During the First World War people from the five continents resided in France and Flanders, mostly in service of of the French and British armies. Besides European settlers, it concerned hundreds of thousands of indigenous inhabitants from many colonies. The two largest subaltern groups who served on the Western Front in British service - each in itself accounting for some 140,000 men - were Asian: from the Indian subcontinent and from China. In my book I investigate not only their motives to join up and the nature of their war service on the Western Front, but above all how these subaltern groups experienced a modern war in Europe and what impact this residence in a Europe-in-war had on their subsequent lives and on the society to which they returned. A central position in my judgment of their war experiences is their meeting with the European 'other', the local populations who hosted these uninvited guests. I investigate how the European population underwent the confrontation with their non-European guests, but especially which impression the Europeans, their society and their culture made upon the Asian rank and file. In- and outside the Army Indians and Chinese were confronted with different degrees of xenophobia, racism and discrimination, while at the same time friendly engagements with Europeans also occurred. All this lead to a strengthened self- and (proto)national consciousness that manifested itself in initiatives in different domains of human activity: politics, culture, education, ... Through the comparative perspective, differences as well as similarities between both Asian groups on the Western Front become clear, and parallels can be drawn in their evolution towards a stronger (self)consciousness and an increasing identification with the (proto)nation through their war experiences in Europe. In this respect, so I argue, the war experiences of Indians and Chinese on the Western front contributed to the increasingly anti-imperialist feelings and attitudes in both countries.

Little art-historical scholarship has been dedicated to fine art responding to the British home front during the First World War. Within pre-war British society concepts of sexual difference functioned to promote masculine authority. Nevertheless in Britain during wartime enlarged female employment alongside the presence of injured servicemen suggested feminine authority and masculine weakness, thereby temporarily destabilizing pre-war values. Adopting a socio-historical perspective, this thesis argues that artworks engaging with the home front have been largely excluded from art history because of partiality shown towards masculine authority within the matrices of British society. Furthermore, this situation has been supported by the writing of art history, which has, arguably, followed similar premise. This study will demonstrate that engagement with the home front inevitably meant that artists’ work could be interpreted as supporting different values to the pre-war period. However, the reintegration of ex-servicemen after the war resulted in the promotion of the wartime ordeal of male combatants. Not only did this restore the pre-war position of men, it inspired canonical values for British First World War art to uphold masculine authority. Consequently much art engaging with the home front has been deemed antithetical to established canonical values and written-out of art history.

Learning is critical to battlefield success. \(Ceteris\) \(paribus\), victory becomes more likely when militaries adapt faster and more effectively than their opponents. This thesis examines the effectiveness of the British army’s process for learning and adaptation across six different operational theatres during the First World War. Using a series of case studies, it considers how the army shared knowledge, responded to change, and integrated newcomers. It finds that the army’s attitudes towards learning were more thoroughgoing than hitherto thought. With its pre-war ethos and increased fluidity in wartime, the army displayed organisational and cultural flexibility across all theatres, encouraging a culture of innovation through the promotion of informal learning and tactical diversity. In a broader sense, the thesis does three things. First, it moves beyond the standard Western Front narrative of learning in the First World War, offering a more rounded examination of the army’s experience. Secondly, it highlights the complexity of military learning, considering that which occurs institutionally, between formations, and between theatres. Finally, it reflects on the importance of an organisation’s ethos when faced with uncertainty. This thesis, therefore, offers a point of departure for future studies of traditionally bureaucratic institutions and their ability to learn and innovate.

The idea of a learning process has become broadly accepted among military historians of the First World War, but explanations for how and why this occurred remain limited. This thesis uses a number of different disciplines alongside more orthodox historical analysis of what the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) did at the divisional level to learn the lessons from combat in an uncompromising operational environment. At the beginning of 1916 the BEF was predominantly a citizen army lacking experience. This marked a low-point in the BEF's fighting capabilities. This thesis charts the development from 1916 to the Armistice in 1918 using the British 32nd Division as a case study. The division participated in a number of major operations including the Battle of the Somme, the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, the Battles of Nieuport, Passchendaele, Amiens and the Hundred Days. They experienced both success and failure ensuring they are a representative case from which to draw broader conclusions. This thesis argues that the BEF's learning process developed as structural improvement occurred, battle experience was gained and leadership improved.

Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Ernest William Turner served Canada admirably in two wars and played an instrumental role in unifying veterans’ groups in the post-war period. His experience was unique in the Canadian Expeditionary Force; in that, it included senior command in both the combat and administrative aspects of the Canadian war effort. This thesis, based on new primary research and interpretations, revises the prevalent view of Turner. The thesis recasts five key criticisms of Turner and presents a more balanced and informed assessment of Turner. His appointments were not the result of his political affiliation but because of his courage and capability. Rather than an incompetent field commander, Turner developed from a middling combat general to an effective division commander by late 1916. His transfer to England was the result of the need for a proficient field commander to reform the administration. Turner proved to be an excellent administrator, a strong nationalist, and was crucially responsible for improvements in administration and training in England. Finally, the conflict with Sir Arthur Currie, the commander of the Canadian Corps, rather than being motivated by obstructionist jealousy was the outcome of competing institutional imperatives and Currie’s challenging personality.

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 offers a comparative analysis of British wartime civilian internment policies, focusing on three key case studies: the South African War (1899-1902), the First World War and the Second World War. It seeks to determine the place of the ‗concentration camps‘ of the South African War within the history of internment and the extent to which world war internment episodes were shaped by both historical and contemporary experiences. It suggests that reactions to internment, at both state and popular levels, are revealing about Britain‘s self-image in relation to civil rights, justice and the treatment of minorities. In particular, the thesis argues that gender ideologies were highly significant in determining the development of internment policies, playing a central role in shaping popular images of the enemy and underpinning official assumptions about the treatment of women by the state. The debates and discussions which emerged around internment policy also provide insight into the ways in which the experience of war can accentuate the exclusion of minorities and the reinforcement of racial stereotypes. The thesis examines the ways in which racialized and gendered discourses converged during each conflict to create particular understandings of the enemy, which in turn had a discernible impact on the development of internment policies.

The Ottoman Empire was in serious decline by the late nineteenth century. Years of misrule, war, and oppression of its various nationalities had virtually driven the Turks from Europe, leaving the weakened Empire on the verge of collapse. By the 1870s the Armenians were the most troubling group, having gained international sympathy at the Congress of Berlin. As a result, violence against the Armenians had escalated dramatically by the turn of the century. They felt, however, that their fortune had changed when the liberal Young Turks seized power from the Sultan in 1908. Unfortunately, the Young Turks had a much more ominous plan for the Armenians. When they entered World War I as an ally of the Central Powers, they decided to use the cover of war to exterminate the Ottoman Armenians. Over one million Armenians were murdered, and the Turkish government's crimes went unpunished in the postwar world.

This thesis is an investigation that combines historical research into military records and genealogy in the examination of the brief military career and death in courageous circumstances of George P. Cole. It also considers the policies of the U.S. military as regards battlefield treatment of deaths, immediate burial and subsequent repatriation of the remains. The author draws upon family records, official government reports and the recollections of the friends and superiors of the deceased.

This paper focuses on Native American military service in Euro-American Wars. It analyzes their reasons for fighting and compares those reasons to the reasons of other racial and ethnic groups. This paper explores how certain racial and ethnic groups are marginalized and “otherized” and how they occasionally attempt to assimilate into mainstream society through military service. Irish Americans and African Americans viewed the Civil War in this way, while Native Americans hoped they would be able to improve their individual situations. Native Americans fought for purposes of assimilation and citizenship in World War I, and while they were technically granted citizenship their conditions did not improve. Neither military service or various government policies have allowed Native Americans to fully integrate into mainstream society. Today they still suffer because they are seen as “others” and stereotypes.