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.

This research examines the relationship between masculinity and recruitment at the University of Toronto during the Great War. Through a gendered framework established by historians such as Judith Butler, masculinity is approached as a constructed process that encompasses a variety of complex relationships between the individual subject and social processes. The following questions are explored: What motivated the administration the University to instate policies that first encouraged, and then forced, male students to enter active service? How did dominant discourses of masculinity influence recruitment efforts and the subsequent movement towards mandatory military training? The research reveals that gendered understandings of war and recruitment on campus presented active service as the defining moment of manhood. Enlisting, then, was understood as more than a willingness to take up arms; it publicly signified that a man was committed to the defense of democracy and to securing the freedom of generations to come.

This thesis analyzes the culture of coercive voluntarism in Georgia during the First World War using studies of legislation and vigilance, the press, and the Georgia Council of Defense. Each of the themes studied demonstrates how organizations attempted to coerce support of the US war effort in Georgia. The study focuses on Georgia as a single state rather than simply as part of the South, as most other studies have done. The purpose is to challenge studies that have emphasized resistance only, which presents an incomplete picture of Georgia’s domestic scene during the war. In fact, many elements within Georgia—at the state, local, and citizen level—actively supported the war, often with the same level of intention, if not the same results, as did other areas of the country. Georgia attempted to comply with federal imperatives while preserving its rights as a state.

The allotments scheme was a complex and diverse social, political, and economic movement that provided the labouring classes with small plots of land, usually no larger than one-eighth of an acre, on which to grow vegetables. From the late nineteenth century to the end of the First World War in 1918, the East End of London experienced an overwhelming increase in allotment cultivation and provision. Working-class men in the boroughs of Hackney, Poplar, East Ham, and West Ham participated in the allotments scheme for a variety of reasons. Allotments were places in which a working man could grow his own food with his familys help to supplement low, casual or seasonal wages, and his gardening kept him out of the pub and on the land. During the war period, food prices increased to intolerable levels in the East End so that the allotment was one of the few ways to reasonably feed the family, especially for the casual dockers. East Enders maintained personal and collective connections to the land that they had lost both through the Enclosure Acts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the urban sprawl of the early twentieth century. Finally, allotment gardening provided the healthy leisure activities of exercise, horticultural education, and civic participation. </p><p>The allotment was embedded in a social ethic that espoused industriousness, sobriety, respectability, and independence and in this way was a middle class solution to a working class problem. Yet, working men adopted the scheme as their own with enthusiasm and dedication and created natural spaces in the degraded landscape of the East End. By 1916, with the passage of the Cultivation of Lands Order, the East End boasted thousands of allotments growing vegetables on Londons vacant lots largely due to the persistent demands of residents on their local borough councils. The allotment association provided East End men with an unparalleled opportunity for grassroots political participation and gave way to a marked increase in working-class political awareness during the period. East Enders gained a foothold in local, regional, metropolitan, and later national politics for the first time in decades. The allotment in the East End also significantly changed the environment in which it was situated. The green space improved the esthetic of the area, adding to the general well-being of all of the boroughs citizens. East End allotments brought life to an area that many believed was lifeless. Not only did working men prove they could bring their sooty surroundings to life, but that they could also bring back to life the long-latent self-sufficiency of their ancestors. They were attracted to the scheme at a higher rate than many of the other 28 London boroughs because of their poverty, their maintained connection to green space, their cultural and political interest in land, and their profound sense of the loss of the land and the independence it brought.

This thesis outlines the development of Royal Flying Corpss (RFC) training programme from 1912 to 1918. It is based largely on archival sources from the National Archives and Imperial War Museum (London) and the Bundesarchiv (Freiburg, Germany). It considers the changes to the theoretical, practical and in-flight instruction methods used by the Royal Flying Corps. Within this discussion it analyzes the difficulties encountered by the RFC while attempting to train their aviators. It argues that initially the training programme was a detriment to British war effort in the air, as many pilots entered combat without sufficient training. This, however, was not the result of a flawed training regimen. Actually, the RFC training programme remained in tune with the realities of the war over the Western Front. The problems encountered by the RFC were largely the result of the circumvention or ignorance of the training programme by instructors. Nevertheless, British pilot training improved as the war went on both theoretically and practically and ultimately became more efficient than the training programmes in France and Germany. It pays special attention to the use of dual-control aircraft for the purposes of training and the positive effects these changes had on the British war effort. It also touches on some thematic issues such as gender, individuality, modernity and technology.

David Lloyd George, who was the Prime Minister during the period of 1916-1922, served in the British Parliament almost half-century. This thesis focuses on his foreign policy concerning the Ottoman Empire during his Premiership. Lloyd George intruded himself into almost every aspect of the &lsquo / Turkish Question&rsquo / during and after the World War I, and was at the &lsquo / centre&rsquo / in determining the fate of the Ottoman Empire. Although, the effect of &lsquo / forces&rsquo / of economics and social elements have replaced the &lsquo / Great Man&rsquo / theory of history, as it is in this case, Lloyd George&rsquo / s role in the dissolution of the Empire can not be truly abandoned. In the episode of &lsquo / building&rsquo / a new Europe and the dissolution of the Empire, Lloyd George worked closely with other actors such as / Clemenceau, Wilson and on domestic platform, Balfour, Curzon and Churchill who all shared the very similar views. Lloyd George, starting from a modest and humble Welsh background, made his way in politics to the top, through his ability and persistent determination and earned rightfully to be remembered as the &lsquo / man who won the war&rsquo / and as the founder of modern welfare state. His determination to &lsquo / finish&rsquo / the Ottoman Empire is often attributed to his devotion to Greece rather than to his personality and imperialistic approach / on the other hand, the British State&rsquo / s role in decision making process in this issue is overlooked. This study, attempts to establish the roles of Lloyd George and the British State during the attempts for the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and exemplifies the formation and implementation of the policies towards the Ottoman Empire, an end carried out whether due to Lloyd George or otherwise. This study traces in detail the evolution of Lloyd George&rsquo / s and the British State&rsquo / s policies in regard to the Ottoman Empire, and is based primarily on original research conducted in private and governmental documentary collections in England.

Second Constitutional Era (1908-1918) was a period within which great changes occurred in the Ottoman Empire. On the one hand, it was a part of the modernization process that began in late eighteenth century / on the other hand, it was the last period of the Empire that had its own dynamics. This study is to examine changes and continuities in a locality, the Sivas Province, during the Second Constitutional Regime. The Sivas Province was one of the largest and most populated Anatolian provinces. It located in the middle of Anatolia therefore it had a geopolitical importance. Moreover, it was one of the six Eastern Provinces with a considerable Armenian population. Sivas had the biggest Armenian and Greek population among these provinces. Thus, both geopolitical importance and population characteristics make the province an appropriate place to examine change and continuity during the Second Constitutional Regime. In this study, transformation of the province is examined over some topics such as demographic characteristics, political life, administrative, educational and economic structures. The research about these topics indicates that three main dynamics of the Second Constitutional Regime were influential on developments in the Sivas case. These dynamics are war, population movements especially the Armenian Deportation and nationalism. These dynamics also determined implementation of the modernization policies in the Sivas Province during the Constitutional Regime. Therefore, transformation/change of the province is examined over these dynamics.

The creation of exhibits and exhibit-going have been part of popular culture for centuries and have long been hallmarks of outreach to new audiences for archival services. With the explosion of digital technologies there are many new and exciting avenues for archivists to create exhibitions to display their collections and engage with their users. Websites such as Facebook, Instagram, Tumbler and Flickr as well as increasingly diverse website functionalities have greatly contributed to a new understanding of visual literacy both within and outside the archival profession. Web 2.0 technologies and web analytics have opened up opportunities for archives to curate their records in many different ways for much larger audiences. This study will examine how visual records, specifically the archival photographs from the Lewis B. Foote fonds at the Archives of Manitoba, could be used to commemorate the First World War and shape our understanding of it. During the centennial anniversary of the war it is important to study how such images relating to this conflict might be used today to create specific narratives for understanding it through archival outreach activities such as exhibitions. This can help us rethink the aims and characteristics of archival exhibitions, thereby shedding greater light on the role of archives in creating public memory and enhancing societal understanding of archives and their relevance to important public interests. / October 2015

Horatio Lord Nelson, Britain's most famous naval figure, revolutionized what victory meant to the British Royal Navy and the British populace at the turn of the nineteenth century. But his legacy continued after his death in 1805, and a century after his untimely passing Nelson meant as much or more to Britain than he did during his lifetime. This thesis utilizes primary sources from the British Royal Navy and the general British public to explore what the cultural memory of Horatio Nelson's life and achievements meant to Britain throughout the Edwardian era and to the dawn of the First World War. An introductory literature review provides a thorough explanation of how Nelson's legacy has been perceived by past historians and how this legacy will be examined throughout the thesis. The manner in which Nelson was viewed by both his naval contemporaries and the general British public during his lifetime is then surveyed, with a specific focus on the outpouring of national grief that followed Nelson's death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. A major portion of the thesis explores how Nelson's legacy developed throughout the century following his death. Separate studies of Nelson's professional memory among his Royal Navy successors and his cultural memory in British society as it became ever more focused on naval concerns follow; these take the thesis chronologically up through the final decades of the nineteenth century and are then combined in a discussion of the degree to which Nelson's legacy permeated all Britons, regardless of profession, in the early years of the twentieth century. The thesis concludes with a brief discussion of the impact Nelson's legacy had on Britain during the early months of the First World War and a broader analysis of how the cultural and professional memory of Horatio Nelson's naval achievements in 1805 created an atmosphere in which a naval victory decisive enough to satisfy all aspects of British society was impossible in 1914.

The orthodox narrative of the First World War, which maintains that the conflict was futile, unnecessary and wasteful, continues to dominate historical representations of the war. Attempts by revisionist historians to dispute this interpretation have made little impact on Britain’s collective memory of the conflict. The Christmas truce has come to represent the frustration and anger that soldiers felt towards the meaningless war they had been trapped into fighting. However, the Christmas truce, which at the time it occurred was seen as an event of minimal importance, was not an act of defiance, but one which arose from the unprecedented conditions of static trench warfare and the adaptation of the soldiers to that environment. An examination of contemporaneous accounts of the truce demonstrates that it was viewed by the soldiers involved as merely a brief holiday, and that British army commanders generally ignored or tolerated the truce, eventually releasing orders preventing its continuation or reoccurrence but taking no steps to punish any of the men who took part in it. A review of the letters and diaries of truce participants sheds light on the event itself, while simultaneously challenging the orthodox narrative of the First World War.