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During the First World War, 312,891 men and women from Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) were recruited as porters. Their task was to ensure a steady supply of food and artillery from Northern Rhodesia to the northern border into German East Africa (modern Tanzania and parts of Rwanda and Burundi) and Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique). There is a growing body of literature on African porters who served in the East Africa campaign during the First World War. Despite the recognition of the importance of African porters, the experiences of those from Northern Rhodesia remains understudied. Therefore, this article examines the experiences of Northern Rhodesian porters – the mtenga-tenga – in the East Africa campaign. It also explores the porters' reactions to their wartime experiences. The article argues that negative experiences in the war altered these men and women in many ways. Significantly, these experiences adversely affected their relationship with the traditional authorities. This shook the very foundations of established traditional authority. The article draws extensively on new primary data stored in Zambian museums and archives, which hitherto have been underutilised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the political dynamics of the labor force at the federal Armory in Springfield, Massachusetts during the U. S. Civil War. The Springfield Armory, which produced firearms for the Union Army, was an actively patriotic institution within a city, state, and region very supportive of the Union cause. The Armory as an institution and many of its workers as individuals participated in Springfield's civic celebrations of Unionism and, since it was one of the most public faces of the federal government's war effort, this helped to tie the city to the conflict in a very direct way. This essay argues that, despite this projection of patriotism, the Armory was a political site where some laborers openly criticized the Lincoln administration or openly cheered the Confederacy. These men came to work at the Armory for a number of reasons, which did not always include Unionism. Their political dissent highlights both how divisive even the most patriotic of spaces on the Northern home front could be and how impressive the resolve of the Armory leadership was during the war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shortly after the Armistice which ended the First World War, most of the propaganda organizations established by the British authorities closed down, apparently because of distaste for an occupation considered a necessary wartime evil. Within a decade, propaganda's reputation was damaged by several critiques of wartime activities and continued to worsen thereafter. This article provides an overview of British wartime propaganda activity, and, drawing on wartime and postwar observations from writers, artists, speakers and administrators, considers how propaganda veterans discussed propaganda, and how this affects understanding of its historical reputation. Many eminent propagandists proved happy to discuss their activities in later reminiscences. Such recollections, ranging from enthusiastic claims to their own or others' credit, republication of propaganda content, self-validation alongside wider critiques of the organizations, euphemistic or evasive discussion of propaganda activity, and renunciations or denunciations, suggest propaganda was not a universally despised relic of the war, but a contribution to wartime service willingly undertaken and often recalled without embarrassment or disdain. Propaganda did not have a terminally negative reputation after the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article researches the process of historical memory formation and the role of museum spaces in it. The authors consider the use of letters from the front as the means of commemoration. The issues of commemoration and re-commemoration, museum reflection and its influence on historical memory are studied. Special attention is paid to museumification of front letters and memoires of war workers. The authors consider the new possibilities of using them in museum displays using multimedia technologies, emphasizing the higher accessibility of the letters' content in multimedia. The research novelty consists in the cross-disciplinary view of a historical source through the prism of museum space. The authors show the properties and possibilities of narrative sources which are now available due to modern technologies. The unpublished ego-documents (private letters and memoires) from museum funds were studied and described. The research topicality is due to identification of the influence of written museum exhibits on the formation and socialization of historical memory. It is proved that the personal materials in a museum display using modern technical opportunities enhance the informative effect, stimulating commemoration and facilitating the formation of historical memory. The article employs the experience of fund, exhibition and excursion work of the Museum of the history of Gorky railroad development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on women working in reserved occupations in Glasgow and Clydeside during the Second World War, including their feelings of contribution to the war effort, self-fulfilment in work and, in some cases, dislike of work and lack of attachment to the war effort. The article also examines the extent to which wartime work represented continuity in the lives of working women in the region, and discusses the relationships of such women with men in their local communities, where social and cultural discourse was inextricably intertwined with the realities and discourses of day-to-day existence. One argument presented is that women's wartime work in Clydeside was representative of renegotiated relationships with the men in their communities rather than destabilising masculinity. The argument is put forward that, as well as the changes represented by war, the day-to-day life of women's immediate local vicinities and the uniquely industrial and working class background of Clydeside were enduring influences on their subjectivities and everyday behaviour. The article therefore adds to the historiography relating to life on the home front in the Second World War by exploring the subjectivities of reserved women in the context of the communities where they lived and worked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although no real battle was fought in Nigeria during the Second World War (1939–1945), the burden of the war was much felt by Nigerians. They made significant contributions to the war effort; a method through which the British shifted the burden of the war onto their colonial subjects. This strategy had caught the attentions of many scholars, and various discussions have centered on its origin, purpose and operation at provincial and Nigeria wide level. Thus, contributions at the Districts and Division levels have always been subsumed into colony-wide studies, and by that fact remained unresearched. This paper focuses the effects of the imperial coping strategy on the Yoruba society with Osun Division as a case study. The study adopts historical approach, which depends on written, oral, and archival sources. However, it is hoped that, with due attention being given to the efforts of the people at a local level, the impact of the Second World War on African social order will be better understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First aid was the focus of growing voluntary activity in the post-war decades. Despite the advent of the National Health Service in 1948, increased numbers of people volunteered to learn, teach, and administer first aid as concern about health and safety infiltrated new activities and arenas. In this article we use the example of the Voluntary Aid Societies (VAS, focusing in particular on St John Ambulance) to highlight continuities and change in the relationship between state and voluntary sector in health and welfare provision during the four decades after 1945. Though the state assumed vastly expanded health and welfare responsibilities after the war, the continuing vitality of the VAS suggests cultural continuities that the post-war welfare state did not eradicate. The article therefore builds on the insights of historians who argue that volunteering remained a vital component of British society across the later twentieth century, and that the state and voluntary sector were not mutually exclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses Western Canada during the Second World War. Unpreparedness for the war; Implementation of the War Measures Act; Fortification of bases and harbors; Cooperation between Canadian and American forces; Increased army presence in British Columbia; Construction of a highway to Alaska; War-time efforts of Western Canadian troops.

Children are currently being recruited to an increasing extent by armed groups, assuming both ancillary and combat roles. Academic research on this phenomenon has grown in scope over the last few years. However, the current research lacks a comparative perspective. As a result, we presently have a very restricted perspective of the state of the art on the subject of child soldiering, making it difficult to recognise research areas that urgently require further investigation. The ambition of this article is twofold: first, to explore the existing state of child soldier studies across disciplines, and second, to encourage potential research by highlighting three relatively underdeveloped research areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the experiences of women in the World War II Swan Island shipyard in Portland, Oregon and their attitude toward their war work. Topics discussed are representation of women's war work that discouraged labor unrest and appreciated their strength, self-confidence and determination, as well as the controversy that surrounded the recruitment of women for war work such as masculinization of women and discrimination against Black women, and traditional sexual mores.

This essay intends to provide an introduction into an interesting aspect of the German war economy of the First World War not previously examined in detail: home-based outwork for the production of military supplies. In particular, this type of home-based outwork enjoyed great popularity amongst women with no previous experience of this form of work, such as soldiers' wives and war widows. They were supported by various charitable welfare societies and women's organizations which campaigned for public welfare during the war. Their efforts included the establishment of sewing rooms in which military home-based outwork was provided as emergency work. Orders were supplied by the military procurement bodies of the German Reich. Although many potential workers were thus withheld from the armaments industry, the development was not seen as a problem by the military administration. However, it did react critically to the many cases in which particularly female home workers were duped by firms when picking up their work. Especially in the area around Berlin, the military authorities intervened vigorously to enforce standard wages for the home workers sewing military uniforms. Nevertheless, the year 1916 marks a turning point: This benevolent stance on home-based outwork changed under the pressure of new employment priorities. New contract regulations made military home-based outwork difficult for unskilled male and female workers to access. These were in theory then available to work in the armaments industry and in agriculture, areas both struggling to meet labour demands. Moreover, the changes led to an organizational separation between sandbag sewing and other home-based outwork involved in producing textiles for the military. In the case of sandbag sewing, a separate war committee was responsible for the planned distribution of sandbag orders throughout the whole Reich. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The experience of women staff in the Houses of Parliament during the Second World War, although an unusual example of the Home Front in action, was perhaps surprisingly typical in how parts of its male workforce came to be replaced by women. Parliament was a particular target for bombing, and more than 40 women worked in a munitions factory underneath Central Lobby at the very heart of Parliament. Six women auxiliaries also participated in the Palace of Westminster Home Guard. Women took on new administrative jobs for the first time, including Kay Midwinter, appointed the first female Clerk in the House of Commons in 1940, who had a successful career at the League of Nations before the war and the United Nations afterwards; and Jean Winder, the first female Hansard reporter, appointed in 1944, who fought a long battle for equal pay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Pacific War, Japanese boys and girls were increasingly pulled out of secondary school to help the war effort as factory and farm workers. Their labor-service hours kept increasing until, by January 1944, many students were working year-long shifts. This paper argues that secondary students had a sense of entitlement to education that went against the grain of their patriotic duty to the state asshōkokumin, or ‘little countrymen’. Their later memoirs support the postwar view of their labor as child abuse. However, their identity as adolescents came more from their status as students than from their age; before 1945 most Japanese left school and entered the workforce at age 14. This paper brings together evidence that has not been linked previously: (a) the voices of student workers in diaries and memoirs; (b) the disaggregation of wartime labor by age; and (c) the differential treatment of students in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]