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

第二次世界大战以征兵、征兵、粮食短缺、野蛮战斗、宣传和政治竞争等形式扰乱了数百万人的生活。帝国权力将偏远地区与全球经济、政治和军事潮流联系起来。帝国-英联邦臣民令人难以置信的多样化战争经历，以及帝国在定义不列颠战争中的巨大重要性，只是慢慢地才被正确理解。战争的跨国影响往往被简单地视为大都市和外围国家之间的单向关系，强调非西方战斗人员在欧洲的作用，但并没有进一步丰富我们对战时欧洲对帝国补给、人员和资源的巨大依赖的理解。这个项目旨在通过研究1939-1945年第二次世界大战期间南亚和中东的帝国联系和社会变革，在最广泛的意义上极大地拓宽我们对战争的全面影响的理解，通过展示伴随着战争在一些最重要的帝国“本土战线”上的持久发展变化。本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，从这些‘本土战线’的角度出发，分析三个主要主题：第一，促成战争的帝国和跨国联系，如航运和供应网络，外来务工人员和工厂生产。其次，该项目力求超越传统的军事历史，分析非战斗人员的经历以及这些地区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，军事和地方皇室臣民之间的日常互动是否比通常所描述的更密切。第三，该项目希望突出战时带来的社会变革，例如，通过投资土著资本、建设基础设施以及发展城市和工厂，实现战争带来的发展。简而言之，帝国时期战争的全面性和变革性将得到更好的强调，并以一种超越简单的社会或军事历史的方式加以说明，以呈现对南亚和中东地面事件如何与战时变革相交的更全面和更整体主义的评估。

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.