Race, Empire and First World War Writing

Description

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.

Santanu Das is Senior Lecturer in English at Queen Mary, University of London and is author of Touch and Intimacy in First World War Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

'This new volume of essays provides a wonderfully comprehensive account of its subject ... The result is a stunningly fresh perspective on an event which continues to open new dimensions of understanding just as it maintains its signal importance in modern history.' Vincent Sherry, Washington University, St Louis 'Santanu Das has presented a collection of scholarly essays which powerfully re-centres the history of the Great War in its full imperial character ... Here is a major contribution to the cultural history of the 1914-1918 war.' Jay Winter, Yale University 'Engaging voices recovered from diaries, censored letters and oral histories resurrect the soldiers and workers whose experiences provide diverse narratives of 'The old lie: Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori'.' The Times Literary Supplement 'Das's edited volume is an exemplary study of global First World War encounters that implicitly suggests how some of the 'new' new imperial historiography might continue to unfold ... Das's volume is a seminal contribution to this.' History Workshop Journal 'A compelling, scholarly, and highly nuanced portrayal of 'the combatants and non-combatants from the former colonies and dominions' ... Das's insightful introduction expresses the exemplary degree of nuance evident in the volume's composition.' Journal of British Studies 'A wide-ranging, accessible, powerful and highly nuanced study of the all too often marginalized racial and colonial aspects of the First World War. The volume's cast of international scholars has effectively decentred the hitherto Eurocentric 'Great War and Modern Memory'.' Textual Practice '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