The World in World Wars: Experiences, Perceptions and Perspectives from Africa and Asia

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Heike Liebau
BRILL, Sep 24, 2010 - History - 613 pages
The volume situates itself within the growing field of research on the global social history of the World Wars. By investigating social and cultural aspects of these wars in African, South Asian and Middle Eastern societies it aims at recovering both the diversity of perspectives and their intersections. Drawing substantially on new sources such as oral accounts, propaganda material and artistic representations, the publication investigates the experiences of combatants and civilians on the frontline and in the rear of the front. It studies spontaneous and organized responses manifested in public debates, propaganda activities, and in individual and collective memories. Questioning conventional periodizations and discussing both wars together, the book analyses broader implications of the wars for African and Asian societies which resulted in significant social and political transformations.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
Part One War Experiences and Perceptions
27
Seeing Europe from the Rear of the Front
29
Sepoy and Menial in the Great War 19161920
55
The Experience of Malawians in the Second World War
107
Reverberations of Indian Wartime Experiences in German Prison Camps 19151919
131
Arab Victims of National Socialism
167
Egypts Overlooked Contribution to World War II
217
Radio and Society in Tunisia during World War II
369
Part Three Social and Political Transformations
399
Everyday Life in Kurd Dagh Northern Syria during the Allied Occupation in the Second World War
401
Military Collaboration Conscription and Citizenship Rights in the Four Communes of Senegal and in French West Africa 19121946
429
Race Gender and Liberalism in the Union Defence Force 19391945
457
The Impact of the East Africa Campaign 19141918 on South Africa and Beyond
483
The Military and the Mujahidin in Action
499
Still Behind Enemy Lines? Algerian and Tunisian Veterans after the World Wars
519

Part Two Representations and Responses
249
Perceptions of World War I and the SocioReligious Movement among the Oraons in Chota Nagpur 19141916
251
Outofarea Deployment and the Swahili Military Press in World War II
277
The First World War According to the Memories of Commoners in the Bilād alShām
299
The Great War in the Memoirs and Poetry of the Iraqis
313
Politics and Literature in the Indian Homefront
341
Wartime Imaginings of Development and Social Policy c 19421946
547
Bibliography
579
General Index
603
Index of Names
609
Index of Places
611
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About the author (2010)

Heike Liebau is a historian/linguist who studied in Taschkent and received her PhD from University of Halle (Germany). She is presently a research fellow at ZMO in Berlin and works on the impact of print in colonial India as well as on Indian experiences of the First World War. Katrin Bromber received her Ph.D. in African Linguistics from the University of Leipzig (Germany) and her habilitation degree from the University of Vienna (Austria). She specialized in Swahili Studies and currently works on sports in Ethiopia and the Gulf States. Since 2001 she has been affiliated to ZMO in Berlin. Katharina Lange PhD in 2002 (University of Leipzig) is an anthropologist who studied in T bingen, Leipzig, and Reed College / USA, and received her PhD in 2002. She has conducted fieldwork in Syria, Jordan, and Egypt and currently works on oral and written historical narratives in northern Syria. She is a research fellow at the ZMO in Berlin. Dyala Hamzah is research fellow at the ZMO in Berlin. She holds a M. Phil in philosophy (Sorbonne) and a PhD in History and Islamic Studies (Freie Universit t Berlin, EHESS Paris). Ravi Ahuja is a social historian of labour, infrastructure and war in colonial India. He is presently professor of Modern Indian History and the director of the newly founded Centre for Modern Indian Studies at the University of G ttingen.

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