The Korean War in Britain. Citizenship, Selfhood and Forgetting

Abstract

world. During the years 1914–20 they faced internment, expropriation, deportation and ultimately expulsion ‘back’ to Germany – all without much practical assistance or moral support from Berlin. How did this impact on their feelings towards the German fatherland? The volume’s focus is on belligerent states only. Yet in fact many of the questions it poses might equally be asked of countries that remained neutral. Switzerland would be a good example. Here we can find instances of ‘transnational volunteering’ in 1914, as many able-bodied men of Swiss origin returned from places of emigration across the world, and particularly from the Americas, to serve in the federal army at a time of national crisis. Urban histories of the First World War ‘need to pay particular attention to the geography of belligerence’, argues Pierre Purseigle, but they cannot be limited to metropolitan communities at war. Swiss towns and cities too grappled with problems like wartime migration, ‘recruiting and conscription, . . . organization of labour, and . . . shortages of coal or food’. And the Swiss people also ‘attempt[ed] to claim and exercise sovereignty over their sacrifice’, not least during the general strike (Landesstreik) of November 1918 (pp. 242–3). All in all, there is much more to be said about loyalties and national identities during the First World War. This volume nonetheless represents a solid and impressive base to start from.