Suchergebnisse

"The literature on trench journalism is well-established for Britain and France during the First World War, but this book is the first systematic study in English of German soldier newspapers as a representation of daily life and beliefs on the front. Printed by and for soldiers at or near the front line these newspapers were read by millions of 'ordinary soldiers.' They reveal an elaborately defined understanding of comradeship and duty. The war of aggression, the prolonged occupation on both fronts, and the hostility of the local populations were justified through a powerful image of manly comradeship. The belief among many Germans was that they were good gentlemen, fighting a just war and bringing civilization to backward populations. This comparative study includes French, British, Australian, and Canadian newspapers and sheds new light on the views of combatants on both sides of the line"--

Robert L. Nelson on the racial ideology of a conservative-majority court.

Many who study colonialism have noted that the same words used by the colonizer to describe the colonized—"dirty," "backward," "uncultured," and "possessing an improper understanding of the value of work and property"—were often identical to those that rich people used to describe the poor. They were the terms the "modern" used to describe the "not yet modern"; the urban the rural; the educated the uneducated. To use a British example: Those who wrote from positions of power (the urban, educated bourgeoisie) looked down upon, first, the urban poor, then the rural poor, then the Scottish, then the "half-civilized" Natives of North America; then, finally, they squinted from on high upon the Aborigines of Australia. All of these groups fell short of the "norm," the way the colonizer understood the very height of modern progress. All of these groups were "lacking" something. Thus, in sometimes surprising ways, colonialism merely seems to be another manifestation of the exertion of power over the powerless, a relationship much closer to that of "class" than many expect. This is especially so in a field that produces much of the best work in cultural history, and where anything hinting at old-fashioned "labor history" is gauche (no pun intended). Yet, as the authors of the books under review argue, understandings of labor and property, and the manner with which they are tied to an understanding of nature, are more fundamental to the history of modern colonialism than, for example, race, the latter a category almost always invoked by the colonizer in a completely instrumental fashion.

To memoirs and soldiers' letters, the new military historian must add soldier newspapers as a rich and useful source for understanding the fears and hopes of the troops of all ranks. By analysing the production and creation of these newspapers for the British, French, and German armies in the First World War, and indicating both the unique national traits of each nation's journals and the universal stories found across the three armies' newspapers, it is hoped that this article will point researchers toward the vast archive of soldier newspapers available for many of the wars of the last 250 years.