What does it mean to engage students with difficult, traumatic, messy and complex histories of the British empire and the two world wars? How can we engage with the ‘un-commemorated’, whose names have not appeared on the memorial landscape? Anna Maguire and Diya Gupta reflect on their experiences teaching histories of the ‘un-commemorated’ in empire and war.
Tag: World War One
Black & Asian soldiers and the ‘White Man’s War’
Following the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s apology for the non-commemoration of Black and Asian soldiers in the First World War, John Siblon explores how and why their memory was deliberately hidden by Britain.
The Death and Life of a Great British Trading Estate
Lisa Edwards explores the troubled history of Slough Trading Estate, a site that acted as a short-lived central depot intended to repair vehicles deployed during the First World War and played a pioneering role in Britain’s industrial economy.
Radical Object: Military Sweetheart Brooches of the First World War
Penny Streeter examines the emotional history of sweetheart brooches; tokens of love and loss kept by the families of soldiers in the First World War.
Silvertown a century on: the mysterious cause and tragic legacy of London’s biggest explosion
A century ago, Silvertown was devastated by an explosion so big that is was heard in north Norfolk and Cambridgeshire.
Little Germany, Stratford 1914
As the centenary approaches of the outbreak of the First World War, Simon Buck of Eastside Community Heritage invites support for a local initiative in London’s East End to remember the treatment meted out to the tens of thousands of German nationals living in Britain at that time