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GLOBALISING AND LOCALISING THE GREAT WAR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2017

Adrian Gregory
Adrian Gregory*
Affiliation:
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
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Abstract

This article is intended to suggest an approach to the global history of the First World War that can provide a method of managing the potentially unwieldy concept of global conflict by understanding it through the war's impact on localities. By concentrating on four relatively small but significant cities; Oxford in England, Halifax in Nova Scotia, Jerusalem in Palestine and Verdun in eastern France, which experienced the war in very different ways, it looks at both the movement of people and things and the symbolic interconnectivities that made the war a ‘world war’. This local focus helps challenge both the primacy of self-contained national history and the focus on the violent interaction of the opposing sides which are the more normal ways of narrating the war. It does not deny the usefulness of these traditional structures of narration and explanation but suggests that there are different and complementary ways the war can be viewed, which create different emphasis and chronologies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 27 , December 2017 , pp. 233 - 251
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2017 

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References

1 The best summary account of Sen's military service can be found on the Leeds Pals website produced by Stephen and Sam Wood which also includes a letter from Harry Burniston to his father describing Sen's death in some detail: www.leeds-pals.com/soldiers/jogendra-sen; www.leeds-pals.com/soldiers/harry-burniston, consulted 27 Sept. 2016. Burniston was himself killed on 1 July 1916.

2 Most of the story was pieced together after Professor Santanu Das gave a lecture at Leeds University mentioning an exhibit of Sen's possessions in the Chadernagore museum. See Yorkshire Post, 6 Mar. 2015. I am indebted to Professor Das for bringing this story to my attention.

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