With the outbreak of war in 1914, an estimated 30,000 German civilians in African and Asian colonies were violently uprooted and imprisoned. Britain's First World War internment of German settlers seriously challenged the structures that underpinned nineteenth-century imperialism. Through its analysis of this internment, this book highlights the impact that the First World War had on the notion of a common European 'civilising mission' and the image of empire in the early twentieth century. Mahon Murphy examines the effect of the war on a collective European colonial identity, perceptions of internment in the extra-European theatres of war, and empires in transition during war. Policymakers were forced to address difficult questions about the future rule of Germany's colonies and the nature of empire in general. Far from a conflict restricted to European powers, the First World War triggered a worldwide remaking of ideas, institutions and geopolitics.

With the outbreak of war in 1914, an estimated 30,000 German civilians in African and Asian colonies were violently uprooted and imprisoned. Britain's First World War internment of German settlers seriously challenged the structures that underpinned nineteenth-century imperialism. Through its analysis of this internment, this book highlights the impact that the First World War had on the notion of a common European 'civilising mission' and the image of empire in the early twentieth century. Mahon Murphy examines the effect of the war on a collective European colonial identity, perceptions of internment in the extra-European theatres of war, and empires in transition during war. Policymakers were forced to address difficult questions about the future rule of Germany's colonies and the nature of empire in general. Far from a conflict restricted to European powers, the First World War triggered a worldwide remaking of ideas, institutions and geopolitics.

This new analysis of internment outside Europe helps us to understand the First World War as a truly global conflict.

Long a topic of historical interest, wartime captivity has over the past decade taken on new urgency as an object of study. Transnational by its very nature, captivity’s historical significance extends far beyond the front lines, ultimately inextricable from the histories of mobilization, nationalism, colonialism, law, and a host of other related subjects. This wide-ranging volume brings together an international selection of scholars to trace the contours of this evolving research agenda, offering fascinating new perspectives on historical moments that range from the early days of the Great War to the arrival of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

In 1678, the Puritan minister Samuel Nowell preached a sermon he called "Abraham in Arms," in which he urged his listeners to remember that "Hence it is no wayes unbecoming a Christian to learn to be a Souldier." The title of Nowell's sermon was well chosen. Abraham of the Old Testament resonated deeply with New England men, as he embodied the ideal of the householder-patriarch, at once obedient to God and the unquestioned leader of his family and his people in war and peace. Yet enemies challenged Abraham's authority in New England: Indians threatened the safety of his household, subordinates in his own family threatened his status, and wives and daughters taken into captivity became baptized Catholics, married French or Indian men, and refused to return to New England. In a bold reinterpretation of the years between 1620 and 1763, Ann M. Little reveals how ideas about gender and family life were central to the ways people in colonial New England, and their neighbors in New France and Indian Country, described their experiences in cross-cultural warfare. Little argues that English, French, and Indian people had broadly similar ideas about gender and authority. Because they understood both warfare and political power to be intertwined expressions of manhood, colonial warfare may be understood as a contest of different styles of masculinity. For New England men, what had once been a masculinity based on household headship, Christian piety, and the duty to protect family and faith became one built around the more abstract notions of British nationalism, anti-Catholicism, and soldiering for the Empire. Based on archival research in both French and English sources, court records, captivity narratives, and the private correspondence of ministers and war officials, Abraham in Arms reconstructs colonial New England as a frontier borderland in which religious, cultural, linguistic, and geographic boundaries were permeable, fragile, and contested by Europeans and Indians alike.

This book offers new international perspectives on captivity in wartime during the twentieth century. It explores how global institutions and practices with regard to captives mattered, how they evolved and most importantly, how they influenced the treatment of captives. From the beginning of the twentieth century, international organisations, neutral nations and other actors with no direct involvement in the respective wars often had to fill in to support civilian as well as military captives and to supervise their treatment. This edited volume puts these actors, rather than the captives themselves, at the centre in order to assess comparatively their contributions to wartime captivity. Taking a global approach, it shows that transnational bodies - whether non-governmental organisations, neutral states or individuals - played an essential role in dealing with captives in wartime. Chapters cover both the largest wars, such as the two World Wars, but also lesser-known conflicts, to highlight how captives were placed at the centre of transnational negotiations.

This book is the first major study of civilian internment during the First World War as both a European and global phenomenon. Based on research spanning twenty-eight archives in seven countries, this study explores the connections and continuities, as well as ruptures, between different internment systems at the local, national, regional and imperial levels. Arguing that the years 1914-20 mark the essential turning point in the transnational and international history of the detention camp, this book demonstrates that wartime civilian captivity was inextricably bound up with questions of power, world order and inequalities based on class, race and gender. It also contends that engagement with internees led to new forms of international activism and generated new types of transnational knowledge in the spheres of medicine, law, citizenship and neutrality. Finally, an epilogue explains how and why First World War internment is crucial to understanding the world we live in today.