Women, Children, and the Collective Face of Conflict in Europe, 1900-1950Europe was in turmoil during the first half of the twentieth century. The political stability that emanated from nineteenth-century political liberalism began to break down, reaching climaxes in the Great War, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second World War. Revolutions in Russia and Spain threatened parliamentary governments, and the Armenian genocide that began in 1915 foreshadowed the systematic destruction of European Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. Dictators seized power and established authoritarian regimes that stymied democratic expression and censored the press. Much of the scholarship on each of the conflicts has tended to focus on the military (male) and the civilian (female) binary. Women and children experienced every conflict during this tumultuous period as civilians, consumers, victims, exiles, and combatants. As histories of women and war suggest, there are exciting new areas of research and scholarship that resist simplistic binaries. Women were not simply civilians or victims. They were actors in the minutiae of wars, revolutions, dictatorships, and genocides. Children were present in these conflicts and not invisible, as many histories suggest. They too were actors and often politicized by propagandist literature and sectarian education through their own experiences and the politics of their families. This collection seeks to complicate the child/ adult distinction and examine the experiences of women and children as lenses to view a more collective face of conflict. While the volume brings to attention conflicts in Europe, the editors acknowledge the global ramifications of the revolutions, wars, and genocides, as well as the multitude of individual experiences. This collection seeks to expand understanding of the personal as the political in European conflicts from 1900-1950. We believe the focus on women and children offers a diverse perspective on five tumultuous decades of European history. |
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Administración aid workers Albacete American Archivo Armenian Genocide Army Auxilio de Invierno Basque Children Battle of Jarama Bemporad Britain British Burgess Caja Cambridge chapter China Campaign Committee Chinese civilian collective identity conflict consumer consumption cultural Departamento Central Fascist female FET-JONS Finland Finnish Fondo Auxilio Social France Francoist French front Fuhr gender German Guernica guerra History hospital humanitarian Ibid International Brigades Italia nostra Italian Italy Japanese Jewish Kysymyksiä ja vastauksia Leighton living London Madrid male meals Medical Bureau Méric military identity mothers nation Nazi Nazi Germany nurses officers organization Ottoman Ottoman Empire Oxford Paris patriotic political Refugee Children regime relief Republican roles Russian Second World shortages Sirkka Social Aid soldiers Soviet Union Spain Spaniards Spanish children Spanish Civil Spanish Civil War Susan Travers Testament of Youth traditional University Press upper-class Vera Brittain Vichy volunteers Winter War women and children wounded wrote Yessayan York young Youth