What is often held to be Britain's 'finest hour' – the Second World War – was not experienced so uniformly across the British Isles. On the margins, the war was endured in profoundly different ways. While D-Day or Dunkirk is embedded in British collective memory, how many Britons can recall that Finns were interned on the Isle of Man, that enemy soldiers developed British infrastructure in Orkney, or that British subjects were sent to concentration camps from Guernsey? Such experiences, tangential to the dominant British war narrative, are commemorated elsewhere in the 'other British Isles'. In this remarkable contribution to British Island Studies, Daniel Travers pursues these histories and their commemoration across numerous local sites of memory: museums, heritage sites and public spaces. He examines the way these island identities assert their own distinctiveness over the British wartime story, and ultimately the way they fit into the ongoing discourse about how the memory of the Second World War has been constructed since 1945.

The incredible true story of what really happened in occupied Guernsey during the Second World War.

Every large nation in the world was directly or indirectly affected by the impact of war during the course of the twentieth century, and while the historical narratives of war of these nations are well known, far less is understood about how small islands coped. These islands – often not nations in their own right but small outposts of other kingdoms, countries, and nations – have been relegated to mere footnotes in history and heritage studies as interesting case studies or unimportant curiosities. Yet for many of these small islands, war had an enduring impact on their history, memory, intangible heritage and future cultural practices, leaving a legacy that demanded some form of local response. This is the first comprehensive volume dedicated to what the memories, legacies and heritage of war in small islands can teach those who live outside them, through closely related historical and contemporary case studies covering 20th and 21st century conflict across the globe. The volume investigates a number of important questions: Why and how is war memory so enduring in small islands? Do factors such as population size, island size, isolation or geography have any impact? Do close ties of kinship and group identity enable collective memories to shape identity and its resulting war-related heritage? This book contributes to heritage and memory studies and to conflict and historical archaeology by providing a globally wide-ranging comparative assessment of small islands and their experiences of war. Heritage of War in Small Island Territories is of relevance to students, researchers, heritage and tourism professionals, local governments, and NGOs.

This book explores the way in which the legacy of the German occupation of the Channel Islands has been turned into heritage (or, conversely, neglected) over the last 70 years. Once seen as the ‘taint of the mark of the beast’, the perception of much of what the Germans left behind has slowly changed from being despised and reviled, buried underground or dumped at sea, to being reclaimed, restored, highly valued and treated as ‘heritage’. This book examines the journey of various aspects of this heritage, exploring the role of each post-war generation in picking at the scar of occupation, refusing to let it heal or fade. By discovering and interpreting anew their once-hated legacy, each generation of Channel Islanders has changed the resulting collective memory of a period which is rapidly moving to the edge of living memory. It includes the first in-depth investigation into the multiple aspects of heritage of occupation of a single place and will offer comparative material for other heritage professionals who work with similar material throughout Europe and in other post-occupation areas. It will explore the complex ethical issues faced by anyone who works with the legacy or heritage of Nazism, seeking to understand how and why the Channel Islands have responded in the way that they have and asking how unique – or typical for formerly-occupied Europe - their response has been.

Islands and archipelagos hold great imaginative power, and they have long been a subject of study for cartographers and geographers, for anthropologists and historians of colonisation. But what does it mean to be an islander? Can one feel both British and Manx, for example? What are British tourists looking for when they go to former island colonies? How do past relationships with Britain affect islands today? This collection takes a variety of perspectives to provide answers to such questions, examining war, empire, tourism, immigration, language, literature, and everyday life on and in islands, and the question of travel to and from them. Britishness is highlighted as a global island phenomenon, providing an insight into the history, culture and politics of identities from Jersey to Jamaica. Islands and Britishness not only brings together various contemporary strands in Island Studies, but uniquely focuses on the relationship – historical, cultural and economic – between particular islands and Britain, and, crucially, how this relationship frames national identity both on the island and in Britain itself. The collection examines interactions between Britishness and indigenous or earlier invasive/settler cultures, as well as the internal differences within the concept of ‘Britishness’ (Britain/Scotland/Shetland, for instance). It considers the relationship played out on the island between Britishness and the other nationalities with which the islands share an affinity, and questions received wisdoms about national identity on the islands by considering intersecting discourses such as class and gender. The collection offers a global perspective on the divisions within a notion of Britishness and the identities against which Britishness has been constructed.

In its totality, the “Long Second World War”—extending from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War to the end of hostilities in 1945—has exerted enormous influence over European culture. Bringing together leading historians, sociologists, and literary and film scholars, this broadly interdisciplinary volume investigates Europeans’ individual and collective memories and the ways in which they have shaped the continent’s cultural heritage. Focusing on the major combatant nations—Spain, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, and Russia—it offers thoroughly contextualized explorations of novels, memoirs, films, and a host of other cultural forms to illuminate European public memory.

Integrating trauma studies with historical research and social psychology, Landscapes of Trauma examines a range of battlefields from across history, including Waterloo, the Battle of Sedan, the Battle of the Ebro and the Battle of Normandy, to bring to light what these battlefields say about our collective and individual psyches. Hunt explores how war shapes the nature of trauma, not only by its innate horror but also by the historical and societal contexts it is fought in, from the cultural and social conventions of the period to the topography of the settings. This book provides a deep analysis of how war is experienced and remembered in different eras and by different generations. Moving beyond the clinical concept of post-traumatic stress disorder, Hunt discusses how trauma can be understood socially and historically, as well as through the lens of individual suffering. This book also investigates the psychological foundations of memorialisation, remembrance and commemoration that shape the legacy of the battles discussed. Using interviews with veterans, their letters, journals and diaries, as well as literary and historical sources, Hunt locates the battlefield as a place where humans explore the parameters of human behaviour, thought and emotion. This book is in important resource for students and scholars interested in the psychology of trauma and war, as well as military history.