Civilian Internment during the First World War: A European and Global History, 1914-1920

by Matthew Stibbe

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137571908
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	11/14/2019
Edition description:	1st ed. 2019
Pages:	335
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Matthew Stibbe is Professor of Modern European History at Sheffield Hallam University. UK. A twentieth-century specialist working across and beyond the borders of Europe, he has co-edited two essay collections on First World War captivity, and is author of the British Civilian Internees in Germany: The Ruhleben Camp, 1914-18 (2008).

Table of Contents

• Introduction

2. First World War Internment across the Globe

Germans and Austro-Hungarians

The German and Habsburg Empires’ Response

Ottoman Turkey, Bulgaria and the Balkans

3. Internment and War Governance in the First World War

France

Britain

Germany

Austria-Hungary

War Governance, Camps and the Turkish Genocide against the

Ottoman Armenians, 1915-16

4. Imagining Internment: International Law, Social Order and National Community

International Law and Perceptions of the ‘Other’: the view of officials Reprisals and Punishments

Internment and Social Control

Internment and ideas about ‘National Community’

5.Internment and International Activism: The Search for More Humane Alternatives

Pre-War Precedents: Emily Hobhouse and the South African Camps

The Auskunfts- und Hilfsstelle für Deutsche im Ausland und Ausländer in Deutschland

 The Auskunfts- und Hilfsstelle and the ICRC

Neutral Internment in Switzerland and the Netherlands

Barbed-Wire Disease and the ‘Medicalisation’ of Internment

6.(Not) Ending Internment: The Years 1918-20

Wartime Civilian Captivity in Russia from Tsar Nicholas II to Lenin

Germany and Austria-Hungary

Imperial Britain and its Allies in Africa, Asia and the Atlantic Ocean

France, Italy and the ‘Little Entente’ (Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia)

The ‘Red Scare’: the Americas

7. Conclusion and Epilogue