Owens, Brian McCullough; (1998) Record-keeping practices in World War 1 in relation to the development of modern bureaucracy in Great Britain and Canada. A study of government institutions and of the Royal A. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D.), University College London.

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Abstract

The thesis investigates and addresses the issue of the influence of World War I upon record-keeping practices and the development of twentieth-century bureaucracy. The records of the Offices of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet of Great Britain and Canada and the records of the Royal Army Medical Corps and the Canadian Army Medical Corps were selected for the purposes of this study. These bodies were representative of those administrative bodies which were actively engaged in the war, had to respond to its demands and created a multitude of documentation. Records from the selected bodies were investigated to determine whether change and adaptation occurred in terms of quantitative output, format and in informational content. The internal and external administrative factors contributing to change and adaptation were studied, focusing upon the information requirements of the government institutions and the Army Medical Corps of Great Britain and Canada, while these bodies were engaged in a military conflict. These organisations employed specialized recordkeeping methods as a result of the two governments undertaking more specialized activities brought on by the war, as well as by the two Army Medical Corps which were forced to undertake care of millions of ill and injured and to adapt to newly-introduced methods of prognosis and diagnosis. The impact of the alteration of record-keeping practices is also examined. The expansion of the bureaucratic structures of the governments of Great Britain and Canada and the medical community and its impact on the development of national pension schemes and of specialized areas of medicine, such as epidemiology, are also investigated. This study determines that World War I had a profound influence upon the transition of recordkeeping practices from complex burdensome volumes to simple and utilitarian files and, as a result, upon the development of twentieth century bureaucracy.

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