Pieters, Chloë Jessica A; (2024) Mobilising the family for war: Belgium and Britain, 1914-1918. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The First World War was entered into by belligerents for reasons of political strategy and diplomatic treaty, but states often reframed the war as a moral crusade to save the family. Propaganda images of women and families at risk of violation were used to mobilise the British population for the war effort. Belgian civilians, meanwhile, suffered when the German army carried out atrocities during the invasion. As Belgian civilians faced hunger owing to the British naval blockade, securing the material survival of the Belgian family became a matter of national and international humanitarian relief efforts. Atrocities, and the occupation regime’s incursions into private life, expanded the meaning of the war there, from defending national honour to family and sexual honour. This thesis compares how the war affected real living families in occupied Belgium and Great Britain, drawing on a range of published and unpublished memoirs, diaries, letters, newspapers and magazines, and court records. It considers the relationship between the state and the family, examining how the state and its representatives and substitutes (the latter especially in the case of occupied Belgium) sought to shape and influence the wartime family. Continuities, wartime innovations, and how a new language of patriotism was mobilised to justify older priorities are assessed for both countries. In addition, the responses of families are taken into consideration: how they accepted, resisted, and managed new cultural expectations about wartime behaviour and obligations. This thesis considers how families in both countries who did not fulfil their patriotic duties were subject to the disciplinary force of state and society, an object in law to be regulated, reprimanded, persuaded, and punished. By comparing across two wartime belligerents, this thesis demonstrates that the pressures on the wartime European family could be surprisingly similar despite different cultural contexts and experiences.

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