Capital cities at war.

Capital cities at war. Paris, London, Berlin 1914-1919. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP) is a publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534, and one of the two privileged presses (the other being Oxford University Press). , 1997. Pp. xvii, 622. US$90.00 (cloth). War and social change are prominent subjects for historiansinterested in the cultural and social aspects of conflict, with mostconceding that the First World War was the watershed of change in thetwentieth century. One of these historians, Arthur Marwick Arthur John Brereton Marwick, (29 February, 1936–27 September, 2006) was a professor in history. Born in Edinburgh, he was a graduate of Edinburgh University and Balliol College, Oxford. , hasdeveloped a paradigm of total war's effects on society -- asdestructive, as a test, as demanding participation, as a vastpsychological experience -- applied to the national experience inseveral countries, especially to Great Britain Great Britain,officially United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, constitutional monarchy (2005 est. pop. 60,441,000), 94,226 sq mi (244,044 sq km), on the British Isles, off W Europe. The country is often referred to simply as Britain. . Capital Cities at War:Paris, London, Berlin 1914-1919, edited by Jay Winter of PembrokeCollege Pembroke College,Providence, R.I.: see Brown University. , Cambridge, and Jean-Louis Robert of the University of Orleans,self-consciously departs from this national framework to present anambitious study of the capital cities of France, Britain and Germanyduring the First World War. Their departure from Marwick's approachis so complete that this innovator in the field of war and social changeis not even mentioned in this large study, either in the text or in thebibliography. Winter and Robert set out to fill lacunae in both urban history andthe history of the Great War The History of the Great War is a series of 28 volumes covering the military operations of the British Army during the First World War. The full title is the History of the Great War Based on Official Documents but the series is usually referred to as the : existing histories of the capitals end in1914 or gloss over the war period; and their wartime social historieshave yet to be written. These are serious omissions, argue the editors,since wars are fought and experienced at the community level, ratherthan as an "imagined" national experience. In the book,community means "social and geographical entities around whichordinary people construct their daily lives" (p. 4). The city iskey in this concept as it is the point at which the"experienced" and the "imagined" community cometogether. Thus the book aims at a more realistic depiction of theexperience of war by investigating its effects at the local level whereFrenchmen, Britons and Germans lived their daily lives. How does thisambitious project succeed? The book is organized into six parts -- dealing with such themes assacrifice, labour, incomes, consumption, and demography -- and seventeenchapters written by several historians who are specialists in theirfields. The editors are responsible for the introductory and concludingchapters, which mar this otherwise exemplary work. In a collaborativework of this kind, it is especially important that a strong introductionand conclusion focus the reader's attention on the main goals andarguments of the work. But in this case both the introduction andconclusion tend to be vague and repetitive. The latter seems moreconcerned with promoting the anticipated second volume of the work thanwith tying together the findings of the participants in the project. This is unfortunate since Capital Cities at War is an authoritativeand original addition to the historiography of the First World War. Theindividual contributors to the study provide clear summaries of theirfindings which aid the reader through complex material. Thus the themesemerge: the war led to increased state intervention in areas such ashousing, public health, labour supply, and the like; Berlin withstoodthe test of war less well than did the allied capitals; French andBritish administrators coped more effectively with the shortages andpressures of total war better than did their German counterparts; inBerlin, a thriving black market proved to be less fair than the controlsexerted in the allied capitals; and the hardships in the German capital,coupled with the psychological impact of defeat, contributed to theproblems of the Weimar Republic Weimar Republic:see Germany. Weimar RepublicGovernment of Germany 1919–33, so named because the assembly that adopted its constitution met at Weimar in 1919. after the war. Significantly, London and Paris were more successful than Berlin increating a consensus about the level of sacrifice acceptable to theircitizens and in providing an equitable distribution of food and coal.Berlin, on the other hand, suffered from bureaucratic bu��reau��crat?n.1. An official of a bureaucracy.2. An official who is rigidly devoted to the details of administrative procedure.bu incompetence and acorrupt black market, which produced a law-of-the-jungle approach that"made a mockery of appeals for solidarity and fair shares forall" (p. 373) ("Feeding the cities" ' by Bonzon andDavis; "Coal and the metropolis," by Armin Triebel). Aninteresting comment on the psychological impact of war concerns"The image of the profiteer," by one of the editors,Jean-Louis Robert. He uses cartoons effectively "to disclose theway contemporaries juxtaposed forms of moral behaviour, personalconduct, and social comportment com��port��ment?n.Bearing; deportment.Noun 1. comportment - dignified manner or conductmien, bearing, presencepersonal manner, manner - a way of acting or behaving during the ... war" (p. 104).Focussing on material grievances, these caricatures helped to redefinethe social order -- capitalists vs labour, the new rich vs the ordinarypatriot -- matters which contributed to political discontent after thewar. As Jon Lawrence ("Material pressures on the middleclasses") points out, "for the middle classes, the lottery ofthe wartime economy offered ... great riches for some alongsidecrippling losses for many others" (p. 229). In the allied capitals,however, middleclass suffering could be soothed by victory; in Berlin,no such compensation existed. One reservation regarding the book's treatment of its subjectconcerns the relative lack of attention paid to the allied blockade ofGermany, which after 1916 seriously harmed civilian well-being. Forinstance, the blockade's contribution to the acceleration inBerlin's death rate from 1916 compared to the other capitals --noted by Jay Winter ("Surviving the war ...") -- is notmentioned. Yet, the experience of an effective naval blockade Noun 1. naval blockade - the interdiction of a nation's lines of communication at sea by the use of naval powerblockade, encirclement - a war measure that isolates some area of importance to the enemy is a keydifference between Berlin's war experience and that of the alliedcapitals. Indeed, the word "blockade" does not show up in thebook's index. In general, however, the contributors apply Marwick's paradigmimplicitly -- the destructiveness of loss and material hardship, thetest of governmental institutions, the participation in sacrifice ofcivilian populations, and the psychological impact of death and defeat-- to the local level, with many of the same results. The war resultedin vast social change, and in most cases the experiences of the capitalsmirrored those of the nation at large. The overall impact of Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin1914-1919 is impressive, and the companion volume is eagerlyanticipated. As comparative urban history, the study covers thesignificant themes of urban living in wartime; and as military-socialhistory, it is a major contribution to the field of war and socialdevelopment. Aside from the shaky introduction and conclusion, the bookis impressively written, with many useful illustrations, tables, graphsand maps, including an appendix comprising copious statistics andtables. As one would expect, the book is thoroughly documented, and athirty-two-page bibliography reveals a full range of primary andsecondary sources in English, French and German, notwithstanding theabove-mentioned omission of Marwick's work. Capital Cities at War,along with its projected second volume, should be an indispensablesource for urban, social and military historians for years to come. W. John McDermott John McDermott may refer to: John McDermott, the British footballer John McDermott, the American golfer John McDermott, the Scottish-Canadian singer John McDermott former Meath Gaelic footballer John McDermott (British Artist) born Scotland 1957 www. Department of History University of Winnipeg The University of Winnipeg (U of W) is a public university in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada that focuses primarily on undergraduate education. The U of W's founding colleges were Manitoba College and Wesley College, which merged to form United College in 1938.