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The Great War: A Comparative History: Context

Module description

This module examines the Great War from cultural, social, economic and military perspectives. It will allow you to explore the conflict (and the conflicts which surrounded it – known as the ‘Greater War’) from different thematic and geographical approaches. You will move away from a British and Western-Front-centric approach to consider this as a truly global conflict. This module utilises a ‘total historiography’ to consider this ‘total war’. This comparative perspective plays a crucial role in this exercise allowing us to consider such questions as: Did the nations face variants on the same problem or substantially different problems? Were they pursuing similar strategies or fundamentally different ones? You will utilise a wide variety of sources including letters, diaries, official and military documents, films, posters, literature, poetry, and ephemera to explore the war from the perspectives of both decision-makers and the civilians and soldiers who lived through it. These will be drawn from different combatant nations and will be available in translation.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module will focus on the social, cultural and military aspects of the Great War. It will look at the war on land, at sea, in the air and on the home fronts. It approaches the First World War as a world war and will take a transnational and comparative approach. Whilst it will discuss Britain and the Western Front as part of this, the bulk of the module will be devoted to other theatres of war and other combatant nations. It will draw comparisons between countries – looking for similarities and differences. It aims to refocus your mind on the contemporary character of the war by divorcing it from the popular idiom of the Great War as ‘futility and slaughter’. It will achieve this through an analysis of the operational aspects of the war, the experiences of both fighters and civilians, and also consider how the memory of the war has come to be formulated as it has been by later generations.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Identify and explain the different complex themes that relate to the history of the Great War
• 2. Analyse critically military campaigns and their impact on the course of the war both on the battle front and within a wider context of ‘total’ war

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Analyse the key developments within a particular historical environment
• 4. Comprehend and explain complex historical issues
• 5. Understand and deploy relevant historical terminology in a comprehensible and sophisticated manner

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 6. Select, organise and analyse material for written work and/or oral presentations of different prescribed lengths and formats.
• 7. Present an argument in a written form in a clear and organised manner, with appropriate use of correct English
• 8. Through essay development process, demonstrate ability to reflect critically on your own work, to respond constructively to feedback, and to implement suggestions and improve work on this basis

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:
• The ‘origins’ of the war
• Mobilisation
• The military-industrial state
• ‘Total’ war
• Alliance warfare
• Land, sea and air combat in all theatres of operation
• Morale and discipline
• Brutality and atrocity
• Diplomacy
• Neutrality
• Civilian governance and military leadership
• Economic warfare
• Home fronts
• Women and war
• Civilian striking and unrest
• Revolution
• Peace treaties
• Remembrance
• Issues of theory and methodology

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Paul Halpern, A Naval History of World War I (London: UCL Press, 1994).
• Holger Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918 (London: Hodder Arnold, 1996)
• N. Ferguson, The Pity of War (London: Penguin Books, 1998).
• Richard Smith. Jamaican Volunteers in the First World War: Race, Masculinity and the Development of National Consciousness (Manchester: MUP, 2009).
• .
• Leonard V. Smith, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, France and the Great War (Cambridge: CUP, 2003).
• Hew Strachan, The First World War, I, To Arms (Oxford: OUP, 2001).
• Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, The Great War in History (Cambridge: CUP, 2005).
• Jay Winter, The Experience of the First World War (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988).
• Alexander Watson: Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914-1918 (Cambridge: CUP, 2008).

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=2554
• The World War I Document Archive (http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Main_Page)
• Project Façade (http://www.projectfacade.com/index.php?/case/)
• Firstworldwar.com (http://www.firstworldwar.com/index.htm)
• The Great War Archive: A Community Collection (www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa)
• The First World War Poetry Digital Archive (www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/)

Other documents will be available on ELE.