Laura Ugolini

Consumers to Combatants? British Uniforms and Identities, 1914–18

Abstract By the outbreak of the First World War, glamorous military uniforms and accoutrements already had a long history of luring men into the armed forces. They also played a central role in the process of transforming raw recruits into servicemen, instilling a sense of separation from civilians, and fostering esprit de corps. The purpose of this article is to investigate further the supposed differences between uniforms and civilian garments. Focusing on the experiences of British servicemen who volunteered or were conscripted into the armed forces during the First World War, it questions whether mens sartorial practices and identities changed significantly once they put on a uniform. Did they, the article will consider, cease entirely to be shoppers and consumers once they were no longer civilians? Concentrating on the period of training, when recruits were first introduced to army life and regulations, the article will assess whether uniforms were perceived as different from other commodities, and whether taking off civilian garments also meant a shedding of the sartorial habits of prewar civilian life.

The ‘recruiting muddle’: married men, conscription and masculinity in First World War England*

ABSTRACT Interviewed many decades after the end of the First World War, Mary Morton recalled vividly how her mother’s family had made no secret of their contempt for her father’s conduct during the conflict: he was – they thought – a ‘bounder’. Tellingly, they condemned not his continued civilian status, but the fact that he had volunteered, despite his responsibilities as husband and father. Historians have long recognized the powerful pull of military masculinities during the First World War, as well as the denigration of civilian men and masculinities: this article suggests that the wartime experiences of married men like Mary Morton’s father complicate this picture of hegemonic and subordinate masculinities. They, it was widely agreed in the early years of the conflict, had responsibilities that tied them to the home front; it was unmarried men’s duty to ‘go first’. In May 1916, however, the pressing need for military manpower led to the introduction of conscription for all men, without reference to marital status. This article explores the underlying shift in understandings of manly conduct in wartime, from a belief that married men had responsibilities that kept them from enlisting, to a new emphasis on the equality of duty among all physically fit men of military age, irrespective of domestic responsibilities.

Middle Class Fathers, Sons and Military Service in England, 1914-1918

Abstract The figure of the hyper-patriotic middle-class father, happy to sacrifice his sons to the war, while remaining snug at home, was a recurrent feature of post-First World War literature. This article places this view of wartime fatherhood under scrutiny, suggesting that middle-class fathers with sons of military age rarely behaved as straightforward enforcers of the state’s call to arms. Alongside expressions of vocal pride in sons who conformed to the manly ideal by volunteering, there were resistance, silence and fear, while support for sons who sought to avoid enlistment was a good deal more evident than any determination that sons should do their ‘bit’ at all costs.

The nineteenth-century child and consumer culture

raised by existing theoretical studies. The first investigation covers estate organisation and reporting needs, examining the extent to which the disparate activities undertaken by the landowners were integrated through accounting to provide information to owners on a stewardship or agency basis. The second covers contractual arrangements in which accounting linked the exchanges, rights and obligations of a complex network of owners, stewards, tenants and workers and through which the changing relationships of feudal obligation to paid labour can be traced. Chapters 4–6 cover return on investment, labour process/labour control and behavioural aspects relating to stewardship. The conclusion draws the arguments together to address the two key questions identified above. The mass of carefully assembled detail in this book works well under the chosen structure and each of the themes is dealt with succinctly. The main danger is that the book might fall between its prospective audiences. It should be of great interest both to accounting academics generally and not just to accounting historians. Local and agricultural historians as well as business and economic historians would form other audiences. In accounting, the book is very valuable in drawing together the literature and theoretical insights around estate management and accounting in order to understand the context in which accounting practices develop and grow, and in particular to challenge (if not put paid to) notions that modern management accounting is a twentieth century industrial phenomenon. It should be required reading for postgraduate research students onwards in accounting, for the historical context and the way in which it challenges theoretical interpretations through sound empirical analysis. For historians and general readers, this is an absorbing discussion in which the accounting elements are explained lucidly and which do not, despite the assessment above, dominate the narrative and evaluation. The detail from the archival material and the contextualisation of that material make the book accessible and interesting to a wide range of readers, and an excellent resource for future research activity.