Canadian remembrance of the Great War (1914-1918) in the early twenty-first century is often associated with grand gestures at national monuments like the opening of the new Canadian War Museum in 2005 and the restoration of the Vimy Ridge Memorial in 2007. However, these sites of memory, what Pierre Nora terms lieux de mémoire, are not part of the everyday environments of memory, the milieux de mémoire, of most Canadians. In my investigation of three contemporary works of Canadian literature: The Danger Tree by David Macfarlane, Broken Ground by Jack Hodgins, and Unity (1918) by Kevin Kerr, locally-based storytellers describe the continued influence of the Great War on their individual Canadian communities. The fictionalized narrating personas in these three works create what I refer to as bio-geographies: first-person accounts of the narrator’s particular social and memory environments. While the bio-geographers in these three texts lack first-hand experience of the Great War, their writing reflects the continued repercussions of the conflict in the weeks, years, and decades after the 1918 armistice. The Great War differentially affected thousands of communities in Canada and Newfoundland. Constructing a coherent national narrative that accounts for the multiple lived experiences of individuals in communities across North America is virtually impossible. Turning to local representations of the Great War (in the case of the three bio-geographic texts: depictions of communities in Newfoundland, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan) provides a sense of the nation as a diverse landscape of memory with multiple vantage points. Negotiating the complex terrain of self, place, and memory, the bio-geographers in the three works I examine create representations of the past that reveal how sites of memory, lieux de mémoire, come to be firmly embedded in the ongoing lived experiences of comunity members, the milieux de mémoire. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Following the failed Jacobite Rebellion of 1745-46 many Highlanders fought for the British Army in the Seven Years War and American Revolutionary War. Although these soldiers were primarily motivated by economic considerations, their experiences were romanticized after Waterloo and helped to create a new, unified Scottish martial identity. This militaristic narrative, reinforced throughout the nineteenth century, explains why Scots fought and died in disproportionately large numbers during the First World War.

Magister Artium - MA / Mathew Arnold's 1867 poem presents romantic love as a condition of permanence that can offer refuge from a changeable world. Sixty years later, however, Virginia Woolf observes that romance has become rare as a subject of modern poetry. Her suggestion that there is an historical explanation for this change in literary subject matter is the starting point for this study of the representation of women in the early poetry of T.S. Eliot. Whereas Woolf tentatively dates the "death" of romance to the First World War I will suggest that this change in poetic sentiment is evident in Eliot's early work, some of which predates the war. In the poems under discussion, written between the years 1910 ("Portrait of a Lady" and "The Love Song of J.

This thesis is a transnational study of the military actions and responses related to prisoners of war in World War I. Building on the works human rights scholars, I explore the how the collective rights afforded to prisoners of war under the 1906 Geneva Convention and 1907 Hague Convention served as a precursor to the concept of human rights that emerged after World War II. I argue that German military treated prisoners of war according to national interest, rather than international law. Specifically, I explore how the concepts of "military necessity" and "reciprocity" drove German internment practices, and how German internment practices escalated in violence during the last two years of the war. The violent practices committed by the Germans against prisoners of war produced an international demand to hold the perpetrators of wartime atrocities accountable for their actions in the postwar period. / Master of Arts

The following dissertation examines the little-known history of Canada’s Great War disabled. During the Great War Canada mobilized 620,000 soldiers, most of them volunteers. Nearly 120,000 would one day receive compensation for a disability incurred on, or aggravated by military service. Thousands more suffered from related injuries, diseases, or traumas but lacked the documentary evidence necessary to garner material support from the state. The core objective of this dissertation is to explore how policy-makers responded to these challenges, and how their efforts shaped the daily experiences of veterans from all walks of life. By fusing an analysis of policy with a social history of disability, this study uncovers the multiple paths disabled veterans embarked upon during their civil re-establishment. Few followed unfirom trajectories. The affects of disability on a veteran’s wellbeing varied widely based on numerous factors including pre-war social standing, support networks, material resources, age, and overall health. While most studies of disability and the Great War have focued on the cultural, medical, or political impact of disability, few adequately explain how both government policy and extraneous forces affected the lives of disabled veterans. Utilizing a wealth of statistical data and a large sample group of case files, “State, Service, and Survival: Canada’s Great War Disabled, 1914-44” is the first Canadian study to address this gap in our collective understanding of the war’s legacy. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>This investigation contributes to the existing scholarship on Britain and the First World War by examining the war's impact on the county of Devon in southwest England. More specifically, this study pays particular attention to how communities, families, and individuals responded to the pressures of war and to what extent social unity was achieved at the county level. By exploring the relationship between the state and its citizens, this dissertation questions the extent to which Devonians were passive and accepting of the sacrifices and hardships that the government required from them, how their experiences were informed, and to what extent class, gender, and religious differences limited public support for the war? While this dissertation argues that Devonians were generally supportive of British participation in the war, that support was provisional and based on the perception of 'equality of sacrifice' - the expectation that the burdens of war would be shared equally throughout the county and across all segments of society. This study reveals that the inequalities of sacrifice and inconsistencies of government policies burdened some groups more than others and led to social disaffection. Rather than promoting solidarity, the war often exacerbated rural/urban tensions, highlighted the social and economic divisions that characterized relations between the communities of northern and southern Devon, and led to frequent and public criticisms of the government's management of the war.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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Yes / Many members of Europe’s national minorities had particularly terrible experiences during the First World War. This article examines how three ethnic German minority activists from the Baltic region responded to those dreadful years by, subsequently, presenting themselves as peace campaigners promoting a novel model for multi-ethnic society. They promoted ideas such as the ‘a-national state’ and ‘cultural autonomy’ at both national and international levels, not least in the hope of influencing the League of Nations. To what extent should they be accepted as early peacebuilders? / British Academy

My Ph. D thesis, Panic over the Pub: Drink and the First World War, considers the causes, consequences and control of popular drinking behaviour and how broader currents of social debate affected the perception of the alleged alcohol problem during the First World War, shedding new light upon government inclinations towards state control during the conflict. Within current historiography there is a consummate lack of understanding concerning the formation of opinion on the drink problem ‘from below’ and its effect upon the ‘high politics’ of the decision making procedure. My thesis considers how ‘drink’ and ‘leisure’ became increasingly contentious and a domestic problem due principally to established fears concerning working class behaviour and military failures on the Western Front. My thesis argues that moral panic, rather than factual certainties, dictated attitudes to drinking in Britain during the war. An investigation of the Central Control Board, a government body established to deal specifically with the drink problem in the exigencies of conflict, constitutes the central core of my thesis, together with an assessment of the role of Lord D’Abernon, Chairman of this organisation.

The purpose of this study has been to research what is included in the First World War teaching in English compulsory school. The teaching of this historical event is performed in a context where the war is yearly commemorated and given attention in society at large in various ways. Through conducting interviews with six history teacher working at a school in northeastern England the study was set out to investigate how teaching of the war is performed in general as well as with specific focus directed towards potential challenges in connection to the remembrance events, the collectively remembered public history and issues such as gender and colonial representation. The study shows that there is a clear focus on the past in the teaching of the war with trench warfare and life during the war being issues that are discussed. Connections are further made to the present where the importance of remembrance is stressed. The main challenge experienced by the teachers regarding the First World War is the lack of living witnesses due to the time distance. In consequence, the war is seen as less relevant to learn about among the pupils. However, remembrance symbols can in this instance be a tool in order to entice interest for the study of the war and the common perception among the teachers is that the pupils enjoy the study of the First World War.