Warfare Violence Research Articles

Mobilizing Great War Literature: Rereading the English Canon through Mulk Raj Anand's Across the Black Waters

Abstract: While Great War scholars have recently recovered colonial texts, they seldom use those texts to reassess the English Great War canon. Mulk Raj Anand's depiction of Indian experience in Across the Black Waters highlights the imperial dimensions of English texts from the Great War. The novel depicts Indian soldiers first as travelers through Europe before narrating their experiences of displacement in the horrors of the trenches. This shift calls attention to the English canon's depictions of soldiers' mobility, which similarly shift from travel in initial military mobilization to displacement in the violence of warfare. Across the Black Waters rewrites this characteristic shift to reveal its imperial significance, ultimately transforming the English Great War canon's typical disillusionment with Britain into a critique of empire. Anand's novel invites us to recenter the imperial position in Great War literature: all English narratives are narratives of empire, and Britain at war is always imperial.

Translating between the lines: the rape of Constance Mauduit and histories of violation

Abstract This article illuminates the life of Constance Mauduit, a twelfth-century Anglo-Norman heiress, patron and rape victim, while problematizing the modern historiography around her. Drawing on feminist theory and gender history, the article recasts her life (and assault) by centring her experiences, elucidating wider social concerns with violent disruptions – actual and metaphorical – to social and spatial hierarchies. Constance’s experiences are finally drawn as important beyond this singular life as her rape speaks of sexual violence in warfare in the period, a topic that needs much more study, particularly as medieval records of sexual violence can be difficult to discern.

Forum: Religion, Security, and Gender: An Unholy Trinity by Maria Alcidi

Abstract The paper explores the interplay between religion, security, and gender. By employing a broad analytical security framework ranging from warfare violence against women to violence in the domestic sphere, the paper supports the view that countries with heightened rates of gender inequalities and violence are more insecure and prone to conflict. The paper also questions the role played by religions enforcing hierarchical gender constructs in preserving women’s security and protecting them from gender-based violence. Against this background, the paper maintains that deferring the realisation of women’s security until a comprehensive reform has taken place within the religious precinct must not be an option. Such an approach would signify the capitulation of the egalitarian human rights paradigm. Instead, women’s roles as agents of change within religious institutions should be supported, and the proactive engagement of states to encourage religious institutions to reform and embrace an egalitarian ethos should be promoted. Only in this way will the interplay of religion, security, and gender truly benefit the pursuit of women’s security.

The Violence of Warfare and Traumatic Experiences in Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The Violence of Warfare and Traumatic Experiences in Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

THE WAR CAME ALIVE INSIDE OF THEM

AbstractIncreasingly, scholarship on moral injury is expanding to include non‐military personnel, and considers a violation of bodily integrity—for example, of civilian women who are targeted for sexual violence in warfare—as a particularly egregious harm. Moral injury discourse also extends beyond the individual to the social context in which moral injury arises, its relational effects, and its utterly devastating impact on personhood, an impact frequently characterized as a “soul wound.” The intersection of genocidal rape—both as an individual and a group harm—with religion, as facilitating moral injury and restorative “soul repair,” exemplifies these trends. Although moral injury research rarely addresses the detrimental influences of religion or references the “soul” with precision, the discourse of moral injury does provide an opportunity for exploring the relationship between personhood and agency from the perspectives of those who inflict and are subjected to harm.

BUDDHISM, THE ROYAL IMAGINARY AND LIMITS IN WARFARE: THE MODERATING INFLUENCE OF PRECOLONIAL MYANMAR ROYAL CAMPAIGNS ON EVERYDAY WARRIORS

ABSTRACT Rules on the treatment of civilians and other non-combatants in conflict are often attributed to Western origins, particularly the increasingly widening circles of empathy that grew out of the European Enlightenment and found international implementation in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, such limits were pursued or encouraged by many non-Western societies as well, particularly amongst indigenous Americans. The present article examines the case of Myanmar and the ways in which the Myanmar court set limits on violence in administration and limits on warfare. These limits were not an imposition of the West but emerged entirely within the Myanmar-Buddhist historical experience. It is argued that these provide an existing, discernible and indigenous model for limiting violence in warfare in Myanmar society. The article also explains why this model was forgotten. The removal of the king and disintegration of the standing army that came with the end of indigenous rule in 1885 did away with crucial moderating influences, while the violence of the brutal Pacification Campaign from 1885 erased from Burmese social memory the idea that there could be limits in warfare.

Monuments, Legitimization Ceremonies, and Haudenosaunee Rejection of Sullivan-Clinton Markers

Monuments, Legitimization Ceremonies, and Haudenosaunee Rejection of Sullivan-Clinton Markers Andrea Lynn Smith (bio) and Nëhdöwes Randy A. John (bio) As we reach the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War, states and civic organizations are seeking ways to commemorate the conflict. It is timely, then, to take a closer look at the granite monoliths established by New York's Education Department in 1929 to commemorate the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign of 1779. In the contemporary era, characterized by heated debates over the meaning of monuments to the Confederacy, many Americans now recognize that understandings of national historical events are not fixed but evolve over time, and that historical markers do not necessarily represent a national consensus or even a nationwide vetting, but rather more immediate local interests. As the sociologist James Loewen has argued, a full understanding of any historical marker involves two eras, that of the event being commemorated, certainly, as well as that of the marker's establishment. It is in this spirit that we explore how and why a New York agency decided to develop the Sullivan-Clinton markers in the 1920s. The thirty-five Sullivan-Clinton monoliths identifying the paths taken by Sullivan's troops and the Native settlements they destroyed were developed as part of a multiyear celebration of the 150th anniversary (sesquicentennial) of the Revolutionary War.1 Stylistically [End Page 343] they resemble other historical markers of the era, and, moreover, as a marker series, were at the height of commemorative fashion reflecting a growth in automobile tourism. The same state committee commemorated the route Henry Knox had taken in transporting canons from Lake Champlain to Massachusetts with thirty stone markers in 1927.2 Unlike most other Revolutionary War markers, however, the Sullivan-Clinton markers carry additional meaning, for they recognize an expedition against a Native American population. They also resemble other markers and place names across the United States that document the country's origins in violent warfare against the land's Indigenous inhabitants. In this article, we consider the socially constructed nature of the 1929 Sullivan markers. In part due to their aura of permanence, stone markers can give a false sense of pre-ordination, suggesting that the message they bear is the only one possible or the "correct" interpretation of the past. Passersby may assume that they reflect consensus when in fact it is usually a small group of people—wealthy benefactors or well-positioned elites—who make decisions regarding marker placement, wording, and appearance. The state-funded Sullivan-Clinton markers are no exception. We also consider this commemorative project within a wider context that includes the Haudenosaunee, exposing a relatively unknown meeting when Six Nations participation in the planned festivities was flatly refused. Finally, we introduce an often-unseen element of the wider context of the Education Department's program, a land claims case that threatened state sovereignty in much of the Haudenosaunee homeland. New York's Invention of the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign New York State's monuments recognizing the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign evolved almost by happenstance. In the early 1920s, while some cities like Philadelphia were gearing up for massive 150th anniversary celebrations, a similar movement did not emerge in New York until the question was raised by Utica industrialist and New York road advocate W. Pierrepont White (1857–1938).3 In his role as president of the Mohawk Valley Historical Society, he passed a resolution in August 1922 calling on the state legislature to observe "New York State's magnificent Revolutionary record," promoting funding for an Oriskany battlefield [End Page 344] park and celebrations of key events such as the Battle of Saratoga.4 While it is unclear what prompted White to prepare the extensive proposal, he seemed motivated by competition with other states. He estimated other states' expenditures for their sesquicentennial ceremonies and tallied wartime battles to demonstrate that more conflicts occurred in what became New York (ninety-two) than any other state, arguing it was time the state received the recognition it deserved for its role in the nation's founding conflict.5 When Governor Alfred E. Smith signed a bill on May 24, 1923, granting funds ($5,000) to the New York State Historical...

Palaeoenvironmental, epigraphic and archaeological evidence of total warfare among the Classic Maya.

Despite over a century of archaeological research, the nature and broader consequences of Maya warfare remain poorly understood. Classic period (250-950 CE) Maya warfare has largely been viewed as ritualized and limited in scope1-6. Evidence of violent warfare in the Terminal Classic period (800-950 CE) is interpreted as an escalation of military tactics that played a role in the socio-economic collapse of the Classic Maya civilization7,8. The implications of specific textual references to war events (war statements) remain unknown, however, and the paucity of field data precludes our ability to test collapse theories tied to warfare. Here we connect a massive fire event to an attack described with a Classic period war statement. Multiple lines of evidence show that a large fire occurred across the ancient city of Witzna, coincident with an epigraphic account describing an attack and burning of Witzna in 697 CE. Following this event, evidence shows a dramatic decline in human activity, indicating extensive negative impacts on the local population. These findings provide insight into strategies and broader societal impacts of Classic period warfare, clarify the war statement's meaning and show that the Maya engaged in tactics akin to total warfare earlier and more frequently than previously thought.

Early Representations of Wartime Violence in Films, 1914–1930

This article deals with the cinematic representations of warfare violence and with its aestheticization in early films. It argues, in particular, that the patterns and narrative structures of (anti-)war movies were laid out during the First World War. Among the first films establishing those patterns and rules were D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, a film on the American Civil War, and Hearts of the World, showing the war on the western front, produced in 1918. Films such as these offered the main elements that would mark, henceforth, how anti-war movies would portray violence. With the up-coming of sound, moviegoers would be able not only to see, but also to hear what a war sounded like. Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), one of the first sound films, exposed the audiences to a series of (calculated) audio/visual distortions, including explosions, screams, and the monotone sound of machinegun fire.

Avoiding War in Tarapacá (Northern Chile) During the Andean Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1450)

AbstractThe Late Intermediate period (LIP, AD 1000–1450) in the South Central Andes is commonly characterized by an increase in violence. Here, we analyse evidence to test whether the population that inhabited the oasis of Pica (Region of Tarapacá, Northern Chile) during LIP was engaged in violent warfare. The analysis of 96 individuals showed a low prevalence of violence‐related injuries (N = 6/96). Facial traumas observed on females could be a result of domestic violence, whereas nasal traumas found in males could be interpreted as a result of ritualized combats. One male exhibits a point embedded in his first right rib which is the only injury that can be attributed to open intergroup combat. These findings, combined with the mortuary characteristics of the Pica 8 cemetery, the lack of defensive constructions at the site, the settlement pattern and the iconography, do not support the existence of war at Pica during the LIP. The weapons found at Pica 8 cemetery are elaborately decorated, and many are clearly useless in combat so they were likely not made to be used in open conflicts. In addition, clothes considered to belong to warriors may be alternately interpreted as garments used for ceremonial purpose. Taking into account the belligerent climate in contemporaneous San Pedro de Atacama, we suggest that the Pica population employed ritualized violence as a means of avoiding larger conflicts or war. We propose that male violence in controlled scenarios permitted the sublimation of social inequalities or internal conflicts, and could have been used in order to create and maintain social stability. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Creating and contesting Carolina: Proprietary Era histories

The essays in Creating and Contesting Carolina shed new light on how the various peoples of the Carolinas responded to the tumultuous changes shaping the geographic space that the British called Carolina during the Proprietary period (1663-1719). In doing so, the essays focus attention on some of the most important and dramatic watersheds in the history of British colonisation in the New World. These years brought challenging and dramatic changes to the region, such as the violent warfare between British and Native Americans or British and Spanish, the no-less dramatic development of the plantation system, and the decline of proprietary authority. All involved contestation, whether through violence or debate. The very idea of a place called Carolina was challenged by Native Americans, and many colonists and metropolitan authorities differed in their visions for Carolina. The stakes were high in these contests because they occurred in an early American world often characterised by brutal warfare, rigid hierarchies, enslavement, cultural dislocation, and transoceanic struggles for power. While Native Americans and colonists shed each other's blood to define the territory on their terms, colonists and officials built their own version of Carolina on paper and in the discourse of early modern empires. But new tensions also provided a powerful incentive for political and economic creativity. The peoples of the early Carolinas reimagined places, reconceptualised cultures, realigned their loyalties, and adapted in a wide variety of ways to the New World. Three major groups of peoples--European colonists, Native Americans, and enslaved Africans--shared these experiences of change in the Carolinas, but their histories have usually been written separately. These disparate but closely related strands of scholarship must be connected to make the early Carolinas intelligible. Creating and Contesting Carolina brings together work relating to all three groups in this unique collection.

Does the Military Train Men to Be Violent Criminals? New Evidence from Australia's Conscription Lotteries

Combat is the most intense form of military service, but several aspects of the training experience, which explicitly prepares people for violent warfare, are hypothesized to link service to violent crime. Using Australia's Vietnam-era conscription lotteries for identification and criminal court data from Australia's three largest states, we seek to estimate the effect of army training on violent crime. Using various specifications, we find no evidence that military training causes violent crime, and our point estimates are always negative. In our preferred specification (using only non-deployed cohorts), we rule out with 95% confidence any positive violent crime effects larger than 3.6% relative to the mean.

Violence with a conscience: Religiosity and moral certainty as predictors of support for violent warfare.

Violence with a conscience: Religiosity and moral certainty as predictors of support for violent warfare.

Yugoslavia in 1989 and after

The year 1989 marked a turning point for the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). But unlike other places in the region, that year saw a turn towards growing political conflict which soon led to violent warfare. This paper identifies and discusses three processes that led to this outcome. The first process was the impetus towards reform of the Yugoslav federal state, its political and economic system. The second was the conflict over the future of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (Savez komunista Jugoslavije – SKJ). The third was the shifting meanings of ethnic and nonethnic labels and the ways in which putative “national” and “ethnic” interests came to be aligned with specific political options. By the end of 1989 these three processes had come together to spell the end of the SKJ, of the SFRY, and of “Yugoslavism” as a political identity. In their places, ruling parties threatened by changes within their own societies, as well as by pressures created by the 1989 revolutions in the region, resorted to strategies of conflict and violence in an attempt to forestall the kinds of changes and elite turnovers seen in other socialist countries.

Resonant Materiality and Violent Remembering: Archaeology, Memory and Bombing

In this paper I outline the commemorative potential of a historical archaeology of aerial bombing. As an affective and challenging archaeology‐from‐below it offers glimpses of individuality and everyday life amidst the violence of warfare, inscribing shattered buildings and material culture as sites of memory. Firstly I examine the tropes and themes that link archaeology, memory studies and the history of bombing, both in popular imaginations and cultural representations. These include ruins, fragments, depth, wounding, and the contrast between bottom‐up and top‐down views of the world. I then develop these themes to highlight the tensions between historical and mnemonic narratives of aerial bombardment, the importance of a human centred approach to the commemoration of warfare, and the roles of oral history and archaeology in these processes. Finally I briefly discuss a case study of bombsite archaeology and suggest a valuable application for this technique in the discourses of memory and bombing in contemporary German society.

Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo and Laura (review)

Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo and Laura. By Leonora Sansay. Edited by Michael Drexler. (Toronto: Broadview Press, 2007. Pp. 319. Paper, $19.95.)Reviewed by Christopher IanniniIn this splendid edition, Michael Drexler republishes two strange and important narratives by the Philadelphia-based author Leonora Sansay. The first, Secret History; or, the Horrors of St. Domingo, recounts the experiences of two young American sisters caught in the turmoil of revolutionary Saint Domingue, where they have gone to live with the eldest sister's French creole husband. The second, Laura, concerns the secret marriage of a beautiful young orphan to a gallant medical student, who dies in a duel to defend his wife's honor. With its meticulous editing, clear and insightful introduction, and invaluable appendices, this new edition will go a long way toward placing these texts in the prominent light they deserve.Indeed, while both narratives deserve far more scholarly attention than they yet have received, the relative neglect of Secret History, in particular, in the two centuries since its publication, is as worthy of remark as the text itself. Considered solely for its subject matter, this should already have become an indispensable text for historians and literary scholars alike. Based on Sansay's first-hand observation of the Haitian Revolution in its turbulent final phase, Secret History provides a sustained and nuanced literary representation of the sole successful slave rebellion in the colonial Americas. While the specters of race slavery and warfare stalk the edges of a number of early American novels, from Charles Brockden Brown's Ormond and Arthur Mervyn to Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette, they inhabit the vivid center of Sansay's narrative. If its subject matter was not in itself a sufficient source of interest, both in its own day and in ours, the notoriety of its main addressee might have made it a sensation, for this epistolary narrative is addressed to the author's reputed lover Aaron Burr - dueler, libertine, seditious conspirator, and, by the time the novel was published, vortex of early national fantasy and fear.As Drexler's introduction makes plain, however, these are only the most obvious of the narrative's rewards. Secret History is also a fascinating formal creation. It moves fluently between genres as varied as travelogue, epistolary narrative, sentimental and gothic novel, and political reportage, and it shifts with disconcerting ease between a decadent domestic realm of balls and erotic intrigues in a besieged Cap Francais and the violent warfare of revolution itself. As Colin Dayan first observed, one of the signal achievements of the narrative is to make visible the tight interconnectedness within a Caribbean slave society between social and sexual rivalry in the so-called domestic sphere and the more visible and public conflict for military and political control Haiti, History, and the Gods, Berkeley, CA, 1995). …

Beating ploughshares back into swords: warfare in theLinearbandkeramik

Armed with a number of powerful arguments, the authors invite us to face up to the evidence for violence in early Neolithic Europe.Linearbandkeramik(LBK) people first attacked the hunter-gatherers they encountered and then entered a period of increasingly violent warfare against each other, culminating in an intense struggle in the area of central and western Germany. The building of fortifications, physical mutilation and cannibalism, while no doubt enacted with ritual airs, nevertheless had their context and purpose in the slaughter of enemies.

Modern combat: Sexual violence in warfare, Part II

The previous part of this paper showed how sexual violence was perpetrated in ancient warfare. To follow here is an examination of modern evidence from China, Vietnam and former Yugoslavia, investigating influences that have pertained over centuries. A considerable amount of literature treats this subject, both with regards to specific cases and general theories. The aim here is to follow up questions posed in the previous paper. When, how and against whom is sexual violence perpetrated? Are there patterns or is it executed at random? What are the motives? Records of the conflicts were researched and existing theories applied to assist the interpretation of data. The results showed that violence often follows a pattern and that individual and common motives are intertwined. Comparing ancient and modern warfare, this paper demonstrates how certain cultural factors of military life shape the execution and perception of sexual violence during war, historically and cross-culturally.

Ancient origins: Sexual violence in warfare, Part I

Sexual violence frequently occurs in warfare. The focus here is on its perpetration throughout history, beginning with ancient Greek, Roman and Israeli societies. Many references to sexual violence in modern literature appear in studies on siege warfare. Rape has also been discussed as a main topic. The current paper explores how violence is described by ancient authors—Homer, Herodotus, Livy, Hebrew prophets and others—and in which contexts it occurs. What contemporary attitudes to these actions are conveyed by the sources? Did violations follow patterns as to how and when they were executed or did they take place at random? Was individual, physical gratification the sole motive? Ancient historiography and prose was researched and modern theories applied for the purpose of interpreting cases in greater detail. This investigation showed that ancient sources held multiple, often contradictory attitudes to sexual violence. In addition, apparent chaos in the battlefield appears more structured than expected and physical satisfaction offers only a partial explanation to the violence. In conjunction with the second part where modern evidence is discussed, the current papers provide an historical, cultural and psychological insight into the persistence of sexual violence and its influences.

Despite the odds - providing reproductive health care to Afghan women.

The majority of women in Afghanistan have never seen a doctor. Twenty-three years of war destroyed the few existing health care facilities, and women's health has suffered from the violence of warfare, the lack of economic development, and the strengthening of Islamic fundamentalism.In 1982, in the midst of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, I graduated from Kabul University's School of Medicine. After only a four-month residency at the Wazir Akhbar Khan Hospital, I had to flee Kabul for central Afghanistan, where I had been born and which was not yet under Soviet control. I arrived in Jaghori with only . . .