Home Fronts of the Empire-Commonwealth: Imperial Interconnections and Wartime Social Transformations during the Second World War

第二次世界大战以各种形式扰乱了数百万人的生活，包括征兵、劳工征召、粮食短缺、野蛮的战斗、宣传和政治竞争。皇权将偏远地区与全球经济、政治和军事潮流联系起来。帝国-联邦各臣民战争经历的惊人多样性，以及帝国在定义英国战争中的重要作用，只是慢慢地被人们正确理解。战争的跨国影响通常被简单地认为是大城市和外围地区之间的单向关系，强调了欧洲非西方战斗人员的作用，但没有进一步丰富我们对欧洲在战时对帝国物资、人员和资源的巨大依赖的理解。该项目旨在通过调查1939- 1945年第二次世界大战期间南亚和中东的帝国相互联系和社会变革，在最广泛的意义上拓宽我们对战争全面影响的理解，展示了伴随战争的一些最重要的帝国前线的持久发展变化。“这个项目旨在从南亚和中东的角度审视第二次世界大战的社会历史，通过集中在这些‘后方’的战争角度和三个主要主题的分析：首先，帝国和跨国联系使战争得以进行，如航运和供应网络，移民劳工和工厂生产。”第二，该项目力求超越常规军事史，分析这些地区非战斗人员的经历以及平民与战时之间的联系；例如南亚和中东劳工、护士、运输工人和工厂工人的作用。我们会问，在军队和地方帝国臣民之间，是否有比通常描述的更密切的日常互动。第三，项目希望突出战争带来的社会转型，例如，通过本土资本的投资，基础设施的建设，城市和工厂的发展，战争带来的发展。简而言之，帝国时期战争的总体和转变性质将以一种超越简单的“社会”或“军事”历史的方式得到更好的强调和说明，从而对南亚和中东的地面事件如何与战时转变相交叉进行更综合和全面的评估。

The Second World War disrupted millions of people in the form of military recruitment, civil labour conscription, food shortages, savage fighting, propaganda, and political competition. Imperial power connected remote regions to global economic, political, and military currents. The incredible diversity of the war experience of the subjects of the Empire-Commonwealth, and the great importance of the empire in defining Britain's war, is only slowly coming to be properly understood. The trans-national effects of the war are often regarded simplistically as one-way relationships between metropole and periphery, that stress the role of non-Western combatants in Europe but do not go further to enrich our understanding of the vast dependency of Europe on imperial supplies, people and resources during wartime. This project aims to considerably broaden our understanding of the full impact of war in the widest sense by investigating imperial interconnections and social transformations during the Second World War in South Asia and the Middle East from 1939-45 by showing the lasting developmental changes that accompanied the war on some of the most important imperial 'home fronts.'This project aims to examine the social history of the second world war from the perspective of South Asia and the Middle East, by concentrating on the perspective of war from these 'home fronts' and analysis of three major themes: firstly, the imperial and transnational connections which enabled the fighting of the war, such as shipping and supply networks, migrant labour and factory production. Secondly, the project seeks to go beyond conventional military history to analyze the experience of non-combatants and the links between civilians and wartime in these regions; for instance the role of South Asian and Middle Eastern labourers, nurses, transport workers and factory workers. We will ask whether there may have been closer quotidian interactions between the military and local imperial subjects than is usually depicted. Thirdly, the project hopes to highlight the social transformation wrought by wartime, for instance, the development generated by war through the investment of indigenous capital, the building of infrastructure and development of cities and factories. In short, the total and transforming nature of war during empire will be better stressed and illustrated in a way that goes beyond simply 'social' or 'military' history to present a more integrated and holisitic appraisal of how events on the ground in South Asia and the Middle East intersected with wartime transformations.