Tag Archives: First World War

SCOLMA Annual Conference 2015: “There came a darkness”: Africa, Africans and World War I

Posted on by

SCOLMA Annual Conference 2015: “There came a darkness”: Africa, Africans and World War I

Friday 17th July 2015, 9.15am – 5.00pm

Programme

9.15: Registration

9.30: Welcome

9.40: Keynote speech: Edward Paice
The Pike Report and Captain Caulfeild: Emerging Voices and Commemoration of the Great War in Africa

10.30: Coffee

10.50: Panel 1

10.50-11.10: Holgar Hansen, Copenhagen
Karen Blixen: a Danish view on the War in Africa

11.10-11.30: David Stuart-Mogg, Society of Malawi
Frederick Njilima, M.M.: an unlikely African hero of the Western Front

11.30-11.50: John Pinfold, Oxford and Alison Metcalfe, National Library of Scotland
The African Experience of the East African Campaign: some new oral and photographic evidence

11.50-12.00: Questions

12.00: Panel 2

12.00-12.20: Anne Samson, Independent Researcher
Duty to Empire? South Africa’s invasion of German South West Africa

12.20-12.40: Terry Barringer, Cambridge
“When you hear of wars and rumours of war”: reading about the War in Africa in missionary periodicals

12.40-1.00: Martin Plaut
Imagery of African Troops

1.00-1.10: Questions

1.10: Lunch

1.50: SCOLMA AGM

2.15: Panel 3

2.15-2.35: Daniel Steinbach, King’s College London
Colonial Encounters in War Photography by British Soldiers during the First World War in East Africa

2.35-2.55: Allyson Lewis, Essex County Record Office
The Forgotten Front – experiences of Essex men fighting in East Africa

2.55-3.15: Dan Gilfoyle, National Archives
Critical reading: the war diaries of the King’s African Rifles

3.15-3.30: Questions

3.30: Tea

3.50: Panel 4

3.50-4.10: Sarah Longair, British Museum
A fitting memento of Peace”: compromise and conflict in constructing Zanzibar’s Peace Memorial Museum

4.10-4.30: Ben Knighton, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies
Consequences of World War One for Empire in East Africa: Mission as political grievance among Christian Agikuyu, Kenya

4.30-4.50: Iris Wigge, Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University
The transnationality and intersectionality of Anti-Black racism in the aftermath of the Great War. Revisiting the ‘Black Horror’ Campaign.

4.50-5.00: Questions

5.00: Close

5.00-6.00: Reception

SCOLMA thanks the following for support for the conference: The British Library; Taylor and Francis; Adam Matthew.

Conference venue: The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB.

For more details, and to book, go to http://scolma.org/events/
or contact:
Terry Barringer
Email: TABarringe@aol.com

This programme is subject to change.

Book Launch: Violence: A Modern Obsession

Posted on by

Violence, it seems, is on everyone’s mind. It constantly is in the news; it has given rise to an enormous historical, sociological, and philosophical literature; it occupies a prominent place in popular entertainment; and it is regarded as one of the fundamental problems affecting social, political and interpersonal relations. After a century that has been described as the most violent in the history of humanity, Professor Richard Bessel has written a new history of our violent world and how we have become obsessed about violence. He critiques the great themes of modern history from revolutionary upheavals around the globe, to the two world wars and the murder of the European Jews, to the great purges and, more recently, terrorism. Bessel sheds light on this phenomenon and how our sensitivity towards violence has grown and has affected the ways in which we understand the world around us – in terms of religious faith, politics, military confrontation, the role of the state, as well as of interpersonal and intimate relations. He critiques our modern day relationship with violence and how despite its continuing and inevitable nature, we have become more committed to limiting and suppressing it. Both historically questioning and intensely evocative of the most vicious and brutal violence enacted by mankind, this book shows how the place of violence in the modern world presents a number of paradoxes and how it is an inescapable theme in human history.

Richard Bessel is Professor of Twentieth Century History at the University of York. He works on the social and political history of modern Germany, the aftermath of the two world wars and the history of policing. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of German History and History Today. His books include Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism, Germany after the First World War and Nazism and War.

Chair: Patricia Clavin (Jesus College)
Panelists: Jane Caplan (St Antony’s), Paul Betts (St Antony’s), Nick Stargardt (Magdalen)

Venue: European Studies Centre, St Antony’s College, 70 Woodstock Road

Discounted copies from Simon & Schuster will be available

* Please let Paul Betts (paul.betts@sant.ox.ac.uk) know if you plan to attend, so that they can arrange refreshments.

Event: First World War in the Middle East, 20-22 April 2016

Posted on by

The Changing Character of War (CCW) and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS) will run a joint event on the First World War in the Middle East on 20-22 April 2016.

For further details please contact Rob Johnson.

Physics and the Great War

Posted on by

Centre for the History and Philosophy of Physics, St Cross College, Oxford
Saturday, June 13 2015, 10.30 am – 5.30 pm

wirelessArguably the First World War saw the greatest advent of new science and technology and the role of science in warfare than any conflict hitherto. On land the innovations of barbed wire, machine guns and eventually, tanks changed the nature of land battles. At sea, radio communications changed operation of surface fleets and the introduction of submarine warfare changed the nature of war at sea. This war saw also the advent of aerial warfare which was to change the nature of all future wars. This conference seeks to review the key ways in which physics and its mathematics changed the nature of conflict from various points of views: technical, historical and sociological.

Further information here. Download the poster: Physics and the Great War Poster

Registration to attend this conference is free, but must be confirmed using the Conference booking form by Monday 8th June.

Workshop – Translating World War One: The Case of T. E. Lawrence

Posted on by

Workshop organised by Mary Bryden, fellow at the Paris IAS

Date et heure:
12/05/2015 – 09:30 – 17:30

Lieu: Institut d’études avancées de Paris, 17 quai d’Anjou, 75004 Paris

During the current Centenary of the First World War, we are commemorating the first mass industrialised war. If the number of victims was unprecedented, so too was the manner in which this quickly became a literary war. Amongst those caught up in the conflict were many who wished to describe this radical break with normality. Some of these narrations appeared in the course of the conflict itself, while others formed part of the second wave of war literature, between 1929 and 1930. The prevalent literary model is that of the muddy fields and trenches of the Western Front. However, this journée d’étude will concentrate upon the Middle Eastern Front and, in particular, on the person of T. E. Lawrence, whose war book Seven Pillars of Wisdom describes his participation in the Arab Revolt from 1916 to 1918.

Further information, programme and registration.

Vacancy: Lecturer in the History of the First World War (E&S), University of Exeter

Posted on by

University of Exeter – College of Humanities

The College wishes to recruit a Lecturer in the History of the First World War (Education and Scholarship) to deliver the level 3 Special Subject modules HIH3410 and HIH3411, ‘The Great War: a Comparative History’, providing maternity cover for a colleague. This part time (24% FTE) post is available from 1st September 2015 to 30th June 2016.

Location: Exeter
Salary: £33,242 to £37,394
Hours: Part Time
Contract Type: Contract / Temporary
Closes: 16th April 2015
Job Ref: P48317

Further details: jobs.ac.uk

Lecture: Futurism, Fascism, and the Art of War

Posted on by

Futurism, Fascism, and the Art of War
Michael Subialka, Powys Roberts Research Fellow in European Literature
St Hugh’s College, Oxford

29 April 2015, 5 pm, Taylor Institution Library, St Giles’, Oxford

The Italian entry into World War I was rooted in a complex mix of secret diplomacy, longstanding nationalist sentiments, and popular cultural provocation. One of the features of that mix is that it made for strange bedfellows and stranger combinations of beliefs even within single groups or movements. The Italian Futurists are no exception, and their years of provocation on behalf of intervention against Austria-Hungary (and in Africa) can be traced to a series of conflicting impulses that emerge out of the 19th century. In their thought, the basic irredentist cause of “completing” the Risorgimento’s unification of Italy is combined with the 19th-century discourse on vitalism, Darwinian visions of race theory and natural selection, and also an impulse toward the abstract, mysterious, and metaphysical, transposed from the realm of religion to human action and artistic creation. This blend of impulses makes the Futurist provocation emblematic both of the late 19th century and of the coming era of Fascism. It is in this light that we should approach the shift of alliances achieved by the Patto di Londra (Treaty of London), signed secretly 26 April 1915, nearly a month before Italy’s entry into the war.

All welcome. Lecture followed by Futurist book display and reception.

Poster: 2015-03-FuturismFascismAndTheArtOfWar-Poster-1