![Sample our Urban Studies journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110826/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Urban-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
This article outlines the relationship between London and the First World War. The metropolitan dimension of total war is an emerging field of research at the intersection of military history and urban studies. The article (and special issue) aims to set out an agenda for historians of war/the city. While it is true that what happened at the ‘home front’ generally occurred in the capital city too, the London experience of the Great War was in many respects distinctive. The nerve centre of both the national and imperial war effort, the metropolis was the site of heightened anticipation, dense experience and concentrated commemoration. For London, the First World War proved an accelerator and incubator of socio-cultural change. Even so, London's stability vis-à-vis other imperial capitals was remarkable. The true impact of the war and its legacy can only be gauged by contrasting it with the state of London around 1914.
Notes on Contributors
Stefan Goebel is a Reader in the School of History at the University of Kent at Canterbury and Director of the Centre for the Study of War, Propaganda and Society. His books include The Great War and Medieval Memory: War, Remembrance and Medievalism in Britain and German, 1914–1940 (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and as co-editor Cities into Battlefields: Metropolitan Scenarios, Experiences and Commemorations of Total War (Ashgate, 2011).
Jerry White is Professor in London History at Birkbeck, University of London. His London in the Twentieth Century (Viking, 2001) was awarded the Wolfson History Prize, and Zeppelin Nights: London in the First World War (Bodley Head, 2014) won the Spear's Social History Book of the Year Award for 2014.
Notes
1 The authors would like to Mark Connelly and the two anonymous LJ readers for their perceptive comments on earlier versions of this article.
2 J. Bush, ‘East London Jews and the First World War’, London Journal, 6:2 (1980), 147–61; A. Tanner, ‘The Spanish Lady Comes to London: The Influenza Pandemic 1918–1919’, London Journal, 27:2 (2002), 51–76; M. Durey, ‘South London's “Age-fudgers”: Kitchener's Under-age Volunteers’, London Journal, 40:2 (2015), 147–70; see also the conference report by S. Legg, ‘Metropolitan Catastrophes: Scenarios, Experiences and Commemorations in the Era of Total War’, London Journal, 29:2 (2004), 57–61.
3 See, for example, F. Sheppard, London: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); D. Feldman and G. Stedman Jones (eds.), Metropolis London: Histories and Representations since 1800 (London: Routledge, 1989); M. Daunton (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. III: 1840–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); R. Dennis, Cities in Modernity: Representations and Productions of Metropolitan Space, 1840–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
4 S. Goebel, ‘Cities’, in J. Winter (ed.), The Cambridge History of the First World War, vol. II: The State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 358–81.
5 H. Sellier et al., Paris pendant la Guerre (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1926); see also J.-L. Robert, Les Ouvriers, la Patrie et la Révolution: Paris 1914–1919 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1995).
6 J. Winter and J.-L. Robert (eds.), Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997–2007).
7 J. White, Zeppelin Nights: London in the First World War (London: Bodley Head, 2014).
8 F. Lenger, Metropolen der Moderne: Eine europäische Stadtgeschichte seit 1850 (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2013), 275–316.
9 S. Goebel and D. Keene, ‘Towards a Metropolitan History of Total War: An Introduction’, in S. Goebel and D. Keene (eds.), Cities into Battlefields: Metropolitan Scenarios, Experiences and Commemorations of Total War (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 1–46; P. Purseigle, ‘Between Participation and Victimization: World War I Urban Mobilization in Comparative Perspective’, in F. Lenger (ed.), Kollektive Gewalt in der Stadt: Europa 1890–1939 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2013), 51–67; M. Funck and R. Chickering (eds.), Endangered Cities: Military Power and Urban Societies in the Era of the World Wars (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2004).
10 A. Gregory, ‘Imperial Capitals at War: A Comparative Perspective’, The London Journal, 41:3 (2016), doi:10.1080/03058034.2016.1216757.
11 White, Zeppelin Nights, 1–25.
12 D. Kynaston, The City of London, vol. II: Golden Years 1890–1914 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1995).
13 For the extent and character of trade on the eve of war, see London County Council [LCC], London Statistics: 1913–14, XXIV (1915), 484–502.
14 The City of London Directory for 1906. 36th ed. (London: W.H. & L. Collingridge, 1906), 9.
15 J. Siblon, ‘Negotiating Hierarchy and Memory: African and Caribbean Colonial Troops in London's Imperial Spaces’, The London Journal, 41:3 (2016), doi:10.1080/03058034.2016.1213548.
16 J. Schneer, London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); F. Driver and D. Gilbert, ‘Heart of Empire? Landscape, Space and Performance in Imperial London’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 16 (1998), 11–28; M.H. Port, Imperial London: Civil Government Building in London 1850–1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 18–19.
17 A. Maguire, ‘Looking for “Home”? New Zealand Soldiers Visiting London during the First World War’, The London Journal, 41:3 (2016), doi:10.1080/03058034.2016.1209343.
18 R. Espley, ‘Caroline Playne: The Activities and Absences of a Campaigning Author in First World War London’, The London Journal, 41:3 (2016), doi:10.1080/03058034.2016.1216692.
19 J. White, London in the Nineteenth Century: A Human Awful Wonder of God (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007), 145–6; J. White, London in the Twentieth Century: A City and Its People (London: Viking, 2001), 103–4; D. Feldman, ‘Migration’, in Daunton, Cambridge Urban History, 189–201.
20 S. Weintraub, The London Yankees: Portraits of American Writers and Artists in England 1894–1914 (London: W.H. Allen, 1979); T. C. Barker and M. Robbins, A History of London Transport: Passenger Travel and the Development of the Metropolis, vol. II: The Twentieth Century to 1970 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1974), 61–84; LCC, London Statistics: 1913–14, 69.
21 M. J. Daunton, ‘Financial Elites and British Society, 1880–1950’, in R.C. Michie (ed.), The Development of London as a Financial Centre, vol. II: 1850–1914 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000), 335–56.
22 C. F. G. Masterman, The Condition of England. 7th ed. (London: Methuen, 1912), 64–85.
23 C. Booth (ed.), Life and Labour of the People in London, vol. I: East, Central and South London (London: Macmillan, 1892), 131–55.
24 White, London in the Twentieth Century, 177–84.
25 Barker and Robbins, London Transport, 169, shows the London General Omnibus Co. route map of March 1911.
26 S. Abernethy, ‘Moving Wartime London: Public Transport in the First World War’, The London Journal, 41:3 (2016), doi:10.1080/03058034.2016.1213526.
27 LCC, London Statistics: 1913–14, 477.
28 LCC, London Statistics: 1913–14, 477.
29 Booth, Life and Labour, 131.
30 LCC, London Statistics: 1913–14, 57.
31 Booth, Life and Labour, 131.
32 S. Haas, ‘Visual Discourse and the Metropolis: Mental Models of Cities and the Emergence of Commercial Advertising’, in C. Wischermann and E. Shore (eds.), Advertising the European City: Historical Perspectives (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 54–78; Durey, ‘South London's “Age-fudgers”’, 150–51.
33 A. Paterson, Across the Bridges: Or Life by the South London River-Side (London: Edward Arnold, 1911), 152.
34 LCC, London Statistics: 1911–12, XXII (1912), 241–2; LCC, London Statistics: 1912–13, XXIII (1914), 267; J. Rüger, ‘Entertainments’, in J. Winter and J.-L. Robert (eds.), Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919, vol. II: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 108.
35 LCC, London Statistics: 1912–13, 296–7.
36 A. Mond, ‘Chelsea Football Club and the Fight for Professional Football in First World War London’, The London Journal (2016), doi:10.1080/03058034.2016.1223393.
37 H. Wilson Harris and M. Bryant, The Churches and London: An Outline Survey of Religious Work in the Metropolitan Area (London: Daily News and Leader, 1914), 1–42, 244–50; see C. Field, ‘“A Tempest in the Teapot”: London Churchgoing in 1913 – The Census That Never Was’, London Journal, 41:1 (2016), 82–99; A. Gregory and A. Becker, ‘Religious Sites and Practices’, in J. Winter and J.-L. Robert (eds.), Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919, vol. II: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 383–427.
38 R. W. Postgate, The Builders’ History (London: Labour Publishing, 1923), 414–22; Survey of London, County Hall, Monograph 17 (London: Athlone for the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, 1991), 53–4.
39 The Times, 1 May 1914 and 29 July 1914.
40 The Times, 19 May 1914 and 28 May 1914.
41 The Times, 28 May 1914.
42 The Times, 4, 7–8, 10–11 July 1914.
43 A. Marrin, The Last Crusade: The Church of England in the First World War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1974), 55.
44 The Times, 2 May 1914.
45 A. Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 199–208; A. J. Reid, The Tide of Democracy: Shipyard Workers and Social Relations in Britain, 1870–1950 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 222.
46 Tanner, ‘Spanish Lady’, 51–76; C. Rollet, ‘The “Other War” II: Setbacks in Public Health’, in J. Winter and J.-L. Robert (eds.), Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919, vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 480–5.
47 J.-L. Robert and J. Winter, ‘Conclusions: Towards a Social History of Capital Cities at War’, in J. Winter and J.-L. Robert (eds.), Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919, vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 527–54.
48 B. Beaven, ‘Challenges to Civic Governance in Post-War England: The Peace Day Disturbances of 1919’, Urban History, 33 (2006), 369–92.
49 Gregory, ‘Imperial Capitals’; compare P. Higonnet, ‘Parisian Peculiarities: The French Capital in the Age of Total War’, in S. Goebel and D. Keene (eds.), Cities into Battlefields: Metropolitan Scenarios, Experiences and Commemorations of Total War (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 73–82.
50 F. Morison, War on Great Cities: A Study of the Facts (London: Faber and Faber, 1937), 195–6; see also A. Grayzel, ‘“A Promise of Terror to Come”: Air Power and the Destruction of Cities in British Imagination and Experience, 1908–39’, in S. Goebel and D. Keene (eds.), Cities into Battlefields: Metropolitan Scenarios, Experiences and Commemorations of Total War (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 47–62.
51 J. Winter, ‘Conclusion: Metropolitan History and National History in the Age of Total War’, in S. Goebel and D. Keene (eds.), Cities into Battlefields: Metropolitan Scenarios, Experiences and Commemorations of Total War (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 222.
52 See Gregory, Last Great War, 35, 47; White, Zeppelin Nights, 204–23.
53 Espley, ‘Caroline Playne’.
54 Abernethy, ‘Moving Wartime London’.
55 Barker and Robbins, London Transport, 192.
56 See the special issue ‘150 Years of the London Underground’, London Journal, 38:3 (2013), 175–279; A. Gregory, ‘Railway Stations: Gateways and Termini’, in J. Winter and J.-L. Robert (eds.), Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914-1919, vol. II: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 23–56; A. Gregory, ‘To the Jerusalem Express: Wartime Commuters and Anti-Semitism’, in M. Beaumont and M. Freeman (eds.), The Railways and Modernity: Time, Space, and the Machine Ensemble (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007), 177–90.
57 Maguire, ‘Looking for “Home”’.
58 F. Driver and D. Gilbert, ‘Imperial Cities: Overlapping Territories, Intertwined Histories’, in F. Driver and D. Gilbert (eds.), Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display and Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 1–15.
59 K. Cowman, ‘Touring behind the Lines: British Soldiers in French Towns and Cities during the Great War’, Urban History, 41 (2014), 105–23.
60 Mond, ‘Chelsea Football Club’.
61 Rüger, ‘Entertainments’; S. Goebel, ‘Exhibitions’, in J. Winter and J.-L. Robert (eds.), Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919, vol. II: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 143–87; A. Horrall, Popular Culture in London c. 1890–1918: The Transformation of Entertainment (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 186–236.
62 M. Connelly, The Great War, Memory and Ritual: Commemoration in the City and East London, 1916–1939 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002).
63 Goebel, ‘Cities’, 377–81; C. Trevisan and E. Julien, ‘Cemeteries’, in J. Winter and J.-L. Robert (eds.), Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919, vol. II: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 428–67; K. S. Inglis, ‘Entombing Unknown Soldiers: From London and Paris to Baghdad’, History & Memory, 5:2 (1993), 7–31; S. J. Heathorn, ‘The Civil Servant and Public Remembrance: Sir Lionel Earle and the Shaping of London's Commemorative Landscape, 1918–1933’, Twentieth Century British History, 19 (2008), 259–87.
64 Siblon, ‘Negotiating Hierarchy’.
65 For an introduction to this vast field of research, see J. Winter, ‘Commemorating War, 1914–1945’, in R. Chickering, D. Showalter and H. van de Ven (eds.), The Cambridge History of War, vol. IV: War and the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 310–26.
66 P. Panayi, ‘Anti-German Riots in London during the First World War’, German History, 7 (1989), 184–203; Bush, ‘East London Jews’, 150, 155; White, Zeppelin Nights, 84–9; S. Auerbach, ‘Negotiating Nationalism: Jewish Conscription and Russian Repatriation in London's East End, 1916–1918’, Journal of British Studies, 46 (2007), 594–620.
67 J. White, ‘London in the First World War: Questions of Legacy’, The London Journal, 41:3 (2016), doi:10.1080/03058034.2016.1213957; for the purpose of comparison, see M. Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).