Description
Book SynopsisFor Home and Empire is the first book to compare voluntary wartime mobilization across the Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand home fronts. As communities organized to raise recruits or donate funds, their efforts strengthened communal bonds, but they also reinforced class, race, and gender boundaries. Which jurisdiction should provide for a soldier's wife if she moved from Hobart to northern Tasmania? Should Welsh women in Vancouver purchase comforts for local soldiers or for Welsh soldiers in the British Army? Should Maori volunteers enlist with their home regiment or with a separate battalion? Voluntary efforts reflected how community members understood their relationship to one another, to their dominion, and to the Empire. Steve Marti examines the motives and actions of those involved in the voluntary war effort, applying the framework of settler colonialism to reveal the geographical and social divides that separated communities as they organized for war.
Trade ReviewSteve Marti’s lively and informative monograph
For Home and Empire: Voluntary Mobilization in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand during the First World War will be a worthwhile addition to the reading list of anyone interested in understanding the impact of the Great War on the British Empire. -- Patrick H. Brennan * Canadian Journal of History *
Marti weaves together multiple strands of historiography to present fresh insights into the wartime societies of Australia, New Zealand and Canada...[his] level of detail and meticulously supported arguments offer little room for critique. -- Jordan Beavis, University of Newcastle, Australia * Canadian Military History *
Marti’s research is impressive and suggestive, and the comparative approach will add substantially to further efforts to understand the Great War in the British Dominions. -- J.L. Grantastein * CHOICE Connect *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1 Dominion over War: Local Volunteers, Dominion Mobilization, and the Imperial War Effort
2 Hands across the Sea: Greater Britain, New France, and the Ties to Home and Homeland
3 Far from Home: Race and the Boundaries of Communal Mobilization
4 Aliens or Allies: Southern and Eastern European Immigrants and the Bonds of Military Service
5 As Obsolete as the Buffalo and the Tomahawk: Assimilation, Autonomy, and the Mobilization of Indigenous Communities
Conclusion
Notes; Bibliography; Index
