Military Cultures of Violence among British and Commonwealth Armed Forces in the First and Second World Wars (1914–1945)

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In the first half of the twentieth century, the British Empire ruled over one quarter of the world’s population and controlled one quarter of the global land surface. Its armed forces had been shaped by generations of maritime and colonial warfare and were involved in conflicts all over the world. In the colonial context, atrocities committed by British forces were frequent and are well recorded. In regular international wars, however, British atrocities appear to be a rare exception, especially when comparing the British forces, for example, to the German or Soviet armies. This sub-project will explain this discrepancy by identifying, describing and classifying military cultures of violence among British and Commonwealth armed forces in the First World War and the Second World War, thus covering the years from 1914 to 1945, characterised by Eric Hobsbawm as ‘the Thirty-One Years War’. Addressing this period allows for a comparison of the two world wars along with the important discourses on illegitimate violence that took place in society and in the military during the interwar years. It furthermore enables an examination of the apparent phenomenon that the Second World War witnessed less illegitimate violence by British and Commonwealth forces than the First World War had done and also less acceptance of the same. This is a major difference to almost all other belligerents, for instance Germany, the United States, Russia/the USSR and Romania, where we see a clear radicalisation between the two global conflicts. Britain, however, appears to buck this trend. The reasons for this and the process involved are worth exploring. (The two component projects are outlined separately hereafter to reflect the weighting within Sub-project 6: Component Project A, which is for a postdoctoral position, is the main component project and will be outlined here first. Component Project B, by contrast, is for a doctoral position.)