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AbstractThis article explores what the diversification of British political history might look like. Building on an expanded definition of citizenship and attention to 'ordinary' politics, it suggests several questions which might diversify political history's content and approach. Whom do we count as political actors? Who has access to democratic processes and where does politics happen beyond these processes? To what forms of political thought do we attend? Drawing on examples from my own research on refugees and asylum seekers in modern Britain, and on the wider field of modern British history, I demonstrate the possibilities of diversification as a way to enliven political history's future.

ABSTRACTThis article uses the phenomenon and failure of war marriages between British women and 'colonial' servicemen, mostly from the settler dominions, to explore the gendered, classed and racialised conditions of migration after the First World War. Positioning this migration of British war brides as part of the continued normalisation of settler occupation, the article demonstrates the patriarchal social expectations to which white women were subject. Fears of 'khaki fever' were extended to the protection of naïve 'colonial' soldiers from the manipulative sexuality of white, particularly working‐class, women and girls. At the same time, 'respectable' women were prepared for frontier life and protected from the indignities of bigamy and desertion. The emphasis on their role as 'daughters of Empire' meant 'undesirable' matches and marital failure, as reported by the press, had consequences for the closeness of the imperial family and the maintenance of white superiority. The mediation of mobility in cases of mixed‐race marriage indicate a more explicit, and sometimes violent, policing of the sexual independence of women and Black and indigenous men of colour. In doing so, the article makes an important contribution to understandings of the legacies of global mobilisation and colonial encounters during the First World War.

This article examines representations of the British West Indies Regiment's service during the First World War to explore how limits on their service were negotiated and how tropes of 'martial races' were adapted to ensure the contributions of West Indian men were recognised. The article examines West Indian experiences in Europe and the Middle East, drawing on a rich variety of textual and visual sources: official histories of West Indian regiments, memoirs written by padres who served with the troops, letters from the men as published in newspapers like the Daily Gleaner and the Jamaica Times, and official photographs. It argues that 'combat gnosticism' was replicated in another form within these representations to construct a definition of military service that included these black men and validated their contributions.

For colonial troops from the British Empire, the military mobilizations of the First World War created the opportunity to visit the imperial metropolis – London – leaving the war behind. This article explores the experience and encounters of New Zealand's soldiers in London during the First World War and the ambiguity of their identity and belonging in a city that could be positioned as 'home'. Using diaries, letters, newspapers and oral testimonies, the article builds on the work of Felicity Barnes to question the extent to which these colonial troops could feel at 'home' in the 'Big City', inside and outside the familiar space, to explore colonialism's tensions in a global war.

How can we teach 'forgotten' histories of war and empire in the classroom, responding to urgent needs to 'decolonize' the curriculum and pedagogic practice? This article reflects on an exercise in pedagogical experimentation – a 'widening participation' project based upon a series of workshops – to demonstrate a more global and 'messy' understanding of the role of empire in the First and Second World Wars and their commemoration. We discuss the role of students and teachers as co-producers of knowledge, engaging with race and colonialism in the classroom, and the intervention of such work in the project of 'decolonizing' curricula.

"This volume gathers an international cast of scholars to examine the unprecedented range of colonial encounters during the First World War. More than four million men of color, and an even greater number of white Europeans and Americans, crisscrossed the globe. Others, in occupied areas, behind the warzone or in neutral countries, were nonetheless swept into the maelstrom. From local encounters in New Zealand, Britain and East Africa to army camps and hospitals in France and Mesopotamia, from cafes and clubs in Salonika and London, to anticolonial networks in Germany, the USA and the Dutch East Indies, this volume examines the actions and experiences of a varied company of soldiers, medics, writers, photographers, and revolutionaries to reconceptualize this conflict as a turning point in the history of global encounters. How did people interact across uneven intersections of nationality, race, gender, class, religion and language? How did encounters - direct and mediated, forced and unforced - shape issues from cross-racial intimacy and identity formation to anti-colonial networks, civil rights movements and visions of a post-war future? The twelve chapters delve into spaces and processes of encounter to explore how the conjoined realities of war, race and empire were experienced, recorded and instrumentalized"--