Strangers On The Western Front

Download or read book Strangers on the Western Front written by Guoqi Xu and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-18 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These laborers, mostly illiterate peasants from north China, came voluntarily and worked in Europe longer than any other group. Xu explores China's reasons for sending its citizens to help the British and French (and, later, the Americans), the backgrounds of the workers, their difficult transit to Europe---across the Pacific, through Canada, and over the Atlantic---and their experiences with the Allied armies. It was the first encounter with Westerners for most of these Chinese peasants, and Xu also considers the story from their perspective: how they understood this distant war, the racism and suspicion they faced, and their attempts to hold on to their culture so far from home. --

Download or read book Strangers on the Western Front written by Guoqi Xu and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-28 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War I, Britain and France imported workers from their colonies to labor behind the front lines. The single largest group of support labor came not from imperial colonies, however, but from China. Xu Guoqi tells the remarkable story of the 140,000 Chinese men recruited for the Allied war effort. These laborers, mostly illiterate peasants from north China, came voluntarily and worked in Europe longer than any other group. Xu explores China’s reasons for sending its citizens to help the British and French (and, later, the Americans), the backgrounds of the workers, their difficult transit to Europe—across the Pacific, through Canada, and over the Atlantic—and their experiences with the Allied armies. It was the first encounter with Westerners for most of these Chinese peasants, and Xu also considers the story from their perspective: how they understood this distant war, the racism and suspicion they faced, and their attempts to hold on to their culture so far from home. In recovering this fascinating lost story, Xu highlights the Chinese contribution to World War I and illuminates the essential role these unsung laborers played in modern China’s search for a new national identity on the global stage.

Download or read book An International Rediscovery of World War One written by Robert B. McCormick and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-31 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International contributors from the fields of political science, cultural studies, history, and literature grapple with both the local and global impact of World War I on marginal communities in China, Syria, Europe, Russia, and the Caribbean. Readers can uncover the neglected stories of this World War I as contributors draw particular attention to features of the war that are underrepresented such as Chinese contingent labor, East Prussian deportees, remittances from Syrian immigrants in the New World to struggling relatives in the Ottoman Empire, the war effort from Serbia to Martinique, and other war experiences. By redirecting focus away from the traditional areas of historical examination, such as battles on the Western Front and military strategy, this collection of chapters, international and interdisciplinary in nature, illustrates the war’s omnipresence throughout the world, in particular its effect on less studied peoples and regions. The primary objective of this volume is to examine World War I through the lens of its forgotten participants, neglected stories, and underrepresented peoples.

Download or read book Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I written by Graziella Parati and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-09-14 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I dialogues with the variety of texts recently published to commemorate the Great War. It explores Italian socialist pacifism, the role of women during the conflict and a dominant cultural movement, Futurism, whose leader, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, glorified war and enlisted in the fight. Other soldiers created documents about the war that differ from the heroic and virile endeavor that Marinetti placed at the center of his works on war. Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I pays attention to the representations of the soldiers through an analysis of their letters, dominated by descriptions of the terrible hunger they suffered. In contrast, popular film absorbed the cultural lessons in Marinetti's writings and represented soldiers as modernist heroes in comedies and dramas. However, film did not shy away from representing cowards who could only be baffoons and fools in propaganda films. In another medium, the concern was to publish texts that would serve the fighting soldier and inform readers about ideological and historical motivations for the conflict. The publishing industry supported national propaganda efforts. Only socialism could endanger anti-war publication, but after its initial opposition to the conflict, socialists occupied a neutral position. Italian socialism still remained the only European socialist party that did not renege its pacifism in order to embrace nationalism and the war, but it was also not in favor of actions that would sabotage in the Italian war industry. ltalian socialism is only one feature of Italian culture that was dramatically changed during the war. WWI impacted every aspect of Italian and of European cultures. For instance, as an essay in Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I explores, the war industry needed workers. The solution was to bring Chinese men France to contribute in the war effort. After the war, they moved to other countries and in Milan, Italy, they founded one of the oldest Chinatowns in Europe, dramatically changing the human landscape of Italy as they later moved to other Italian cities. Italy and the Cultural Politics of World War I supplies essential research articles to the construction of an inclusive portrayal of WWI and Italian culture by deepening our understanding of the transformative role it played in 20th century Italy and Europe.

Download or read book The East Asian Dimension of the First World War written by Jan Schmidt and published by Campus Verlag. This book was released on 2020-03-11 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welche Rolle spielte Ostasien im Ersten Weltkrieg? Wie sahen und bewerteten ostasiatische Beobachter den "totalen Krieg" in Europa, welche Lehren zogen sie daraus für ihre Gesellschaften? Wie verschoben sich wirtschaftliche Netzwerke durch den Krieg? Welchen Einfluss hatte er auf Ordnungsvorstellungen und Weltbilder in Ostasien? Das Ziel der neueren Geschichtsschreibung, die Globalität des Ersten Weltkriegs stärker zu erfassen, ohne seine lokalen Rückwirkungen aus dem Blick zu verlieren, verfolgt dieser Band gut 100 Jahre nach dem Beginn des Krieges am Beispiel Chinas, Japans und Koreas.

Download or read book Ecclesiastical Colony written by Ernest P. Young and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The French Religious Protectorate was an institutionalized and enduring policy of the French government, based on a claim by the French state to be guardian of all Catholics in China. The expansive nature of the Protectorate's claim across nationalities elicited opposition from official and ordinary Chinese, other foreign countries, and even the pope. Yet French authorities believed their Protectorate was essential to their political prominence in the country. This book examines the dynamics of the French policy, the supporting role played in it by ecclesiastical authority, and its function in embittering Sino-foreign relations. In the 1910s, the dissidence of some missionaries and Chinese Catholics introduced turmoil inside the church itself. The rebels viewed the link between French power and the foreign-run church as prejudicial to the evangelistic project. The issue came into the open in 1916, when French authorities seized territory in the city of Tianjin on the grounds of protecting Catholics. In response, many Catholics joined in a campaign of patriotic protest, which became linked to a movement to end the subordination of the Chinese Catholic clergy to foreign missionaries and to appoint Chinese bishops. With new leadership in the Vatican sympathetic to reforms, serious steps were taken from the late 1910s to establish a Chinese-led church, but foreign bishops, their missionary societies, and the French government fought back. During the 1930s, the effort to create an indigenous church stalled. It was less than halfway to realization when the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949. Ecclesiastical Colony reveals the powerful personalities, major debates, and complex series of events behind the turmoil that characterized the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century experience of the Catholic church in China.

Download or read book Handbook Global History of Work written by Karin Hofmeester and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-11-20 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coffee from East Africa, wine from California, chocolate from the Ivory Coast - all those every day products are based on labour, often produced under appalling conditions, but always involving the combination of various work processes we are often not aware of. What is the day-to-day reality for workers in various parts of the world, and how was it in the past? How do they work today, and how did they work in the past? These and many other questions comprise the field of the global history of work – a young discipline that is introduced with this handbook. In 8 thematic chapters, this book discusses these aspects of work in a global and long term perspective, paying attention to several kinds of work. Convict labour, slave and wage labour, labour migration, and workers of the textile industry, but also workers' organisation, strikes, and motivations for work are part of this first handbook of global labour history, written by the most renowned scholars of the profession.