British Civilians Research Articles

Susan R. Grayzel. The Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. 288. $34.99 (cloth).

Susan R. Grayzel. The Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. 288. $34.99 (cloth).

“This story is not about immigrants but about refugees”: “Loose Change” by Andrea Levy

ABSTRACT In the past two decades, the critical discourse of migration has shifted from an emphatic validation of migrancy still dominant at the end of the last century to a more differentiated view, taking into account the challenges of forced displacement. This article describes this shift and explores how it has facilitated new readings of migrant literature. It re-examines Andrea Levy’s short story “Loose Change”, discussing how its reception so far has hinged on the assumption of a principal sameness of all migrants. Following this, it problematizes critics’ consistent omission to reflect on the differences Levy develops between the narrator, a well-to-do descendant of the Windrush generation, and a homeless refugee from Uzbekistan. As is shown, close attention to these differences yields a new understanding of Levy’s short story which raises crucial questions about British civil society’s attitude to refugees and British civilians’ implication in their fates.

Book Review: The Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War by Susan Grayzel

Book Review: <i>The Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War</i> by Susan Grayzel

Emigration, War and Reconstruction: Imagining the International Dispersal of Britain in the 1940s

ABSTRACT Debates about reconstruction in Britain at the end of the Second World War included proposals to migrate up to half of the country’s population across the Dominions. The advocates for mass migration included prominent figures in British civilian and military planning who were informed by anxieties about the consequences of a future war, the potential for demographic and trade imbalances to provoke social and economic problems, and concerns about Britain’s place in the new balance of power. This article looks in detail at proposals to disperse millions of people from Britain by influential planner E.A.A. Rowse and Sir Henry Tizard, a prominent military scientist who held numerous high positions in the wartime and post-war governments. Proposals for mass migration on such a scale were outlandish and radical and have been somewhat dismissed in the historiography as a result, but a close analysis of these two interventions highlights how continuities in thinking about town planning and development in Britain intersected with those about migration and imperial development and were reframed by the emerging Cold War.

Perplexities Between Enemy Aliens and Their Motherland: The UK Government's Measures for British Civilians Stranded in the Far East, 1941–2011

This paper explores the British government’s measures for its civilian subjects stranded as ‘enemy aliens’ in Japanese-controlled areas in the Far East during World War II. The British government tried to protect the interests of these Far Eastern subjects during the war and in the immediate postwar period. Its manner of dealing with the latter’s redress movement from the late 1980s was initially reluctant but eventually became relatively adequate, thanks to the twin pressures of domestic public opinion and precedents set by other former Allied governments and the resolute struggles of the ex–Far Eastern subjects themselves.

Panic, False News, and the Roots of Colonial Fear

AbstractThis article offers a microhistory of a forgotten panic that engulfed the north Indian city of Allahabad in 1870, when the city's European residents began to anticipate a revolt by the native infantry. Rumors of this looming event, I argue, confirmed suspicions that ill-advised income tax legislation and military retrenchment had created a combustible situation. The apparent threat of insurrection was therefore symptomatic of a more systemic ailment: burgeoning distrust between the government of India, local officials, and British civilians. Rather than undertaking counterinsurgent action against dissident Indians or so-called Wahhabi agitators, the central administration attempted to tamp down European critique of its policies. I thereby foreground the government's confrontational relationship with the Anglo-Indian press and analyze its legalistic efforts to police the new telegraph lines that brought the false news of this fictitious mutiny to metropolitan notice.

The Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War by Susan R. Grayzel (review)

The Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War by Susan R. Grayzel (review)

Dying for The Nation: Death, Grief and Bereavement in Second World War Britain (Series: Cultural History of Modern War) by LucyNoakes, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020, p. 304, ISBN: 978‐0‐7190‐8759‐2.The Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faces the Terrors of Total War by Susan R.Grayzel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, pp. xiv ± 273, ISBN: 9781108491273.

Gender & HistoryEarly View BOOK REVIEW Dying for The Nation Death Grief and Bereavement in Second World War Britain (Series: Cultural History of Modern War) by Lucy Noakes, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020, p. 304, ISBN: 978-0-7190-8759-2. The Age of the Gas Mask How British Civilians Faces the Terrors of Total War by Susan R. Grayzel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, pp. xiv ± 273, ISBN: 9781108491273. Julie V. Gottlieb, Corresponding Author Julie V. Gottlieb [email protected] Department of History, University of Sheffield, UK Correspondence Julie V. Gottlieb Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Julie V. Gottlieb, Corresponding Author Julie V. Gottlieb [email protected] Department of History, University of Sheffield, UK Correspondence Julie V. Gottlieb Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 21 June 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12714Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation

The Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War. By Susan R. Grayzel

Susan R Grayzel’s latest monograph, The Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War, traces the history of the gas mask from its inception on the battlefields of Ypres in 1915 to its establishment as the emblem of Britain’s home front during the Second World War. In her analysis of governmental policy, public response, and popular conceptions of the gas mask, Grayzel explores the complexities of civil defence and traces the deconstruction of boundaries between civilian and combatant between 1915 and 1945. By using the gas mask as a vehicle to understanding the way in which the boundaries between domestic spaces and the battlefield were broken down, Grayzel highlights how its development marked the evolution of a new type of warfare in the twentieth century—one in which civilian bodies became militarized. Indeed, her core argument positions the gas mask as the singular object which ‘embodied what it meant to be prepared for total war’ (p. 174). Despite the detailed focus on the gas mask as a singular object, Grayzel’s work also speaks to broader arguments about civil defence, empire, and gender; she argues convincingly that the core of civil defence was ‘to determine who could or should be protected, who mattered’ (p. 145, emphasis added). She explores the colonialist and imperialist overtones of gas mask design and distribution in Britain’s empire, which prioritized the safety of certain ‘useful’ (p. 3) bodies, and examines how the gas mask became wrapped up in ideas about wartime identity and civilian loyalty to the state (p. 173). Most notably, Grayzel positions the gas mask as the ‘incarnation’ of a benevolent state, and argues that it functioned not only as a device to protect bodies, but also to manage the emotions of a population at war (p. 127).

The British Army, Upper Silesia, and European Diplomacy, 1920–22

ABSTRACT At the end of the First World War, Britain was at the limit of its capabilities, both militarily and diplomatically. Despite large reductions in the size of its armed forces, it had an increasing number of responsibilities as a victorious power. One of these responsibilities was to ensure the success of a plebiscite in Upper Silesia. It had little desire to do this but was compelled to provide support in order to counter French influence in the region, having to do so with minimal expertise and manpower. This article explores the decision-making which occurred in relation to the British role in Upper Silesia, placing it within the wider context of British strategic and diplomatic policy in the years immediately after the First World War, while also assessing the use (or not) of British civilian and military experts on the ground. Belatedly taking a role in the region certainly helped to aid a situation which was spiralling out of control, but highlights how a short-term outlook on foreign policy and decision-making hindered British efforts to exert influence in the region and further afield.

Managing risk in the ‘danger zone’: Defensive infrastructure and public safety discourses on the north-east coast of England during the First World War

This article explores the development of nascent civil defence efforts during the First World War in Britain, through the use of urban case studies from the north-east coast of England. Whilst pre-war defence planning by central government and military authorities had been primarily concerned with the building of coastal gun batteries and strengthening the Royal Navy – in response to looming fears of invasion by a foreign foe – the war itself saw thousands of civilians on the ‘home front’ affected by war violence. Though they were many miles away from the conventional theatres of war, from late 1914, British civilians began to be killed and injured on their own soil by hostile battleships and aircraft. The largely improvised and dynamic multi-level response of central government, local authorities, the police and civilians indicated shifting relations between the national, local and individual. Fundamentally, early forms of civil defence were devised with pre-war notions of public safety in mind, while in the war context, these discourses were used to promote non-combatant resilience, particularly in urban coastal areas.

There John Bull might be seen in all his glory: cross-Channel tourism and the British Army of Occupation in France, 1815–1818

ABSTRACT Between 1815 and 1818, large portions of north-eastern France were occupied by a coalition of European allies. This Army of Occupation, arguably the first of its kind, was created to strengthen Louis XVIII’s rule and prevent another uprising like Napoleon’s 100 Days. This article argues that, in addition to preserving peace and reincorporating France in the European Congress System, the Army of Occupation was crucial to the reestablishment of cross-Channel tourism between Britain and France and the thawing of relations between those two nations on an individual, as well as governmental, level. Employing a variety of primary sources from both sides of the Channel, it explores military events such as Grand Reviews and race days as well as a variety of civil entertainments, demonstrating that those areas occupied by the British Army served as a physical halfway house and the very idea of the occupation served as a mental halfway house for British civilians, allowing them to feel safe in what had, for the past quarter-century, been enemy territory. This safety then directly translated to economic and cultural exchange, guaranteeing that the peace that the Army of Occupation was designed to create lasted much longer than the occupation itself.

The "Sawdust Fusiliers": The Canadian Forestry Corps in Devon, 1916–1919

In April 1916, the first battalion of Canadian lumberjacks arrived in England to initiate large-scale forestry operations. The remarkable achievements of the men of the Canadian Forestry Corps—who would number almost 32,000 by November 1918—are little known. Astonishingly, over 70% of all the timber used by the Allied armies on the western front was furnished by these men. The county of Devon serves as a useful case study to survey the felling operations undertaken to feed the country’s insatiable appetite for timber. It also provides a lens into the at times ambivalent relationship between the men of the Canadian Forestry Corps and British civilians, on the one hand, and “attached labour”—foreign labourers from Portugal and the growing number of German prisoners of war—on the other.

Landscapes of Internment: British Prisoner of War Camps and the Memory of the First World War

AbstractDuring the First World War, all of the belligerent powers interned both civilian and military prisoners. In Britain alone, over one hundred thousand people were held behind barbed wire. Despite the scale of this enterprise, interment barely features in Britain's First World War memory culture. By exploring the place of prisoner-of-war camps within the “militarized environment” of the home front, this article demonstrates the centrality of internment to local wartime experiences. Forced to share the same environment, British civilians and German prisoners clashed over access to resources, roads, and the surrounding landscape. As this article contends, it was only when the British started to employ prisoners on environmental-improvement measures, such as land drainage or river clearance projects, that relations gradually improved. With the end of the war and closure of the camps, however, these deep entanglements were quickly forgotten. Instead of commemorating the complexities of the conflict, Britain's memory culture focused on more comfortable narratives; British military “sacrifice” on the Western Front quickly replaced any discussion of the internment of the “enemy” at home.

Juliette Pattinson, Arthur McIvor, and Linsey Robb, eds. Men in Reserve: British Civilian Masculinities in the Second World War. Cultural History of Modern War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017. Pp. 384. £80 (cloth).

Juliette Pattinson, Arthur McIvor, and Linsey Robb, eds. Men in Reserve: British Civilian Masculinities in the Second World War. Cultural History of Modern War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017. Pp. 384. £80 (cloth).

The Bengal Partition of 1905: the Evaluation of British Civilians Activities and Its Effect and Consequence

The Partition of Bengal (1905) and the creation of a new province opened a new chapter in the history of this region. Whatever might have been the real motive of the colonial government behind the scheme, it divided the Hindus and the Muslims of Bengal. Most of the upper caste Hindus opposed it on the ground that by partitioning Bengal the government, in effect, had planned to divide the Bangla- speaking people. The also argued that it was the part of the government’s grand design of ‘divide and rule’. On the other hand, most of the upper class Muslims in general supported the scheme. The thought that their interests would be better protected in the newly created province and the would be able to overcome decades of backwardness. Yet, there were some Muslims who opposed the partition. As they belonged both to upper class and ordinary section of the Muslim population, their reasons for supporting the partition also varied. Personal, community, national and economic interests prompted interests prompted them to oppose the partition of Bengal.&#x0D;

"The British Soldier is no Bolshevik": The British Army, Discipline, and the Demobilization Strikes of 1919.

This article considers the breakdown in discipline in the British Army which occurred in Britain and on the Western Front during the process of demobilization at the end of the First World War. Many soldiers, retained in the army immediately after the Armistice, went on strike, and some formed elected committees, demanding their swifter return to civilian life. Their perception was that the existing demobilization system was unjust, and men were soon organized by those more politically conscious members of the armed forces who had enlisted for the duration of the war. At one stage in January 1919, over 50,000 soldiers were out on strike, a fact that was of great concern to the British civilian and military authorities who miscalculated the risk posed by soldiers. Spurred on by many elements of the press, especially the Daily Mail and Daily Herald, who both fanned and dampened the flames of discontent, soldiers' discipline broke down, demonstrating that the patriotism which had for so long kept them in line could only extend so far. Though senior members of the government, principally Winston Churchill, and the military, especially Douglas Haig and Henry Wilson, were genuinely concerned that Bolshevism had 'infected' the army, or, at the very least, the army had been unionized, their fears were not realized. The article examines the government's strategy regarding demobilization, its efforts to assess the risk of politicization and manage the press, and its responses to these waves of strikes, arguing that, essentially, these soldiers were civilians first and simply wanted to return home, though, in the post-war political climate, government fears were very real.

Tangible Patriotism during the First World War: Individuals and the Nation in British Propaganda

This article explores several propaganda campaigns aimed at British civilians during 1917. Through examples from campaigns for War Savings, Food Economy and National Service, it argues that propaganda in this crisis year was as much about identifying small, tangible, contributions that individuals could make to the war effort as about more sensational accounts of enemy wrongdoing. Propagandists targeted all sections of society, offering children and some women new status through war work, promoting attractive working conditions for others, and reminding the wealthy of the social responsibilities that their greater economic freedom carried in wartime. The article suggests that the consensual, voluntarist approaches promoted during 1917 remained an important precursor to possible forms of compulsion.

Men in Reserve: British Civilian Masculinities in the Second World War

Men in Reserve: British Civilian Masculinities in the Second World War

Command and control of Sierra Leone's Ebola outbreak response: evolution of the response architecture.

Management, coordination and logistics were critical for responding effectively to the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, and the duration of the epidemic provided a rare opportunity to study the management of an outbreak that endured long enough for the response to mature. This qualitative study examines the structures and systems used to manage the response, and how and why they changed and evolved. It also discusses the quality of relationships between key responders and their impact. Early coordination mechanisms failed and the President took operational control away from the Ministry of Health and Sanitation and established a National Ebola Response Centre, headed by the Minister of Defence, and District Ebola Response Centres. British civilian and military personnel were deeply embedded in this command and control architecture and, together with the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response lead, were the dominant coordination partners at the national level. Coordination, politics and tensions in relationships hampered the response, but as the response mechanisms matured, coordination improved and rifts healed. Simultaneously setting up new organizations, processes and plans as well as attempting to reconcile different cultures, working practices and personalities in such an emergency was bound to be challenging.This article is part of the themed issue 'The 2013-2016 West African Ebola epidemic: data, decision-making and disease control'.