Empires in World War I

Richard S. Fogarty is Associate Professor of History at the University at Albany, SUNY. Andrew Jarboe is completing his PhD at Northeastern University, Boston.

• Part I: Myths and Realities of Imperial ExpansionChapter 1. Matthew G. Stanard, “Digging-In: The Great War and the Roots of Belgian Empire”Chapter 2. Maryanne Rhett, “Race and Imperial Ambition: The case of Japan and India after World War One”Chapter 3. William Matthew Kennedy, “A Pacific Scramble?: Imperial Readjustment in the Asia Pacific, 1911-1922”Part II: Soldiers of Empire, Far from HomeChapter 4. Steve Sabol, “’It was a Pretty Good War, but They Stopped it too Soon’: The American Empire, Native Americans, and the First World War”Chapter 5. Julian Saltman, “The Full and Just Penalty?: British Military Justice and the Empire’s War for Palestine”Chapter 6. Andrew T. Jarboe, “Propaganda and Empire in the Heart of Europe: Indian Soldiers in Hospital and Prison, 1914-1918”Part III: Thinking Imperially, Acting LocallyChapter 7. Sarah Zimmerman, “Citizenship, Military Service and Managing Exceptionalism: Originaires in World War One”Chapter 8. Kenneth Orosz, “For God and Country: Missionary Service in Colonial Africa during the Great War”Chapter 9. Erin Eckhold Sassin, “The Visual Politics of Upper Silesian Settlements in the First World War”Part IV: Imperial AftershocksChapter 10. Richard Smith, “The First World War and the Permanent West Indian Soldier”Chapter 11. Alan McPherson, “The First World War and Empire in the Americas”Chapter 12. John Lack and Bart Ziino, “Requiem for empire: Fabian War and the Imperial War Graves Commission”Conclusion

' The current trend in general writing on World War I emphasizes its global aspect. At the same time an increasing number of specialised monographs address theatres long overlooked and participants long forgotten- France's Malagasy soldiers, the British West Indies Regiment- yet somehow the pieces never quite fit. The looming presence of the Western Front continues to dominate and define- until this anthology. The essays within cover a comprehensive and dazzling spectrum, from the Belgian Congo to Upper Silesia, and from th Four Communes of Senegal to America's Caribbean 'empire without portfolio'. Some focus on the social/cultural interaction of colonisers and colonised. Others deal with non-European ambitions- not only Japan's but those of Indian nationalists as well. What makes the discrete chapters fit together is their high individual quality- scholarship and presentation are uniformly excellent- and the author's success in presenting case studies and niche studies in a genuinely global context. The result is a major contribution to concretising the global nature of a war still narrowly understood, and to demonstrating that the war's causes and aims were as universal as its operational aspects.' Dennis Showalter, Professor of History at Colorado College.