This revealing book illustrates how the passion for war was fostered and promoted. The author provides detailed evidence of how and why an image of Germany as a nation determined upon world hegemony was deliberately promoted by a group of British newspaper editors, proprietors and journalists. This book examines the role of these ‘scaremongers’. Were they as influential as their critics claimed? Did they influence the minds of their readers and shape events? Were they guilty of creating a climate of opinion that ensured that their prophecies of inevitable Anglo-German war became fact in 1914?
This book illustrates the relationship between British military policy and the development of British war aims during the opening years of the First World War. Basing his work on a wide range of unpublished documentary sources, David French reassesses for the benefit of students and scholars alike what was meant by ‘a war of attrition’.
In 1914, advertising was much less sophisticated that it is today, radio was in its infancy, television was undeveloped, telephones were just coming into use, the gargantuan party rallies of Hitler or Mussolini were still in the future, and the idea of using ocmmunications media to control the thoughts of an entire population was new, relatively unexplored, and not of interest to governments to any great extent. Propaganda was a part of life before 1914, and the term was coming into increasingly widespread usage. But other institutions of society, such as the church, the press, business, political parties, and philanthropy, were the major producers - not government.
A quarter of a century before the Blitz of 1940, the inhabitants of south-west Essex were terrorized by an earlier aerial menace. Over the course of four years, German Zeppelins, Gothas and Giants flew above their homes, unleashing hundreds of highly explosive and incendiary bombs on London. During three of these raids, bombs were dropped on Leyton and many others landed elsewhere in south-west Essex. These early air raids are now largely forgotten in local memory, but for the inhabitants of the time the attacks were unprecedented, unexpected and lethal. In the years since the Great War a great deal of literature has been published on London's first air raids and about the defence network that evolved around the metropolis, but what happened in the capital's eastern suburbs and the nearby Essex countryside has received less coverage. This meticulously researched and insightful book attempts to put that right, looking at the area which, in 1914, was part of south-west Essex, but now comprises the London boroughs of Waltham Forest, Redbridge, Havering, Newham, and Barking and Dagenham. Focussing in particular on Leyton and Ilford, this is the first book to ever examine what happened before and after the raiders reached and bombarded the capital. The author has included a wide range of contemporary letters, diaries and newspaper reports from local sources, plus several previously unseen photographs. To set the story in its wider context, the book also contains a wealth of information about the defence of the London area generally and vivid reports from combatants on both sides.
The First World War appears as a fault line in Britain’s twentieth-century history. Between August 1914 and November 1918 the titanic struggle against Imperial Germany and her allies consumed more people, more money and more resources than any other conflict Britain had hitherto experienced. For the first time, it opened up a Home Front that stretched into all parts of the British polity, society and culture, touching the lives of every citizen regardless of age, gender and class. Even vegetables were grown in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Britain and World War One throws attention on these civilians who fought the war on the Home Front. Harnessing recent scholarship, and drawing on original documents, oral testimony and historical texts, this book casts a fresh look over different aspects of British society during the four long years of war. It revisits the early war enthusiasm and the making of Kitchener’s new armies; the emotive debates over conscription; the relationships between politics, government and popular opinion; women working in wartime industries; the popular experience of war and the question of social change. The book also explores areas of wartime Britain overlooked by recent histories, including the impact of the war on rural society; the mobilization of industry, and the importance of technology, as well as exploring responses to air raids, food and housing shortages; the challenges to traditional social and sexual mores and wartime culture. Britain and World War One is an essential book for all students and interested lay readers of the First World War.
Volume 19 of the Congress Series contains the proceedings of ICCA's 2016 Mauritius Congress, the first ICCA Congress held in Africa. In this volume, renowned practitioners, scholars and jurists from the region and around the world explore the contribution of arbitration to the rule of law and economic development; the conformity of arbitration with international standards of due process and the rule of law; and the benefits and challenges of arbitration in Africa. Topical issues of interest for practitioners, academics and students of arbitration - in the region and internationally - include: • Due process issues in constituting the arbitral tribunal and challenging its members • Interim measures issued by arbitral tribunals and domestic courts • Burden, standard and types of proof in the corruption defence • What to do (and what to avoid doing) to prepare a persuasive case • Do post-award remedies ensure conformity of the arbitral process with the rule of law? • Do rules and guidelines properly regulate the conduct of arbitration? • The interface between domestic courts and arbitral tribunals • What are appropriate remedies for findings of illegality in investment arbitration? • The effect of foreign national court judgments relating to the arbitral award • What does the future hold for investment arbitration in Africa and beyond?
In spite of the general phobia of federalism, there is a strong federalist trend within British political culture. In three very different historical contexts, federalism inspired the action of political movements such as the Imperial Federation League, the Round Table and the Federal Union. Indeed, it was regarded as the solution to problems arising from the first signs of the possible collapse of Great Britain and its Empire. The Round Table Movement played a particularly interesting role in this regard, attempting to reverse the rapid and inexorable decline of the British Empire. It was a political organisation with roots in all the major peripheries of the Empire and almost unlimited financial resources. This volume discusses the strategies and means employed by the group in order to maintain the British Empire’s global prominence. The book’s main argument is that we did not have a “British century” – the nineteenth – and an “American century” – the twentieth – but, rather, four centuries of Anglo–Saxon supremacy, which witnessed the affirmation of the national principle – expression of the Continental political tradition – and its overcoming through its opposite, the federal principle, the expression of the insular political tradition.
Spies of the Kaiser examines the scope and objectives of German covert operations in Great Britain before and during the First World War. It assesses the effect of German espionage on Anglo-German relations and discusses the extent to which the fear of German espionage in the United Kingdom shaped the British intelligence community in the early Twentieth-century. The study is based on original archival material, including hitherto unexploited German records and recently declassified British documents.
Can you name the creator of the Territorial Army, the British Expeditionary Force, the Imperial General Staff, and the Officers' Training Corps? The man who laid the foundation stones of MI5, MI6, the RAF, the LSE, Imperial College, the "redbrick" universities, and the Medical Research Council? This book restores Richard Burdon Haldane to his rightful place among the great men of British and Canadian history. Serving as war minister in the 1905 Liberal British government, his groundbreaking proposals on defence, education, and government structure were astonishingly ahead of his time – the very building blocks of modern Britain. Even the Canadian Constitution, as now interpreted, is unthinkable without Haldane. His ubiquitous networks ranged from Wilde to Einstein, Churchill to Carnegie, king to kaiser; his polymathic interests enabled pioneering cross-party, cross-sector cooperation. Yet in 1915 he was ejected from the Lord Chancellorship, unjustly vilified by an ignorant press campaign as a German sympathizer. John Campbell charts these ups and downs, reveals the intensely personal side of Haldane through previously unpublished love letters, and shows his enormous relevance in our search for just societies and states today. Amidst political and national instability, it is surely now right to reinstate Haldane as an outstanding example of true statesmanship.
The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 was done mainly, if one is to believe US policy at the time, to liberate the people of Iraq from an oppressive dictator. However, the many protests in London, New York, and other cities imply that the policy of “making the world safe for democracy” was not shared by millions of people in many Western countries. Thinking about this controversy inspired the present volume, which takes a closer look at how society responded to the outbreaks and conclusions of the First and Second World Wars. In order to examine this relationship between the conduct of wars and public opinion, leading scholars trace the moods and attitudes of the people of four Western countries (Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy) before, during and after the crucial moments of the two major conflicts of the twentieth century. Focusing less on politics and more on how people experienced the wars, this volume shows how the distinction between enthusiasm for war and concern about its consequences is rarely clear-cut.
