Costin_2018.pdf (42.33 MB)
Town, gown and countryside: the impact of war on Cambridgeshire communities, 1914-1918
thesis
posted on 2023-09-01, 14:30 authored by Joanna E. CostinThis thesis examines the impact of the First World War at a local level, using the
interlinked communities of Cambridgeshire as a case study. It begins with a statistical
analysis of enlistment and appeal to Tribunal, based on a study of 37,000 individuals who
were either resident in one of the selected Cambridgeshire districts or who attended Clare
College. This shows the influence of age, occupation, and location on wartime experience.
It goes on to examine methods of recruitment, the operation of Tribunals, and the impact of
the war on communal and individual relationships. It demonstrates the continued
connection of the home front and fighting front through local war news, and assesses
communal response to the war, both through voluntary mobilisation and increased wartime
regulation. Despite being absent from their home communities, men on active service
remained part of them through local war news and the symbolic return of the dead on local
war memorials. The thesis concludes with an analysis of the fractures the war created in
the local communities, through the loss of undergraduates and the issue of conscientious
objection, and a series of short case studies on wartime suicide. This thesis argues for a
progressive mobilisation of society, moving at different rates in different areas from
volunteerism to conscription or compulsion, while showing that this movement was not
solely dictated by the centre. It also demonstrates the importance of the local in
understanding the war as a whole, and in enabling a more connected picture of different
wartime narratives.
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Anglia Ruskin UniversityFile version
- Accepted version
Language
- eng
Thesis name
- PhD
Thesis type
- Doctoral
Legacy posted date
2019-07-09Legacy creation date
2019-07-09Legacy Faculty/School/Department
Theses from Anglia Ruskin University/Faculty of Arts, Law and Social SciencesUsage metrics
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