Greenwood Press Daily Life Through History Series: Daily Lives of Civilians during Wartime – serie

While soldiers were off fighting on the fields of war, civilians on the home front fought their own daily struggles, sometimes removed from the violence but often enough from deep within the maelstrom of conflict. Chapters provide readers with an excellent, detailed description of how women, children, slaves, and Native Americans coped with privation and looming threat, and how they often used, or tried to use, periods of turmoil to their own advantage. While it is the soldiers who are often remembered for their strength, honor, and courage, it is the civilians who keep life going during wartime. This volume presents the lives of these brave citizens during the early colonial era, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War.This volume begins with Armstrong Starkey's detailed description of wartime life during the American Colonial era, beginning with the Jamestown, VA settlement of 1607. Among his discussions of civilian lives during the Pequot War, King Philip's War, and the Seven Years' War, Starkey also examines Native American attitudes regarding war, Puritan lives, and Salem witchcraft and its connection to war. Wayne E. Lee continues with his chapter on the American Revolution, investigating how difficult it was for civilians to choose sides, including a telling look at soldier recruitment strategies. He also surveys how inflation and shortages adversely affected civilians, in addition to disease, women's roles, slaves, and Native Americans as civilians. Richard V. Barbuto discusses the War of 1812, taking a close look at life on the ever-expanding frontier, rural homes and families, and jobs and education in city life. Gregory S. Hospodor observes American life during the Mexican War, examining how that conflict amplified domestic tensions caused by sharply divided but closely-held beliefs about national expansion and slavery. Continuing, James Marten looks at southern life in the South during the Civil War, examining the constant burden of supporting Confederate armies or coping with invading northern ones. Paul A. Cimbala concludes this volume with a look at northerner's lives during the Civil War, offering an outstanding essay on a home front mobilized for a titanic struggle, and how the war, no matter how remote, became omnipresent in daily life.

In post-Civil War America, civilians were ordinarily far-removed from the actual fighting. War brought about tremendous and far-reaching changes to America's society, politics, and economy nonetheless. Readers are offered detailed glimpses into the lives of ordinary folk struggling with the privations, shortages, and anxieties brought on by U.S. entry into war. They are also shown how they strove to turn changing times to their advantage, especially civically and economically, as minorities pressed for political inclusion and traders profited from government contracts and women took on well-paying skilled jobs in large numbers for the first time.Susan Badger Doyle's chapter on the Indian Wars in the American West shows how for whites the migration westward was the path to a land of opportunity, for Native Americans migration it was a disastrous epoch that led to their near-extermination. Michael Neiberg's piece on World War I highlights how America's entry into the war on the Allied side was far from universally popular or supported because of large German and Irish immigrant communities, and how this tepid support led to the creation of some of the harshest censorship and curtailment of civil rights in U.S. history. Judy Litoff's chapter on the home front during World War II focuses on the exceptional changes brought on by total mobilization for the war effort, African-Americans' push for expanded civil rights, to women entering the workforce in large numbers, to the public's acceptance, even expectation, of centralized planning and government intervention in economic and social matters. Jon Timothy Kelly's essay on the Cold War provides a look at how the country quickly returned to a state of readiness when the end of World War II ushered in the Cold War and the immanent threat of nuclear annihilation, even as a booming economy brought undreamt of material prosperity to huge numbers of Americans. Finally, James Landers describes how American involvement in Vietnam, the first televised war, profoundly changed American attitudes about war even as this particular conflict touched few Americans, but divided them like few previous events have.

In most accounts of warfare, civilians suffer cruelties and make sacrifices silently and anonymously. This volume details the dismal impact war has had on the African people over the past five hundred years, from slavery days, the Zulu War, World Wars I and II, to the horrific civil wars following decolonization and the genocide in Rwanda.In most accounts of warfare, civilians suffer cruelties and make sacrifices silently and anonymously. Finally, historians turn their attention to those who are usually caught up in events beyond their control or understanding. This volume details the dismal impact war has had on the African people over the past five hundred years, from slavery days, the Zulu War, World Wars I and II, to the horrific civil wars following decolonization and the genocide in Rwanda. Chapters provide a representative range of civilian experiences during wartime in Africa extending from the late eighteenth century to the present, representing every region of Africa except North Africa. Timelines, glossaries, suggested further readings and maps are included, and the work is fully indexed.The book begins with Paul E. Lovejoy's study of the ubiquitous experience of African slavery which has so profoundly affected the development of the continent and the lives of its people. John Laband then examines the rise of the Zulu kingdom in the early nineteenth century and its subsequent conquest by Britain, thus charting the fate of civilians during the formation of an African kingdom and their experiences during colonial conquest. The Anglo-Boer War is situated at a crucial crossroads between colonial and modern warfare, and the concentration camps the British set up for Boer and African civilians pioneered a new form of modern savagery. Bill Nasson examines this war's complex effects on various categories of non-combatants in South Africa. Because it was under colonial rule, Africa was dragged into the two World Wars. Tim Stapleton shows in the fourth chapter that while the African civilian response to the war of 1914-1918 was often contradictory and ranged from collaboration to revolt, the effect of the conflict was only to confirm colonial rule. In the following chapter, David Killingray explains how and why the impact of the Second World War on African civilians was rather different from that of the First in that it undid colonial rule, and paved the way for the future independence of Africa under modernized African leadership. The Portuguese held on to their African empire long after the other colonial empires had relinquished theirs in the 1960s. Angola, the subject of Chapter six, passed seamlessly out of an independence struggle against Portuguese rule into civil war that soon involved Cold War rivalries and interventions. Inge Brinkman describes the dismal sufferings and displacement of Angolan civilians during four decades of interminable fighting. Liberia and Sierra Leone declined from relative stability and prosperity into horrific civil war, and in Chapter seven Lansana Gberie traces the deadly consequences for civilians and the efforts to stabilize society once peace was tentatively restored. The Sudan has suffered decades of ethnic and religious strife between the government and the people of the southern and western periphery, and in Chapter eight Jane Kani Edward and Amir Idris analyze what this has meant, and still means, for the myriad civilian victims. Chapter nine concludes the book with the most horrific single episode of recent African history: the Rwandan genocide. Alhaji Bah explains its genesis and canvasses the subsequent search for reconciliation. The chapter ends with his discussion of African mechanisms that should - and even might - be put in place to ensure effective peacekeeping in Africa, and so save civilians in future from the swarm of war's horrors.

From the start of the Thirty Years' War in 1618 through the end of the 19th century, combat shaped the daily life of European civilians. This book explores the effects of war on the everyday life of civilians during that era. Included are chapters on the Thirty Years' War, the wars of 1648 through 1789, the wars of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the battles which took place from 1815 through 1900. Each chapter is written by an expert contributor and cites works for further reading.From the start of the Thirty Years' War in 1618 through the close of the 19th century, Europe was plagued with military conflicts. While soldiers were the most obvious participants and casualties of these wars, civilians were also affected. This book explores the impact of warfare on the daily life of European civilians from 1618 through 1900.The volume begins with a look at the effects of the Thirty Years' War, one of the most devastating and brutal in European history. It then examines the conflicts which took place between 1648 and the French Revolution of 1789. From there the book looks at daily life during the wars of the French Revolution. It then considers daily life during the Napoleonic wars, while a final chapter discusses the period from 1815 to 1900. Each chapter is written by an expert contributor and suggests works for further reading.

The countries of Latin America have suffered through numerous foreign interventions and domestic wars in the nearly two centuries that have followed its independence. These conflicts have also given rise to mass mobilizations of middle-class professionals, women, peasants, urban workers, and Indians, who sought to carve out a more active public role in the new states that emerged from these struggles. In some cases, elites and their military allies violently repressed the newly emerging forces. Recent research has begun to place greater emphasis on the lives of common people and the interventions they had on the larger events of the day. Eight chapters written by different scholars show the the importance of the actions of civilians in wars in Latin America.Chapters describing civilians' roles and lives through wars in Latin America are supplemented by recommended print and online resources for further study, a glossary defining important terms and concepts, and a timeline putting events into a chronological context.

Expert contributors write on the experiences of civilians who lived through occupation and bloodshed in the First World War; the Russians who lived or died during the the devastating civil war in 1917-1922, leading eventually to the terrors of Stalinism; the Spaniards of many factions who fought against each other in bloody civil wars; the ordinary people of France, Germany, Britain, Italy and other countries who faced the hardship and horrors of the Second World War; and the ethnic- and religious-based fighting and atrocities, often targeted at civilians, in the former Yugoslavia from 1991 into the twenty-first century. Carefully selected sources for further research help users find additional information on civilian life during these events.Expert contributors write on the experiences of civilians in the many wars of twentieth-century Europe. Among the events discussed are the Europeans who lived through occupation and bloodshed in the First World War; the Russians who lived and died in the devastating civil war in 1917-1922, leading eventually to the terrors of Stalinism; the Spaniards of many factions who fought against each other in bloody civil wars; the ordinary people of France, Germany, Britain, Italy and other countries who faced the hardship and horrors of the Second World War; and the ethnic- and religious-based fighting and atrocities, often targeted at civilians, in the former Yugoslavia from 1991 into the twenty-first century. Carefully selected sources for further research help users find additonal information on civilian life during these events.Chapters including vivid accounts of civilians' roles and experiences through wars in twentieth-century Europe are supplemented by recommended print and online resources for further study, a glossary defining important terms and concepts, and a timeline putting events into a chronological context.