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An examination of the role of migration in the development of London.

During the course of the nineteenth century millions of Germans left their homeland to settle throughout the world. While most went towards the Americas, hundreds of thousands moved to Britain and its Empire consisting of those with agricultural and working class backgrounds, as well as elites. By 1914, despite rising Germanophobia as the Great War approached, the migrants remained an integrated group. My article will demonstrate how the development of a Germanophobic ideology, emanating from London, but present throughout British possessions in an equally virulent manner, had a devastating impact upon the German communities. The racist ideology meant that Germans faced a combination of draconian measures in the form of internment, property confiscation and deportation. The paper will focus upon the last of these, demonstrating that, while expulsions took place throughout the War, especially against women, who generally escaped the gendered internment policy, the ‘extirpation – root and branch and seed - of German control and influence from the British Empire’, as put forward by the London based Germanophobic pressure group the British Empire Union, became imperial policy. My paper will focus upon the marginalization of the Germans during the Great War and their elimination at its conclusion, which became total in some cases (such as India) and partial in others (such as Great Britain). The article will demonstrate how the plight of the Germans at the end of the First world War fits into the wider picture of minority persecution during the era of the Great War as Empires collapsed.

This article examines the fate of minorities in the immediate aftermath of the Great War. It outlines the different types of outsiders, their plight during the conflict and developments at the conclusion of peace. While continental empires had kept most ethic outsiders relatively invisible until the nineteenth century rise of nationalism, they represent key players in helping us to understand the First World War. The post-War settlement meant the reconfiguration of minorities because of the collapse of continental empires but only resulted in short term solutions which the Second World War and the events which followed that conflict would solve in a much more thorough and even more brutal manner.

The article examines the global nature of interment within the British Empire during the First World War.

Based on years of research in libraries and archives in England, Germany, India and Switzerland, this book offers a new interpretation of global migration from the early nineteenth until the early twentieth century. Rather than focusing on the mass transatlantic migration or the movement of Britons towards British colonies, it examines the elite German migrants who made their way to India, especially missionaries, scholars and scientists, businessmen and travellers. The volume outlines the reasons for migration, in which networks played a central role, and then moves on to examine the everyday lives of Germans in India. It tackles the concept of German community and outlines the interaction between Germans, Britons and Indians, which the First World War completely transformed. The history of the Germans in India is contextualised against the background of nineteenth-century globalisation as a result of imperialism and the internationalisation of German migrant identities. The story told here questions, for the first time, the concept of Europeans in India. Previous scholarship has tended to ignore any national variations in the presence of white people in India, viewing them either as part of a ruling elite or, more recently, white subalterns. The German elites undermine these conceptions. Developing into a distinct group before 1914, especially in the missionary compounds, the Government of India marginalised and expelled them during the First World War, when for the first time, many of them realised they had a distinct German national identity.

Unlike in other states such as Great Britain, the USA or the Soviet Union, the Second World War in Germany does not usually form a distinct and compact period. The most popular phases in the history of twentieth century Germany consist of: the Kaiserreich, 1890-1919; the Weimar Republic, 1919-33; the Third Reich, 1933-45; divided Germany, 1945-89; and reunified Germany after 1989. The Second World War usually receives attention as part of the history of the Third Reich. On the other hand, historians of the War often approach the conflict from a German centred approach. Some differences exist between the perspectives of German and Anglo-American historians, with the former, especially those who work on local history, more likely to examine the Second World War as a distinct period, although some recent major works have begun to buck this trend in Anglo-American scholarship. In recent years the multi-volume Clarendon history of Germany and the Second World War published in English and translated from the German Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, has helped to unify the Anglo-American and German perspectives. Some of the volumes included in this article, however, view the Second World War in Germany as part of the wider history of the Third Reich. From the outset Nazi Germany and the Second World War within it has given rise to a vast literature, which began as the Nazis rose to power and has continued unabated until the present. This article can therefore only provide the briefest of introductions to this enormous historiography by outlining the key publications in these areas: *General Overviews*; *The Push to War*; *The Invasion of Eastern Europe*; *The Bombing of German Cities*; *Economic Mobilization*; *Genocide*; *Foreign Workers and Prisoners of War*; *Local History*; *Women*; *Children*; *Repression and Resistance*; *Religion*; *Propaganda*; and *Defeat*.

During the First World War hundreds of thousands of civilians spent years behind barbed wire throughout the world. London formed the centre of the global internment system which meant the incarceration of enemy aliens in camps throughout the Empire. The symbol of internment consisted of the Isle of Man, which, housed two camps in Douglas and, above all, Knockaloe, through which over thirty thousand people passed, many of whom would remain for years. This paper will begin with an introduction on the adoption of a policy of internment within Britain and then move on to the decision to use the Isle of Man to hold German civilians. It will focus upon the all male internees held here and analyse their experiences. Two key paradigms emerged on incarceration during the First World War. The first constructed a psychosis called barbed wire disease, put forward particularly by the Swiss psychologist A. L. Vischer, who visited Douglas and Knockaloe on several occasions on behalf of the Swiss Embassy, which looked after German interests in Britain from 1917. The alternative view, which evolved decades later, developed the idea of a prisoners’ camp society, put forward by John Davidson Ketchum, who had spent time as a national of the British Empire, in the internment camp in Ruhleben in Berlin during the Great War. Using a wide range of sources, this paper will ask whether the prisoners became victims of depression or managed to overcome the problems thrown up by years of internment by developing social and cultural activity.

The article introduces the relationship between German minorities and the states in which they lived during the Great War.

Offering a global comparative perspective on the relationship between German minorities and the majority populations amongst which they found themselves during the First World War, this collection addresses how ’public opinion’ (the press, parliament and ordinary citizens) reacted towards Germans in their midst. The volume uses the experience of Germans to explore whether the War can be regarded as a turning point in the mistreatment of minorities, one that would lead to worse manifestations of racism, nationalism and xenophobia later in the twentieth century.

The article looks at the experiences of minorities during the First World War under the three key themes of ‘the persecuted’, ‘the integrated’ and ‘the exploited’.

http://www.britishpoliticssociety.no/British%20Politics%20Review