Political Economy of Memory: The Making, Unmaking and Remaking of the Nigeria-Biafra War

Godwin Onuoha, Democracy, Governance and Service Delivery (DGSD) Programme, Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa

Research Grant, 2014

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This research examines the memories of wars, conflicts, and violence in postcolonial Africa. Its point of departure is the Nigeria-Biafra War (1967–1970). Referred to by multiple names, like “Nigeria-Biafra War,” “Biafran War,” “Nigerian Civil War,” “War of National Unity,” “War against Infidels,” the Nigeria-Biafra War was a global event, generally regarded as a defining moment in the postcolonial global order because it foreshadowed the array of devastating conflicts that would eventually threaten the survival of most postcolonial African states. The war was the first major conflict in postcolonial Africa, and in many ways, it represented the end of the “old wars” and the first of the “new wars.” Certainly, it was the first to approximate what we now call “black-on-black” genocide in postcolonial Africa; the first televised African war; the only conflict in postcolonial Africa that had both major super powers of the Cold War on the same side; and the war that launched the modern humanitarian-aid industry as we know it today.

Official memories conceal and disenfranchise other memories, but also perform the ideological task of projecting the state as the sole owner of war memories in post–civil war Nigeria.

Almost fifty years after the war, the individual and collective memories of the Nigeria-Biafra War still dominate national discourse in a manner that elicits passion, discord, and contestation in contemporary Nigeria. Drawing on a political economy approach, this research focused on the following. First, it offered new insights into memory studies by examining how memories are constructed, contested, resisted, appropriated, and structured in a postwar Nigerian context. Second, it explored how memories of wars, conflicts, and violence can underlie a group’s identity and sustain that identity and, ultimately, translate into a basis for future violence. Third, it explores the politics of “dominant” and “subordinate” memories of war and violence in a contested political space. The research was mainly qualitative and most of the fieldwork was done in the five southeastern states of Nigeria. Fieldwork comprised visiting key locations and cities in this region as landscapes of memory and where the activities of neo-Biafran movements took place.

The research provides a historical and contemporaneous analysis of memories of the Nigeria-Biafra War. It demonstrates the nuances in the making of Nigeria-Biafra War memories and why these memories continue to stymie and stunt Nigeria’s post–civil war nation-building project from becoming a more just and inclusive one. It unveiled the making of “official” memories by the state and the interrogation and contestation of these memories by opposing forces. Official memories conceal and disenfranchise other memories, but also perform the ideological task of projecting the state as the sole owner of war memories in post–civil war Nigeria. The research complicates this official narrative by exploring memory production in the Nigerian state as a continuously contested and conflicting project. This involves interrogating the ownership, production, and consumption of extant official war memories, understanding the different forces at play in inscribing and entrenching or subverting and challenging these memories, and the manifold ways in which diverse identities, classes, regions, and intellectual traditions simultaneously project memories of the war in post–civil war Nigeria.

Bibliography

1. 2016: "Shared Histories, Divided Memories: Mediating and Navigating the Tensions in Nigeria-Biafra War Discourses,"Africa Today, Vol. 63, No. 1: 2-21.

2. 2017: "Bringing 'Biafra' Back In: Narrative, Identity and the Politics of Non-Reconciliation in Nigeria,"National Identities, (Forthcoming DOI link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2017.1279133).

3. (Forthcoming): Memory, Reconciliation and Peacebuilding in Post-Civil War South- eastern Nigeria, APN Working Papers Series, African Peacebuilding Network (APN), Social Science Research Council, New York.

Stress Reactivity to Provocation and Aggression in Early Adulthood: Do Early Victimization and Regulation Processes Matter?

Isabelle Ouellet-Morin, Criminology, Université de Montreal

Research Grant, 2013

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There is a relative consensus about the detrimental impact of childhood maltreatment on mental health and behavioral problems later in life, including aggression behavior. Prior research suggests that this association may, in part, be explained by neurophysiological stress mechanisms designed to support adaptation to changing environments. Moreover, very little is known on the reasons why individuals from the general population aggress others in comparison to those who do not (e.g., dating violence, bullying, public shootings, road rage, and violent encounters with strangers). To this end, we invited 160 participants to come to our laboratory, of which 60 had reported having been maltreated as children, whereas the remaining participants did not. A wide range of neurophysiological measures was measured in the context of a laboratory-based stress paradigm and in response to provocation, including the stress hormone cortisol, cardiac measures, testosterone and DNA methylation (i.e., modifications in the chemistry of the DNA that have the potential to alter genetic expression without changing the DNA sequence).

In a paper recently accepted in Development and Psychopathology, we reported that maltreated participants had higher cortisol responses to stress in comparison to controls, but this association was more complex than previously thought. Indeed, a shift from lower-to-higher cortisol responses was noted as the severity of maltreatment experiences increased, providing further empirical support for the idea that persistent dysregulation of the cortisol response to stress may arise in the context of past exposure to maltreatment.

These findings invite practitioners to consider coping strategies and stress regulation as potential targets for preventing or reducing mental health and behavioral difficulties.

Our research team has also brought light on findings suggesting a synergic effect between maltreatment and cortisol response to stress, whereby these early adverse experiences were associated with more depressive symptoms, aggression, and anger rumination in adulthood among participants with moderate-to-higher cortisol response to stress.

Conversely, childhood maltreatment was not associated with these negative outcomes for those who exhibited a lower pattern of reactivity. Also, being interested to generate knowledge that could be mobilized to support the well-being of individuals who were maltreated during childhood, we offered preliminary evidence suggesting that maltreatment was associated with a more frequent use of emotion-oriented coping strategies (e.g., become very frustrated when faced with difficult situations), although the opposite was found for task-oriented coping strategies (e.g., trying to change their behavior to solve the problem). Importantly, these strategies have generally been hypothesized to signal more and less mental health and behavioral difficulties, respectively. Altogether, these findings invite practitioners to consider coping strategies and stress regulation as potential targets for preventing or reducing mental health and behavioral difficulties, including aggression, among young male adults with a history of childhood maltreatment.

Bibliography

1. Ouellet-Morin I, Robitaille MP, Langevin S, Cantave C, Brendgen M, & Lupien S. (accepted). Enduring effect of childhood maltreatment on cortisol and heart rate responses to stress: The moderating role of severity of experiences. Development and Psychopathology.

Aggression and Morality: Links in Early Childhood

Judith G. Smetana, Clinical and Social Psychology, University of Rochester

Research Grant, 2015

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Differences in aggressive behavior emerge in early childhood, become more stable with age, and can lead to significant psychological problems, including violence in adulthood. It is, therefore, imperative to understand the factors that contribute to the development of aggressive tendencies early in life. Although aggression involves intentional harm to others, surprisingly little research has examined whether deficits in children’s moral judgments of issues involving harm and unfairness toward others are implicated in children’s aggressive behavior. Our research investigated this issue, taking advantage of recent advances in how researchers define and measure moral judgments and aggression.

Moral development research has shown the importance of distinguishing children’s judgments of moral transgressions, which entail negative consequences for others, from judgments of transgressions involving more arbitrary, agreed-on social-conventional norms (like those pertaining to manners).

Additionally, aggression research has shown that it is not sufficient to consider only whether a child is aggressive but that we must also question why. Some children have difficulty controlling feelings of anger and frustration, leading to a reactive form of aggression that is impulsive, “hot-blooded,” and aimed at responding to perceived threats from others.

Considering callous-unemotional tendencies may prove essential for understanding the role of moral judgments in the development and maintenance of young children's deliberate, calculated aggression.

In contrast, other children exhibit callous-unemotional tendencies, which reflect a lack of empathy, remorse, or concern for others, and use aggression in a proactive, “cold-blooded” manner to obtain rewards and accomplish goals. We tested whether deficits in children’s ability to distinguish between moral and conventional norms was associated with increases in aggression over time and whether this link was stronger for children showing greater callous-unemotional tendencies.

A socioeconomically and ethnically diverse sample of 135 4- to 7-year-olds, 128 of their parents, and 49 teachers participated in the study. Children were told stories about hypothetical, everyday moral and conventional transgressions using an iPad and were asked to make several types of judgments for each story. At the beginning of the study and then nine-months later, parents and teachers rated children’s aggressive behavior, and teachers rated children’s callous-unemotional tendencies. We found that, controlling for gender and age, children who had difficulty differentiating between moral and conventional norms were more aggressive at the beginning of the study and showed greater increases (relative to their peers) in aggression over time, but only if they also possessed callous-unemotional tendencies.

The ability to make distinctively moral judgments did not predict aggression among children who were capable of empathy and concern for others. Our findings suggest that considering callous-unemotional tendencies may prove essential for understanding the role of moral judgments in the development and maintenance of young children’s deliberate, calculated aggression. Further research needs to be directed toward studying the emergence (and amelioration) of these tendencies in early childhood. This developmental period is particularly critical to target, as the opportunities for successful intervention are greater than in later childhood or adolescence, when destructive patterns are more established.

Bibliography

1. Jambon, M., & Smetana, J. G. (under review). Callous-unemotional traits moderate the association between children's early moral understanding and aggression: A short-term longitudinal study.

When Comrades Go to War: Post-Liberation Movements, Elite Politics and the Internal Dynamics of Africa’s Great War

Harry Verhoeven, Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford

Philip Roessler, Government, College of William & Mary

Research Grant, 2013

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Funding by the HFG enabled vital fieldwork in six African countries (Angola, Congo, Eritrea, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda), which helped detail the day-by-day, week-by-week chronicle of Africa’s Great War, a conflict that had its roots in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 and erupted in two phases (1996 and 1998), claiming the lives of more than four million Africans. These findings were written up in a monograph, Why Comrades Go To War. Liberation Politics and the Outbreak of Africa’s Deadliest Conflict.

We found in our research and argue in the book that Africa’s Great War was not a conflict between old enemies or distant strangers but rather between ideological fellow travelers and revolutionaries who had long waged the same struggle for a new, leftist Africa. Ironically, but not coincidentally, it was this very intimacy that would be the undoing of what initially seemed like a triumph (the ouster of Mobutu, arch-symbol of authoritarianism and decadence in Africa) but quickly turned into a fratricidal nightmare between leftist liberation movements from across the continent.

The initial revolutionary euphoria of liberating Africa's third-biggest country rapidly gave way to distrust between the comrades, now turned ministers and generals.

The seeds of Africa’s Great War were sown in the revolutionary struggle against Mobutu—the way the revolution came together, the way it was organized, and, paradoxically, the very way it succeeded. The overthrow of the ancien regime proved a Pyrrhic victory because the protagonists ignored the philosophy of Julius Nyerere, the godfather of Africa’s liberation movements: they put the gun before the unglamorous but essential task of building the domestic and regional political institutions and organizational structures necessary to consolidate peace after revolution. Thus, the initial revolutionary euphoria of liberating Africa’s third-biggest country rapidly gave way to distrust between the comrades, now turned ministers and generals.

In the absence of robust institutions to settle disputes, divide the spoils of victory, and balance competing visions for the revolution, political disagreements and misperceptions became sources of great tension and later catastrophic physical violence. A mere 15 months after what should have been a “second independence,” the outcome was Africa’s Great War.

King George’s Generals: How the British Army Lost America, 1774-1781

William Anthony Hay, History, Mississippi State University

Research Grant, 2013

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My research project examines how successive British commanders understood the problem they faced during the American Revolution, the ways in which they responded, and why they ultimately failed. The five commanders on whom I focus—Thomas Gage, William Howe, John Burgoyne, Sir Henry Clinton, and Lord Cornwallis—each brought to the task wide experience and a strong record. Their careers reflected the growth of military professionalism in the British army from the mid-18th century, and they scored important successes against the Continental Army of the United States. Far from being incompetent or hidebound aristocrats unable to overcome antiquated assumptions, British commanders demonstrated impressive skill. As Andrew O’Shaughnessy has pointed out, the war’s outcome remained uncertain to the very end. The failure by the British commanders I study lay in their inability to translate operational success into political outcomes by dismantling the revolutionary government they fought. Survival meant success for the fledgling United States.

This research gave me a deeper understanding of how British insiders saw events in America as the war continued along with the civilian side of developing policy and strategy.

Along with its substantial contribution to historical scholarship on the American Revolution and the 18th century British Atlantic world, my project has contemporary relevance. Britain’s position in the American Revolution significantly resembles that of the United States today. Its army had significant experience with irregular warfare from the Seven Years’ War and Jacobite Rebellions, along with conventional operations against comparable opponents. But a small, professional army of long-serving regular soldiers proved a very fragile instrument of war. Possessing the most powerful navy of the age, Britain struggled to turn advantages in weapons, training, and capabilities into strategic success in America. With forces operating across the Atlantic at the end of an extended logistics chain, British policymakers had to balance the American crisis with global commitments and politics at home. Despite changes in technology and differences in context, these points capture problems the United States faces with overseas expeditionary warfare. They also point to the difficulty of coordinating policy and strategy to guide military operations effectively.

Research supported by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation enabled me to work extensively with British manuscript sources unavailable in the United States. Besides letters and reports by the main figures in my study, I saw a range of material, including private letters and diaries. This research gave me a deeper understanding of how British insiders saw events in America as the war continued along with the civilian side of developing policy and strategy. It pointed me toward the role that sea power, including water transport and navigation on lakes and rivers, played for both sides. Howe’s partnership with his brother, Admiral Lord Richard Howe, who commanded naval forces, became an important part of my chapter on his tenure. Overall, the research gave me a fuller perspective of the British side that set each of my protagonists in context and showed the pressures they faced from superiors at home. Two of five chapters are drafted, along with a thematic introduction. Writing expanded the scope of my project, drawing it back into the 1760s to explain the conflict’s origins. I anticipate drafting the remaining chapters this year. Material from my research supported a chapter entitled “An End to Empire? British Strategy in the American Revolution and Making Peace” in Justifying Revolution: Law, Virtue, and Violence in the American Revolution (Oklahoma: June 2018).

Bibliography

1. An End to Empire? British Strategy in the American Revolution and Making Peace in Justifying Revolution: Law, Virtue, and Violence in the American Revolution (Oklahoma: June 2018).

Desistance from Right-Wing Extremism

Pete G. Simi, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Nebraska

Research Grant, 2012

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The research grant from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation provided the funds to conduct intensive life history interviews with an initial sample of thirty-five former North America–based far-right extremists. Interviews for this project were completed between 2012 and 2014, although additional subjects have since been interviewed and the sample is now 102 former far-right extremists. The HFG project focused on examining the disengagement process from far-right extremism, although the design of the life history protocol also meant that unique data regarding childhood and adolescent experiences, the entry process into extremism, and different facets of the person’s involvement were also collected.

While far-right extremism has a long history in the United States and across the globe, the recent resurgence of far-right movements has spurred renewed interest in the topic. The attention directed toward the “alt-right,” the electoral success of populist candidates, and a surge of far-right violence underscore the need to understand the factors that help explain involvement as well as the factors that lead people to leave these movements and what can be done to help facilitate disengagement. The results from the life history interviews shed light on several of these issues and are now being used in partnership with Life After Hate to provide intervention services to assist individuals in the disengagement process.

First, the interview findings helped generate a multidimensional risk factor model for how individuals become involved in far-right extremism (Simi, Sporer, and Bubolz 2016). In short, we found that individuals reported experiencing a number of untreated trauma during childhood, such as physical and sexual abuse, parental abandonment, and family substance abuse. In line with decades of research, individuals also reported experiencing heightened levels of negative emotions such as depression and anger as a consequence of the trauma. In turn, individuals engaged in various forms of misconduct as part of a downward spiral. As such, involvement in extremism provided a mechanism for individuals to address these problems by offering generic solutions such as a surrogate family, protection, and shelter.

Our findings suggest that hate may have addictive qualities and, in some cases, result in potentially permanent consequences that make leaving more complicated than previously thought.

The interview data also produced important findings about the disengagement process suggesting the following: a lack of organizational trust and dissatisfaction with leadership (Windisch, Ligon, and Simi 2017); the importance of anger in the disengagement process (Simi, Windisch, Harris, and Ligon 2018), and the development of positive relationships with individuals from different racial and religious backgrounds (Bubolz and Simi 2015). We also found violence was an important factor in terms of promoting disengagement. In some cases, individuals involved in high levels of violence reported experiencing “burnout,” while other individuals reported experiencing moral apprehension from either direct involvement or vicarious involvement (e.g., watching the television coverage of the casualties from the Oklahoma City bombing).

To examine the long-term consequences of extremism, we discussed the overlap between identity residual and addiction processes in a recent article in the American Sociological Review (Simi, Blee, DeMichele, and Windisch 2017). Our findings suggest that hate may have addictive qualities and, in some cases, result in potentially permanent consequences that make leaving more complicated than previously thought.

Bibliography

1. Simi, Pete, Kathy Blee, Matthew DeMichele, and Steven Windisch. 2017. “Addicted to Hate?: Identity Residual among Former White Supremacists.” American Sociological Review 82, 6: 1167-87.

2. Simi, Pete, Karyn Sporer and Bryan Bubolz. 2016. “Narratives of Childhood Adversities and Adolescent Misconduct as Precursors to Violent Extremism: A Life-Course Criminological Approach.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 53, 4: 536-63.

Legacies of the Past and Support for Terrorism in the Basque Country

Henar Criado, Political Science and Sociology, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Jordi Domenech, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Francisco Herreros, Spanish National Research Council

Research Grant, 2015

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Why do people turn to terrorism? Social scientists have offered many insightful answers to this question ranging from education, poverty, and inequalities to the effects of political regimes. And yet, we are still far from providing a definite solution to this puzzle. Our project, funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, seeks to provide an answer to this question by focusing on the long-term historical legacies of political violence. We analyze how civil wars in the distant past (the nineteenth century) in the Basque Country in Spain could have left an imprint on beliefs and preferences that partly explain the outbreak of terrorism in the 1970s.

We use archival data from the three Basque provinces to collect information about political violence across villages in the nineteenth century. During the nineteenth century, there were two civil wars in Spain that were fought mainly in the Basque Lands. We have collected several indicators from archival and secondary sources of support for one of the warring factions, the one devoted to the defense of Basque autonomy and laws (the “Carlists”), across villages. These indicators include deserters of the Army, votes for Carlist candidates in elections immediately after the second civil war, and subscriptions to the main Carlist journal during the first civil war. We found a positive association between these indicators and support for political violence in the 1970s, which indicates that the legacy of political violence in the past has indeed affected the outbreak of terrorism one hundred years later.

Civil wars left a legacy of distrust and alienation toward the state that can persist through generations, paving the way to violent responses to perceived threats.

Our research has tried to go more in depth into the mechanisms connecting political violence in the nineteenth century and beliefs and preferences in the 1970s. We found that civil wars left a legacy of distrust and alienation toward the state that can persist through generations, paving the way to violent responses to perceived threats. The research also shows that the transmission of these legacies was especially strong in communities that have remained largely isolated in the century that separates the civil wars from the terrorism of the 1970s.

An Unexpected Peace: Understanding Resilient Order and Violence in Multi-Gang Environments

Viridiana Rios, Department of Political Science, Purdue University

Mario Arriagada, Open Society Foundations, New York

Research Grant, 2014, 2015

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Rival criminal organizations sometimes coexist peacefully in the same territory. Mexican drug cartels, known worldwide for their violent battles for turf (Molzahn et al. 2012), are not the exception. Until the nineties, criminal organizations would peacefully share border entries to the U.S. according to certain rules of territorial pricing (Blancornelas 2004, Mauleon 2010). In more recent years, while there is evidence that gangs have violently fought for turf in 348 Mexican municipalities, we also know that they peacefully coexisted in 99 others (Coscia and Rios 2012).

We studied why rival criminal organizations sometimes coexist peacefully and sometimes not.

We also found evidence that peace is more common where marijuana is produced and not eradicated by the government or where the federal government has the same party identification as local governments.

For this study, we brought together social science and journalism to create a natural, experimental setting to study why criminals restrain their violent confrontations in some places and not in others. First, we identified a random sample of places where multiple criminal gangs were operating simultaneously and where inter-gang violence remained contained. Second, we gathered an extensive dataset of the main economic, social, and geographical characteristics of non-violent cases and matched it with a balanced control sample of violent cases. Finally, we traveled to every municipality in our sample to conduct investigative journalism and semi-structured interviews.

Our results show that Mexican criminal organizations coexist peacefully when they are located farther away from the U.S. border and outside the main routes of illegal trafficking. In Yucatán, for example, we found that violence had migrated from one municipality to another exactly at the time that a new highway was constructed.

We also found evidence that peace is more common where marijuana is produced and not eradicated by the government or where the federal government has the same party identification as local governments. We interpret this as evidence that enforcement operations in economically (or politically) valuable territories for criminal operations are a trigger for violence. Other international cases of peace among criminal organizations follow similar patterns.

Bibliography

1. Dell, M. (2015). Trafficking networks and the Mexican drug war. The American Economic Review, 105(6), 1738-1779.

2. Calderón, G., Robles, G., Díaz-Cayeros, A., & Magaloni, B. (2015). The beheading of criminal organizations and the dynamics of violence in Mexico. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 59(8), 1455-1485.

3. Holland, B. E., & Rios, V. (2017). Informally Governing Information: How Criminal Rivalry Leads to Violence against the Press in Mexico. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 61(5), 1095-1119.

4. Lessing, B. (2015). Logics of violence in criminal war. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 59(8), 1486-1516.

5. Ríos, V. (2015). How government coordination controlled organized crime: The case of Mexico’s cocaine markets. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 59(8), 1433-1454.

6. Shirk, D., & Wallman, J. (2015). Understanding Mexico’s drug violence. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 59(8), 1348-1376.

The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakstan

Sarah Cameron, Department of History, University of Maryland-College Park

Research Grant, 2015

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In its staggering human toll, the Kazakh famine of 1930-33 was one of the most heinous crimes of the Stalinist regime. More than 1.5 million people perished in the Kazakh famine, a quarter of Soviet Kazakhstan’s population, and the crisis transformed a territory the size of continental Europe. Yet, the story of this famine has remained largely hidden from view, both in Kazakhstan and in the West. My book, The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan, brings this largely unknown story to light, examining two interrelated questions: What were the causes of the Kazakh famine of 1930-33? And how does this famine, an event long neglected in narratives of the Stalin era, alter our understanding of Soviet modernization and nation-making?

The nature of this state-driven modernization project was uneven. Ultimately, neither Kazakhstan nor Kazakhs themselves became integrated into the Soviet system in precisely the ways that Moscow had originally hoped.

The book begins with the famine’s roots in the last decades of the Russian empire and concludes with the republic’s slow road to economic recovery in the post-famine years of the mid-1930s. It argues that the Kazakh famine of 1930-33 was the result of Moscow’s radical attempt to transform a group of Muslim, Turkic-speaking nomads, known as “Kazakhs,” and a particular territory, Soviet Kazakhstan, into a modern, Soviet nation. It finds that, through the most violent means, the Kazakh famine created Soviet Kazakhstan, a stable territory with clearly delineated boundaries that was an integral part of the Soviet economic system, and forged a new Kazakh national identity. But the nature of this state-driven modernization project was uneven. Ultimately, neither Kazakhstan nor Kazakhs themselves became integrated into the Soviet system in precisely the ways that Moscow had originally hoped. The scars from the famine would haunt the republic throughout the remainder of the Soviet era and shape its transformation into an independent nation in 1991.

Along the way, the book uses the case study of the Kazakh famine to overturn several conventional ideas about nation-making, modernization, and ethnic violence under Stalin. Seen from the angle of the Soviet east, a region that, to date, has not received as much scholarly attention as the Soviet Union’s west, the regime and the devastating consequences of its policies appear in a different light. The book should be of interest to scholars interested in the global transformation of food systems, genocide studies, and environmental history.

Sherman was Right: The Experience of AEF Soldiers in the Great War

Edward A. Gutiérrez, History, University of Hartford

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Research Grant, 2011

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This project analyses why Americans fought on the Western Front during the Great War. The goal of the research and manuscript is to give voices to the thousands of servicemen and women who served their country, whether conscript or volunteer. American society views the Great War through the lens of the Lost Generation—writers such as Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos. First constructed by these authors, the popular image of the war, and the soldiers who experienced it, is one of disillusionment. I humbly admit that I believed the narrative that the violence of the Western Front broke the soldier. I was wrong. While some did psychologically succumb to the horrors of combat, the majority endured, and were proud of their service.

The picture that emerged from the research strikes against the popular notion of the disillusioned doughboy.

At the beginning of the project I expected to confirm the war’s disillusionment narrative, however, after spending over a decade studying the core primary source for the manuscript, I learned the truth. The foundation of this work is 110,847 questionnaires completed by veterans of the American Expeditionary Forces issued in 1919 from four states: Connecticut, Minnesota, Utah, and Virginia. Drawing on these questionnaires, completed while memories were still fresh, the manuscript presents a chorus of soldiers’ voices speaking directly of the expectations, motivations, and experiences they had as infantrymen on the Western Front in World War I. Their experience remains relevant today. Even more relevant since the cornerstone of America’s strategy against terrorism is the infantry, a policy unlikely to fade. In particular, then, we need to understand why individuals volunteer to go to war. And, if reality fails to match expectations—as it did for almost every “doughboy”—we need to ascertain what caused their misconceptions of combat.

The picture that emerged from the research strikes against the popular notion of the disillusioned doughboy. Though hardened by combat, the American Great War veteran is for the most part proud of his service—a service undertaken for duty, honor, and country. Why do men fight? Duty. Throughout history, other reasons have applied, but for the American soldiers of World War I, this reason was paramount.

The grant contributed to the creation of a book that details the uncensored words of American veterans of World War I, and provides a new understanding of the effects of violence upon human beings. The experience of these men and women illuminates not only military history but also sociocultural studies as well, and restores the voices of those marginalized by society and the government after the Armistice in 1918.

Bibliography

1. Gutiérrez, Edward A. Doughboys on the Great War: How American Soldiers Viewed Their Military Service (University Press of Kansas, 2014; paperback 2016).