Race, Empire and First World War Writing

Drawing upon fresh archival material this book recovers the experience of different ethnic groups during the First World War conflict.

Santanu Das (Edited by)

9781107664494, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 January 2014

350 pages, 8 b/w illus.
22.6 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.47 kg

'The achievement of this wide-ranging and revelatory collection of essays is to bring these suppressed aspects of the First World War experience back into the light of day. … Together, the essays in Race, Empire and First World War Writing cast a vivid and long-overdue spotlight on the complex intersections between war, race, and the colonial experience.' Edmund G. C. King, Wasafiri

This volume brings together an international cast of scholars from a variety of fields to examine the racial and colonial aspects of the First World War, and show how issues of race and empire shaped its literature and culture. The global nature of the First World War is fast becoming the focus of intense enquiry. This book analyses European discourses about colonial participation and recovers the war experience of different racial, ethnic and national groups, including the Chinese, Vietnamese, Indians, Maori, West Africans and Jamaicans. It also investigates testimonial and literary writings, from war diaries and nursing memoirs to Irish, New Zealand and African American literature, and analyses processes of memory and commemoration in the former colonies and dominions. Drawing upon archival, literary and visual material, the book provides a compelling account of the conflict's reverberations in Europe and its empires and reclaims the multiracial dimensions of war memory.

Introduction Santanu Das
Part I. Voices and Experiences: 1. 'An army of workers': Chinese indentured labour in First World War France Paul J. Bailey
2. Sacrifices, sex, race: Vietnamese experiences in the First World War Kimloan Hill
3. Indians at home, Mesopotamia and France, 1914–18: towards an intimate history Santanu Das
4. 'We don't want to die for nothing': Askari at war in German East Africa, 1914–18 Michelle Moyd
5. France's legacy to Demba Mboup? A Senegalese Griot (and his descendants) remember his military service during the First World War Joe Lunn
Part II. Perceptions and Proximities: 6. Representing Otherness: African, Indian, and European soldiers' letters and memoirs Christian Koller
7. Living apart together: Belgian civilians and non-European troops and workers in wartime Flanders Dominiek Dendooven
8. Nursing the Other: the representation of colonial troops in French and British First World War nursing memoirs Alison S. Fell
9. Imperial captivities: colonial prisoners of war in Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914–18 Heather Jones
10. Images of Te Hokowhitu A Tu in the First World War Christopher Pugsley
Part III. Nationalism, Memory and Literature: 11. 'He was black, he was a white man, and a dinkum Aussie': race and empire in revisiting the Anzac legend Peter Stanley
12. The quiet Western Front: the First World War and New Zealand memory Jock Phillips
13. 'Writing out of opinions': Irish experience and the theatre of the First World War Keith Jeffery
14. 'Heaven grant you strength to fight the battle for your race': nationalism, Pan-Africanism and the First World War in Jamaican memory Richard Smith
15. Not only war: the First World War and African American literature Mark Whalan
Afterword: death and the afterlife: Britain's colonies and dominions Michèle Barrett.

Subject Areas: Ethical issues & debates [JFM], First World War [HBWN], Literary studies: post-colonial literature [DSBH5], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH]