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“The Band of Brothers”: The Mobilization of English Welsh Dual Identities in Second World War Britain
- Wendy Ugolini
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- Journal:
- Journal of British Studies / Volume 60 / Issue 4 / October 2021
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 July 2021, pp. 822-847
- Print publication:
- October 2021
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- Article
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In the run-up to the Second World War, the War Office agreed to organize territorial units that recruited specifically on the grounds of English Welsh dual identities. These formations, which comprised the 99th London Welsh Heavy Anti-Aircraft regiment and the 46th Liverpool Welsh Royal Tank Regiment, began recruiting in 1939 from English cities with significant Welsh populations. This article explores the mobilization and performance of English Welsh identities during the Second World War and reflects upon why, at a time of global conflict, some English men opted to enlist on the basis of Welsh antecedents. Relatively little attention has been paid to the plurality of British identity in wartime or to how the existence of what historian Thomas Hajkowski has called “hybrid ‘dual identities’” within the constituent countries of the United Kingdom informed the functioning of Britishness during the Second World War. Making use of previously unpublished and original life-writing sources, this article illuminates the significance of dual identifications across two nations at once—in this case, Wales and England—within the multinational state of Britain at war. Overall, by examining the intersectionality between subjective wartime constructions of kin, home, and nation(s), it points to how a sense of dual identifications could feed into recruitment patterns and potentially bolster combat motivation and morale. By highlighting the interconnectedness between constituent nations of Britain, and the complexities of identity formation within Britishness, this article adds to the literature that complicates the notion of fixed singular national identities and underscores the importance of dual identifications within and across the borders of the constituent nations in advancing our understanding of twentieth-century Britain.
Introduction A Global Force: War, Identities and Scotland's Diaspora
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- By David Forsyth, Department at National Museums Scotland, Wendy Ugolini, University of Edinburgh
- Edited by David Forsyth, Scottish History & Archaeology Department, at National Museums Scotland
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- Book:
- A Global Force
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 12 September 2017
- Print publication:
- 15 April 2016, pp 1-10
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Summary
This volume emerged from an international research colloquium in 2012, jointly organised by National Museums Scotland and the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies, University of Edinburgh, funded by the Scottish Government and administered by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Historians and museum curators from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa were invited to join with their Scottish counterparts to consider the functioning, and the meaning, of ‘military Scottishness’ in different Commonwealth countries and in Britain from the late Victorian period to the present day, with a particular focus on the impact of the First World War. Another key objective was to throw light on the ‘hidden’ culture of social networking which potentially operated behind local regiments and military units among Scotland's global diaspora. This edited collection, therefore, provides a comparative overview of the nineteenth-century emergence of military Scottishness and explores how the construction and performance of Scottish military identity has evolved in different Commonwealth countries over the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, it looks at the ways in which Scottish volunteer regiments in Commonwealth countries variously sought to draw upon, align themselves with or, at certain key moments, redefine the assertions of martial identity which the Highland regiments represented.
Between the 1820s and 1914 over two million people emigrated from Scotland, settling primarily in North America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Emigration and outward migration have been constant features of the Scottish demographic experience. The official population statistics reveal a massive haemorrhage of people from Scotland, which placed Scotland as one of Europe's top three ‘exporters’ of people, second only to Ireland. Indeed, despite the comparatively small size of its population there is a general impression of the Scots numbering ‘among the most migration-prone of all European peoples’. According to Graeme Morton, such was the fundamental effect of demographic mobility on Scottish society ‘that emigration – both permanent and temporary – became an experience common to many Scots’. One of the means of identifying a diaspora is the fact that it ‘tends to occur over an extended period of time, incorporating second, third and future generations’. Here the Scottish diaspora scores rather highly, for one of the most significant characteristic features of the Scottish experience is not just its relative scale but also the prolonged nature of the nation's migratory experience.