Concluding that it is a "refreshing, insightful and much-needed monograph," Heath highly recommends the book for those interested in the intersections of religion and conflict.
Read his full review here:
🔗 doi.org/10.1080/1947...
#WWI #Histodons #MilitaryHistory #ReligiousHistory
A key takeaway from the review is Bowker's intervention in debates about wartime faith. Heath notes that Bowker challenges the narrative of a precipitous decline in religiosity, finding instead strong evidence for continued faith among the enlisted men.
Heath praises the book as a unique fusion of religious, social, military and local history. He highlights Bowker’s ability to shift between sweeping macro narratives of Canadian nation-building and the micro details of individual soldiers' lives.
An image of a book cover titled "A CHURCH AT WAR: MacKay Presbyterian Church, New Edinburgh, and the First World War" by Alan Bowker. The top half features a collage of historical, green-tinted photographs, including soldiers marching, a recruiting poster reading "Why aren't YOU?", and a war memorial, with a central circular image highlighting a church building. The bottom half is a solid dark green background displaying the title and author in white text, with a circular black and white "Mercury Series" logo at the bottom centre.
How did local congregations experience the Great War?
In one of our latest reviews, Gordon L. Heath reviews Alan Bowker's "A Church at War: MacKay Presbyterian Church, New Edinburgh, and the First World War".
Both reviewers praise these meticulously researched books as vital additions to Eastern Front historiography.
Read the full reviews here:
🔗 Broken Ground: doi.org/10.1080/1947...
🔗 Belarusian Nation-Building: doi.org/10.1080/1947...
#WWI #Histodons #MilitaryHistory
An image of a book cover titled "Broken Ground: Building Germany's Occupation of Poland in the First World War" by Andrew H. Kless. The cover features a dark red background. At the top, a black horizontal band contains the author's name in white. In the centre is a sepia-toned historical photograph showing a horse-drawn cart and several figures, including soldiers, in a desolate landscape with ruined or industrial chimney structures in the background. A second black horizontal band runs across the lower portion, with the publisher name "PETER LANG" in white at the very bottom.
Second, Jesse Kauffman reviews Lizaveta Kasmach's Belarusian Nation-Building in Times of War and Revolution. Kauffman notes how the movement, divided between German and Russian rule , struggled with deep internal divisions compared to its neighbours.
An image of a book cover titled "BELARUSIAN NATION-BUILDING in Times of War and Revolution" by Lizaveta Kasmach. The background is a dark brown, leather-like texture. The word "BELARUSIAN" is in white text, "NATION-BUILDING" is in red, and the subtitle is in smaller white text. In the centre is an ornate, highly detailed coat of arms featuring a central red shield with a knight on horseback, surrounded by elaborate gold, green, and blue scrollwork containing several smaller shields. The author's name is at the bottom left, and the "CEU PRESS" logo is at the bottom right.
First, @marktkettler.bsky.social reviews Andrew H. Kless's "Broken Ground: Building Germany's Occupation of Poland in the First World War". Kettler highlights that the German occupation was not a systematic colonial project, but rather a confused, improvised bureaucracy.
How did the FWW shape the borders and nations of Eastern Europe? Today, we bring you two book reviews exploring the realities of occupation and nation-building on the Eastern Front.
Read his full review here:
🔗 doi.org/10.1080/1947...
#WWI #Histodons #GermanHistory #Historiography #BookReview #AcademicPublishing
Ultimately, McElligott concludes that Debates on The German Revolution of 1918–19 is an "erudite, wide ranging" study that serves as a "sober antidote" to recent centenary journalism.
McElligott highlights how early historical accounts were shaped by the mutual recriminations of opposing political factions. While he finds the book's treatment of recent historical trends somewhat "perfunctory," he praises the early chapters as a "rich repast".
Stibbe's book traces the historical narrative across three eras: the immediate aftermath to 1948, the divided memory of the two Germanies during the Cold War, and the post-1989 period leading up to the 2018–19 centenary.
An image of a book cover titled "DEBATES ON THE GERMAN REVOLUTION OF 1918-19" by Matthew Stibbe. At the top, a dark red banner reads the series title, "ISSUES IN HISTORIOGRAPHY". The background features a hazy, historical depiction of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. In the foreground, a large crowd of silhouetted figures in dark coats is gathered, with a few individuals holding up large red flags. The author's name, "MATTHEW STIBBE", is displayed in white text at the bottom.
What defines a revolution? In our latest issue, Anthony McElligott reviews Matthew Stibbe's "Debates on The German Revolution of 1918–19", exploring the complex and deeply contested historiography of the era.
Focusing on East Central Europe from Finland to Greece , the book explores how the collapse of empires created a political-scientific battleground. Geographers weren't just mapmakers; they were protagonists pushing competing nationalist agendas.
Duančić praises the book as a broad yet finely grained study that masterfully navigates complex regional histories and shifting alliances.
Read the full review here:
🔗 doi.org/10.1080/1947...
#WWI #Histodons #Geography #Interwar #BookReview #AcademicPublishing
Interestingly, these rival geographers often shared the exact same intellectual heritage and methodologies, using the same scientific language to argue for vastly different borders. For many, the Paris Peace Conference was a "gateway to fame".
Focusing on East Central Europe from Finland to Greece , the book explores how the collapse of empires created a political-scientific battleground. Geographers weren't just mapmakers; they were protagonists pushing competing nationalist agendas.
An image of a book cover for "Drawing Fatherlands: Geographers and Borders in Inter-war Europe" by Maciej Górny. The cover features a dark blue background with a white vertical stripe on the left. In the center, framed by a thick red border, is a historical, color-coded map of regions including Poznan, Wroclaw, Gdansk, and Krolewiec. A smaller inset box with a red border contains the map's legend in Polish, German, and French, titled "Polskie dzieci w pruskiej szkole ludowej" (Polish schoolchildren in Prussia), showing a color scale representing percentages from under 1% to over 75%. The publisher's name, "BRILL | SCHÖNINGH", is located at the bottom right corner.
How did geographers shape the borders of post-WWI Europe? In one of our latest book reviews, Vedran Duančić reviews Maciej Górny's "Drawing Fatherlands: Geographers and Borders in Inter-war Europe".
Ultimately, a split in the Petrograd Seimas, German occupation, and the October Revolution thwarted these early state-building efforts.
Read the full article on this intricate political history here:
🔗 doi.org/10.1080/1947...
#WWI #Histodons #RussianRevolution #Lithuania #EasternEurope #Academic
Why did the Russian Provisional Government resist? Krutikov shows that due to complex ethnic demographics, Russia pushed for autonomy based on ethno-territorial realities rather than the political aspirations of the Lithuanian organisations in Petrograd.
Drawing on previously neglected documents from the Russian State Archive, Krutikov details how Lithuanian leaders lobbied the Provisional Government for favourable borders, particularly focusing on the Suwalki province.
A promotional graphic featuring a historical black-and-white photograph of a large crowd gathered in front of a grand building with tall columns. A banner across the top reads "NEW ORIGINAL RESEARCH". A dark green rounded text box on the left reads "The Lithuanian National Movement in 1917". A banner across the bottom reads "A new article by Anton Krutikov".
The year 1917 was a turning point for Eastern Europe, but how did the Lithuanian national movement navigate the chaos of the Russian Revolution? A new article by Anton Krutikov explores exactly this.
Bremer's work repositions the POW at the centre of wartime psychiatry and exposes the entanglement of discipline, productivity and care.
Read her full 🔓 Open Access article here:
🔗 doi.org/10.1080/1947...
#WWI #Histodons #HistoryOfMedicine #OpenAccess
Administrative systems further erased this trauma. Medical boards and repatriation records often reduced complex psychiatric breakdowns to vague euphemisms like 'N.A.D.' (Nothing Abnormal Discovered), rendering the true suffering invisible.
Driven by a need for forced labour, the camps operated on a brutal "carceral logic". Acts of profound despair, including severe self-harm, were frequently met with punishment or a forced return to the coal mines, rather than medical care.
In Fit for Work, Unfit for Care, Bremer argues that psychological collapse in these camps was rarely treated as a medical illness. Instead, mental deterioration was routinely reframed by administrations as disciplinary deviance or malingering.
A promotional graphic featuring a historical, tinted photograph of soldiers, some wearing kilts, gathered outside wooden barracks in what appears to be a prisoner of war camp. A banner across the top reads "NEW OPEN ACCESS RESEARCH 🔓". A rounded text box in the upper right reads "Fit for Work, Unfit for Care". Another rounded text box in the lower left reads "A new article by Sarah Bremer".
While "shell shock" from the trenches is widely studied, the psychological toll of First World War captivity has largely been overlooked. A new 🔓 Open Access article by ECR Sarah Bremer shines a light on British POWs in German camps.
Read Shannon Conway's full review of this fascinating historical shift in Newfoundland here:
🔗 doi.org/10.1080/1947...
#WWI #Histodons #Newfoundland #MilitaryHistory
The review explores Westcott's central argument: the total war effort caused a shift from classical liberalism to social liberalism, fundamentally redefining understandings of gender, class, and ethnicity to form a new social covenant.
Starting with virtually no military in 1914, Newfoundland eventually saw nearly 12,000 soldiers enlist. Conway highlights how this massive mobilisation forced a complete re-evaluation of life on the homefront.