No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This research is about innovation. Using the example of the British Army, which underwent great changes during the First World War, I focus on the role of soldiers and civilian in its process of adaptation to the new tools of warfare. Innovation was not a process forced from the top of the Army or produced solely by officers. Change came from a complex interaction between soldiers, army institutions, and civilians at home. Technology was the topic of this interaction: soldiers used technology to lobby for change and improve their effectiveness on the battlefield, civilians used it to help and participate to the war, while institutions transformed their own structures to adapt to the fast-paced changes, providing a common place to absorb and redistribute innovation. I try to break the common narrative that portrays the inventor producing a weapon, a committee of the army adopting it, and the weapon changing warfare. Ideas surfaced from a complex environment that looked for solutions in a constant dialogue between the experience of the battlefield, the personal competencies of soldiers and civilians, and the necessities of the British Army to simplify, streamline, and standardize. / History

There is a gap in existing literature in regards to the role of community in understanding the motivations of Civil War soldiers. Current historiographical studies try to apply the same motivational factors to entire states, armies, or to all Union or Confederate soldiers in general. Some historians even attempt to show that regardless of Union or Confederate, soldiers' motivations were similar due to a shared American identity. This thesis explores a community in the mountain valleys of present-day Southwest Virginia, which stayed loyal to Richmond and the Confederacy. This case study of Montgomery County illustrates that enlistment motivations varied based on a mixture of internal and external factors distinctive to a soldier's community; therefore, there cannot be a representative sample of the Confederate Army that covers all the nuances that makes each community unique. Enlistment was both a personal decision and one influenced by the environment. Montgomery County soldiers were the product of their community that included external factors such as slavery, occupation, and class, and internal ideological themes such as honor, masculinity, and patriotism, that compelled them to enlist in the Confederate Army in the first year of the war, April 1861 through April 1862. These men enlisted to protect their status quo when it was convenient for them to leave their home and occupation, and if they had fewer family obligations. / Master of Arts