went beyond the usual stereotypes of the disabled as either victims or monsters. The First World War is often claimed as the defining moment of English-speaking Canadian history. The country’s national myth asserts that Canadians’ toil and sacrifice in the fields of Flanders commanded international respect, promoted patriotic pride and assured its status as an independent country. Both the men who gave up their health for the attainment of these goals, and the literature that documented those events have been given short shrift in literary analysis. This thesis hopes to partially redress that imbalance. The impact of enlistment, trauma, moral and physical danger and civilian disability affected wounded soldiers’ identity formation. The disabled soldier’s body challenged the construction of masculinity, heroism and male and female roles at a period in history when gender relations were perceived as intensely changeable. Authors used disabled soldiers to express the struggle to construct a national identity while Canada was caught between “mother” England and “big brother” United States. Representations of disability exposed exclusionary attitudes to non-white immigrants and indigenous populations. Despite the racist attitudes of the Anglo-Saxon elite, that same group claimed nationhood and moral authority based upon Canada’s treatment of the returned soldier. Myths of Canadian landscape informed the portrayal of the healing powers of the bush, reinforcing notions of Canada as wilderness. Just as Canadian citizens in the postwar years were confronted with limping, coughing, blinded or even paralyzed young men in the streets of their cities, Canadian authors exposed these same injuries in the pages of their novels. For a period in Canadian literature, the experiences of the disabled were imagined, again and again. While such imaginings were not always progressive or enlightened, they nonetheless gave a prominent role to disabled people and generally portrayed them in a positive, if not a heroic, light.

This dissertation addresses early British intelligence activities and Anglo-Ottoman relations by viewing the activities of army officers and private individuals as a collective pursuit to safeguard British imperial interests. It offers a new understanding of the relationships between intelligence, grand strategy, and diplomacy before the Great War. It also examines the role that pre-1914 intelligence played in that conflict. The Boer War had shown that the geographic expanse of the British Empire was a source of strategic danger as well as a foundation of global power. The revelation of weakness propelled Britain to begin collecting intelligence on possible sources of conflict in preparation for the next war. A 1906 border incident between Egypt and Turkey marked turning points in Anglo-Ottoman relations and British intelligence efforts. Intelligence began to focus on railways that threatened Britain’s commercial position, on the disposition of Arab tribes who might revolt against Turkish authority, on the state of the Turkish army, and on the extent of European activity in Turkey. In 1914, British policy in the Middle East was unco-ordinated. Needing an effective means of combatting the Turco-German Jihad proclaimed in 1915, London created the Arab Bureau as an advisory organ based in Cairo. It became the central repository for much of the intelligence gathered before 1914. Officials in Cairo and London created new maps, compiled route reports, and assembled intelligence handbooks for distribution. Once the Arab Revolt began in 1916, intelligence helped marshal Britain’s resources effectively in pursuit of victory. Placing pre-1914 intelligence in the context of British imperial concerns extends our understanding of Anglo-Ottoman relations by considering strategic and diplomatic issues within a single frame. It demonstrates the influence of the Boer War in initiating intelligence-gathering missions in the Ottoman Empire, showing that even those undertaken before the establishment of a professional intelligence service in 1909, although lacking organization, were surprisingly modern, and ultimately successful. Analysis of under-utilized sources, such as the handbooks created by the Arab Bureau and the Royal Geographical Society, demonstrates the value of pre-war intelligence in detailed ways. It deepens understanding of the role British intelligence played in the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and shows how one nation’s intelligence, military, and diplomatic bodies operated separately and collectively in an era that presented them with unprecedented challenges and opportunities.