HY4C1      One Unit
Fighting and Experiencing the Greater' War c. 1912-23

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

The First World War was a turning point in the history of conflict and moment in which many features of our world began to emerge. To fully appreciate these changes, the war needs to be studied in the broadest possible temporal, geographical, and human framework. It changed systems, cultures, maps, and landscapes. Ultimately, it transformed the character of war and forced millions of soldiers and civilians across the globe to confront the brutal reality of modern, industrial, warfare. This module asks two distinct but overlapping questions: how was the war conducted, and how was it experienced? The first half of the course is designed to provide an overview of the conduct of the First World War before, in the second term, we consider how combatants and civilians (from Europe and beyond) experienced and overcame the traumas of the war. In the first half of autumn term, students will explore the historiography of the war, and the key events of the ‘Greater War’, c. 1912-23, stretching from the outbreak of the Balkan Wars, through the global theatres of 1914-1918, to the new conflicts that emerged between the collapse of Tsarist Russia in 1917 and the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. After this, we will focus on five key themes that influenced the course of the conflict: political legitimacy and the home fronts; technology, tactics, and strategy; economics and economic warfare; diplomacy and neutrality; and challenges to international law. Next, in winter term, the module considers the varied experiences of war. In the first five weeks, seminars will interrogate military experiences (including those of frontline servicemen, colonial soldiers, and POWs), whilst the final five weeks of the year will focus on the ways that civilians (such as female factory workers, children, or occupied populations and refugees) were impacted by the conflict. Along the way, the module will provide varied opportunities to engage with the conflict’s cultural, global, international, military, political, and social historiography.

20 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.
20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn and Winter Term.

2000-word Essay (AT); 1000-word Source Analysis (WT)

H. Afflerbach, On A Knife’s Edge: How Germany Lost the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

S. Das (ed.), Race, Empire and First World War Writing (Cambridge University Press, orig. ed. 2011, 2013)

R. Gerwath and E. Manela, Empires at War, 1911-1923 (Oxford University Press, orig. ed. 2014, 2015)

S.R. Grayzel and T.M. Proctor (eds.), Gender and the Great War (Oxford University Press, 2017)

A. Gregory, A War of People’s, 1914-1919 (Oxford University Press, 2014)

J. Horne (ed.), A Companion to World War I (Blackwell Publishing, orig. ed. 2010, 2012)

J. Leonhard, Pandora’s Box: A History of the First World War, trans. P. Camiller (Belknap Press, 2018)

N. Lloyd, The Western Front: A History of the First World War (Viking, 2021) and The Eastern Front: A History of the First World War (Viking, 2024)

D. Stevenson, 1914-1918: The History of the First World War (Penguin, 2012)

A. Watson, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918 (Penguin, 2015)

J. Winter (ed.), The Cambridge History of the First World War, Vols. 1-3 (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

J. Winter and A. Prost, The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present, 2nd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Course participation (10%)

Essay (35%, 3500 words)

Essay (35%, 3500 words)

Source analysis (20%, 1000 words)