Which People's War?: National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain 1939-1945

by Sonya O. Rose

What did it mean to be British during the 'People's War'? Professor Rose uses material from newspapers, diaries, novels and letters to examine popular notions of citizenship on the home front. She shows that what we now mean by 'identity politics' was alive and well in the 1940s and that any singular conception of 'Britishness' was extremely fragile.

Genres: History, World War II, Nonfiction

300 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Sonya O. Rose specializes in the study of women and gender in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain, and has recently turned her attention to the impact of empire and decolonization on British metropolitan life. Her publications deal with the intersections of gender and class in the development of industrial capitalism, and she has published both theoretical and historiographical essays on the subjects of gender, class formation and citizenship. She has also published on nineteenth-century family and household strategies, and on national identity and citizenship in World War II Britain.

Reviews

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

Skip the opening chapter, in which Rose lays out her theoretical apparatus. Chock-a-block of name checks (Anne McClintock, Benedict Anderson, Etienne Balibar, Renata Salecl, Lacan...the list goes on) with little substance behind them, Rose defaults to a conventional cultural history mode of analysis for everything which follows. Her main objective is to complicate the notion of a unified British citizenry during World War II, restricting herself to materials available only during the war (in other words, no oral histories or memoirs published substantially after the war's end).

The chapters which follow cover class, "good-time" girls and Jews (an odd and potentially problematic pairing) as "anti-citizens," femininity, masculinity, geography of Britain, and race/empire, with a final chapter for wrap-up. Following Nicoletta Gullace's The Blood of Our Sons: Men,Women,and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship During the Great War, I wouldn't say anything truly significant is presented in Which People's War, and if one is to read only one recent work on British citizenship, Gullace's book is the one to choose.

Missing from Rose's work here is any substantial analysis of class in as it was rooted in the English landscape (curious, considering her attention to the Scottish and Welsh and the construction of an ideal, markedly rural, Britain). Likewise, Rose might have given some attention to age as a hurdle in the construction of national identity, either as a barrier for fulfilling masculine duties for those beyond conscription age. Finally, Rose completely missed the opportunity to examine the role of World War I veterans, now entering middle age, in the creation or complication of British national identity.

[Vicky P · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensive survey of the complexities of arguing for a sense of unified national identity among British people (primarily in Britain) during World War II. Cohesive intro+concluding remarks leave one with a good sense of the author's purpose and the usefulness of having read the work at all.