Uniforms and Commercial Culture: Constructing a Vision of Warfare in Pre-Great War Britain

Abstract

Uniforms carry cultural meaning shaped by their interaction with military realities. They can communicate tradition but also anticipate change. Prior to the Great War, British Army uniforms had developed from the familiar red tunic to khaki, but the manner of their representation in the mass culture confirmed a continuity and correctness of the British way of war that ran against the emerging industrialization of warfare. Wearing familiar uniforms linked to the past and concurrently fighting what seemed like anachronistic ‘small wars’ in empire as reported in the press, what awaited the volunteers of 1914–15 could not have been anticipated by those consumers of the commercial culture. This article uses a variety of sources, from the illustrated adult and juvenile press, paintings, and toys, to reveal the link between uniforms and the representation of warfare in the fifty years prior to the Great War. In that representation we see not just the glorification of war that cultural historians attach to gendered, imperialist, or nationalist meanings. This article argues that the role of uniforms in the representation of warfare was a means by which to make it knowable and worthwhile for the consumer public. But by representing past and contemporary uniforms quite accurately, the writers and artists imposed a sense of military continuity at a time when war was changing.