This is the first book to bring together an interdisciplinary, theoretically engaged and global perspective on the First World War through the lens of historical and cultural geography. Reflecting the centennial interest in the conflict, the collection explores the relationships between warfare and space, and pays particular attention to how commemoration is connected to spatial elements of national identity, and processes of heritage and belonging. Venturing beyond military history and memory studies, contributors explore conceptual contributions of geography to analyse the First World War, as well as reflecting upon the imperative for an academic discussion on the War’s centenary. This book explores the War’s impact in more unexpected theatres, blurring the boundary between home and fighting fronts, investigating the experiences of the war amongst civilians and often overlooked combatants. It also critically examines the politics of hindsight in the post-war period, and offers an historical geographical account of how the First World War has been memorialised within ‘official’ spaces, in addition to those overlooked and often undervalued ‘alternative spaces’ of commemoration. This innovative and timely text will be key reading for students and scholars of the First World War, and more broadly in historical and cultural geography, social and cultural history, European history, Heritage Studies, military history and memory studies.

This comparative and transnational study of landscapes in the First World War offers new perspectives on the ways in which landscapes were idealised, mobilised, interpreted, exploited, transformed and destroyed by the conflict. The collection focuses on four themes: environment and climate, industrial and urban landscapes, cross-cultural encounters, and legacies of the war. The chapters cover Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Africa and the US, drawing on a range of approaches including battlefield archaeology, military history, medical humanities, architecture, literary analysis and environmental history. This volume explores the environmental impact of the war on diverse landscapes and how landscapes shaped soldiers’ experiences at the front. It investigates how rural and urban locales were mobilised to cater to the demands of industry and agriculture. The enduring physical scars and the role of landscape as a crucial locus of memory and commemoration are also analysed. The chapter 'The Long Carry: Landscapes and the Shaping of British Medical Masculinities in the First World War' is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

The First World War’s centenary generated a mass of commemorative activity worldwide. Officially and unofficially; individually, collectively and commercially; locally, nationally and internationally, efforts were made to respond to the legacies of this vast conflict. This book explores some of these responses from areas previously tied to the British Empire, including Australia, Britain, Canada, India and New Zealand. Showcasing insights from historians of commemoration and heritage professionals it provides revealing insider and outsider perspectives of the centenary. How far did commemoration become celebration, and how merited were such responses? To what extent did the centenary serve wider social and political functions? Was it a time for new knowledge and understanding of the events of a century ago, for recovery of lost or marginalised voices, or for confirming existing clichés? And what can be learned from the experience of this centenary that might inform the approach to future commemorative activities? The contributors to this book grapple with these questions, coming to different answers and demonstrating the connections and disconnections between those involved in building public knowledge of the ‘war to end all wars’.

This volume synthesises the latest scholarship on First World War veterans in post-war Britain and Ireland, investigating the topic through its political, social and cultural dynamics. It examines the post-war experiences of those men and women who served and illuminates the nature of the post-war society for which service had been given. Complicating the homogenising tendency in existing scholarship it offers comparison of the experiences of veterans in different regions of Britain, including perspectives drawn from Ireland. Further nuance is offered by the assessment of the experiences of ex-servicewomen alongside those of ex-servicemen, such focus deeping understanding into the gendered specificities of post-war veteran activities and experiences. Moreover, case studies of specific cohorts of veterans are offered, including focus on disabled veterans and ex-prisoners of war. In these regards the collection offers vital updates to existing scholarship while bringing important new departures and challenges to the current interpretive frameworks of veteran experiences in post-war Britain and Ireland.

This book focuses on a single artefact, the Barochan Cross, a ninth century stone sculpture in Renfrewshire, Scotland. Exploring the changing stories, meanings, locations, uses and feelings of the sculpture, Tim Edensor adopts a broad temporal frame across twelve centuries that moves away from a periodisation that solely considers its original meanings and uses. Narrating the shifting ways in which the Barochan Cross has been moved, utilised, cared for, interpreted, encountered, sensed, copied and appropriated allows for a sophisticated yet highly accessible discussion about its changing relationships with the physical and conceptual landscapes in which it has been situated. This book thus expands the ways in which landscape might be conceptualised, revealing how artefacts can inform future critical thinking about heritage and bringing an important contribution to theories about material culture and landscape.

In a unique collection of international and interdisciplinary research, this book focuses on commemorative events around the world on the same day: 11 November 2018, the centenary of Armistice Day, the end of the First World War. It argues that we need to move beyond discourse, narrative and how historical events are represented to fully understand what commemoration does, socially, politically and culturally. Adopting an experiential reframing treats sensory, affective and emotional feelings as fundamental to how we collectively understand shared histories, and through them, shared identities. The volume features 15 case studies from ten countries, covering a variety of settings and national contexts specific to the First World War. Together the chapters demonstrate that a new conceptualisation of commemoration is needed: one that attends to how it feels.

This book focuses on various manifestations of history in public spaces: in the physical ones of various historical times and geographical places, as well as in the virtual world. It discusses how the spaces have been shaped and re-shaped, by whom and for what (not always laudable) purposes, and raises pragmatical and ethical questions for both research and practical activities in the field. By combining both micro and global perspectives, the universal role that history plays in spaces created by and for, as well as the factors determining its usages, is revealed. The authors are rooted in specific national contexts: Canadian or American, Ukrainian or Polish, British or Irish, German or Luxembourgish, Korean or Brazilian, and the case studies are varied including large cities and small towns, city centers, and godforsaken cemeteries, but the narratives built on these cases go beyond when they deal with issues such as decoding history and its meanings in public spaces, doing history in public spaces, and observing changes in manifestations of history in public spaces. This volume is an essential resource for anyone interested in the relationship between history and public space in a global perspective.