Commemorating Race and Empire in the First World War Centenary

This edited book draws together interdisciplinary perspectives on the treatment of race and empire in commemorations of the Great War. Beginning with discussion of how race was understood during the War, the volume goes on to track how these depictions have influenced national commemoration around the world in 2014-18. Great War commemoration in Europe has been framed as a moment of national trial and as a collective European tragedy. But the First World War was more than just a European conflict. It was in fact a global war, a clash of empires that began a process of nationalist agitation against imperial polities and the racisms that underpinned them in Asia and Africa and one that drew in settler societies such as Australia and New Zealand. The Great War centenary is thus the first global commemorative event, the ‘centenary to end all centenaries’. Despite the global context of commemorative activity, however, these events remain framed by national and state imaginaries and ones in which the ideas about nation, race and imperialism that animated and dominated men and women during the Great War sit uncomfortably with modern sensibilities. This raises a political difficulty: how to commemorate (if at all) race and empire, or more pointedly, racism and imperialism during the Centenary?