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Jamaican volunteers in the First World War : race, masculinity and the development of national consciousness by Richard Smith, Smith, Richard is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Jamaican volunteers in the First World War : race, masculinity and the development of national consciousness about?

This study explores the dynamics of race and masculinity to provide fresh historical insight into the First World War and its Imperial dimensions, examining the experiences of Jamaicans who served in British regiments. Reluctance to accept West Indian volunteers was rooted in the belief that black men lacked the qualities necessary for modern warfare. This, combined with fears over white racial degeneration, resulted in the need to preserve established hierarchies, which was achieved through the exclusion of black soldiers from the front line and their confinement in labour battalions. However, despite their exclusion from the battlefield, the author shows that the experience of war was invaluable in allowing veterans to appropriate codes of heroism, sacrifice and citizenship in order to wage their own battles for independence on their return home, culminating in the nationalist upsurge of the late 1930s. This book offers a lively and accessible account that will prove invaluable to those studying the Imperial dimensions of the First World War, as well and those interested in the wider notions of race and masculinity in the British Empire.

Author

Richard Smith, Smith, Richard

Publisher

Manchester ; New York: Manchester University Press ; New York: Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave

Published

2004

Language

EN

ISBN

9780719069864

Subjects

History, Humanities