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.

This thesis is a comparative analysis of the concept of military loyalty in the armies of Greek city-states and Hellenistic kingdoms, combining ancient evidence with the use of modern theories of organisational structures and combat motivation. It presents a basic contrast between Polis armies, which displayed high levels of loyalty, and Royal armies, which suffered from frequent cases of non-compliance and disloyalty, and argues that this contrast is a consequence of two fundamentally different ways of generating compliance and loyalty. Polis armies, it will be shown, predominantly exercised normative power, i.e. they relied on a combination of symbolic incentives and rewards, and a civic ideology of sacrifice for the common good; correspondingly, the soldiers, over whom this power was exercised, predominantly displayed moral involvement with their army, that is they complied voluntarily, out of a belief in the righteousness of their cause and in the alignment of their own benefit with that of their organisation. Royal armies, on the other hand, primarily utilised remunerative power, i.e. the allocation and manipulation of material rewards, which in turn was met by predominantly calculative involvement from the soldiers, i.e. a utilitarian assessment of risk and reward. These two compliance relationships - normative-moral and remunerative-calculative - lay at the heart of the different levels of loyalty we find in Polis and Royal armies. Nevertheless, at times this distinction broke down, revealing areas of overlap and a complex layering of motivations and types of power. The argument will be developed over the course of five chapters. Chapter 1 provides the theoretical framework. It explains Amitai Etzioni's Compliance Theory, detailing the three congruent compliance models organisations may use. These models are based on the type of power the organisational elites (generals and officers) apply, and the type of involvement present in the lower participants (soldiers): normative power and moral involvement, remunerative power and calculative involvement, and lastly, coercive power and alienative involvement. I will also stress the importance of the socio-political system over that of primary groups for the generation of compliance and loyalty. Chapter 2 presents the evidence for the different levels of loyalty in Polis and Royal armies, showing how citizen forces were robustly cohesive in the field, whereas the armies of the Successors and Hellenistic kings frequently succumbed to treachery, non-compliance, and disloyalty. I argue that one of the main reasons for this contrast lay in the powerful socio-political system that enveloped Polis armies, allowing them to develop a normative-moral compliance relationship. At the same time, however, it caused intense political infighting. Chapter 3 will explore one feature of the socio-political system: funerary practices. We shall analyse how armies and societies commemorated their soldiers, and witness the effects of civic ideology on the expressive content in soldiers' epitaphs. The evidence suggests strong normative elements for Polis armies, but does not allow us to draw firm conclusions regarding Royal armies. Chapter 4 will discuss the third type of congruent compliance relationship, i.e. coercive-alienative. I describe how neither army had access to, or need of, an effective coercive apparatus, as both had found other ways to create and maintain compliance. Chapter 5 will analyse the reward structures of Polis and Royal armies, and I will draw attention to the overall symbolic nature of rewards in citizen armies, and the largely material aspects of Royal army rewards, while pointing out ways in which Royal army elites strove to exert normative power through settling soldiers. This reflects the predominant types of power and involvement that characterised these organisations. Finally, a concluding section highlights the contrasts that were revealed in this thesis, but also discusses areas of convergence where the 'Polis army vs. Royal army' dichotomy broke down: creating and maintaining loyalty is a complex task, and military organisations employ more than one way to achieve it.

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

War ranged in the mountains during the four years of the American Civil War. Campaigns intended to capture the Cumberland Gap and the vital railroad line leading out of Knoxville, Tennessee became a prerogative. However, these campaigns evolved from large infantry units to mobile mounted units that allowed them to operate in the mountainous region of Southern Appalachia. First commanders in the area experimented with using the common infantry units, as they would in any military campaign, but they soon found that large infantry units ate out the surrounding communities. Commanders found that mounted units could quickly move through the mountains and to their destination, thereby living off the land for a shorter amount of time and accomplishing their missions more successfully.

During World War Two, the European Jewish population was faced with this during Shoah (the Holocaust). From Kristallnacht in November 1938 to the collapse of the Nazi Regime in May 1945, they relied heavily on each other and their instincts to discover ways to survive while in the ghettos, labor camps, and partisan units, if they managed to escape and head for the forests. Even with some Jews turning on their own to help the Nazis, the vast majority stuck together and did everything they could to persist and survive. While only two uprisings were viewed as successes, the ghetto and camp revolts that failed still showed the Jewish people were not going to lie down to the Germans and that they were never going to give up. This thesis details some of the ways Jews fought for survival in the ghettos, concentration/extermination camps, and as partisan fighters.

This thesis examines martial race ideology in the British Army during the mid-nineteenth century. A “martial race” was a group of people that the British considered to excel in the art of warfare due to biological and cultural characteristics. This thesis examines perceived “martial” natures or lack thereof of the Highland Scots and the Irish during this era. Central to this analysis are the Crimean War (1853-1856) and the Indian Mutiny of 1857 which provided opportunities for soldiers to display their “martial” qualities. The Crimean War was the first war where the daily newspapers covered every aspect of the war using correspondents, and it gave soldiers the chance to gain recognition through this medium. The Indian Mutiny represented a crisis for Britain, and it gave soldiers the opportunity to be recognized as “stabilizers of the empire.” However, despite their similarities, the Highland regiments became some of the most revered regiments while the Irish came to be seen as untrustworthy, leading many in the British government to initiate efforts to decrease the role that the Irish played in Britain’s conflicts. This reluctance was due to the turmoil that erupted as a result of the anti-Union Fenian Brotherhood in Ireland during the 1860s. The difficulty in stabilizing Ireland in the wake of Fenian terrorist attacks also exposed old prejudices of the Irish related to religion, race, and class. This was evidenced through parliamentary debates and British newspapers reporting on the crises.

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As a border state, Kentucky occupied a unique position in the early days of the Civil War. Her neutral stance was observed by the belligerents for the first five months of the conflict, but in September 1861, troops entered the state. Confederate armies under the leadership of Brigadier Generals Humphrey Marshall and Feliz Zollicoffer sought to drive the Federal forces from eastern Kentucky. Through a series of skirmishes, however, the Southern armies were repelled and placed on the defensive. Later defeats at Logan’s Cross Roads and Middle Creek in early January 1862 cleared eastern Kentucky of Confederate forces. For the next several months, the Confederates regrouped out of the state and planned a major offensive to deliver Kentucky to the Confederacy. Under the guidance of Generals Braxto Bragg and E. Kirby Smith, the fateful invasion took shape in August 1862. But by then, possibly the best chance for a Confederate Kentucky had already passed.