Catriona Pennell's Pioneering Study

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At the outset of her pioneering study, A Kingdom United, Catriona Pennell sets out that she seeks to shatter the myth of ‘War Enthusiasm’ in Britain and Ireland, which she does so very convincingly throughout the book. Pennell uses a plethora of sources, including national, regional, and local newspapers; recorded interviews; pamphlets; leaflets; magazines; committee minutes; memoirs; letters; photographs; police records; sermons; government records and many more. Whilst dispelling the myth of jingoism Pennell does seek to persuade the reader that there was, as the title aptly suggests, a common and general support for the war across Britain and Ireland in 1914. For Pennell, this support and the mass volunteering does not necessarily translate …show more content…

Pennell is once again quick to the point to dispel this myth. Her well worked argument shows there was no ‘rush to the colours’ in August 1914. September was in fact the month with the strongest recruitment levels. This rise in recruitment, Pennell points out, coincided with the Times article which gave a worrying account of the British Expeditionary Force’s losses and retreat, the article ended with an appeal for more men, this explains, for Pennell, the rise in recruitment. This is extremely important for Pennell as she argues ‘thus, far from signing up in an initial burst of enthusiasm, the largest single component of volunteers enlisted at exactly the moment that the war turned serious’. People were not therefore, she argues, volunteering out of enthusiasm, but out of duty. Men felt it was their duty to volunteer to defend their nation against the bloodthirsty barbaric Hun. Her argument is further supported by the fact that recruitment rates dropped after Allied success on the Marne and then rose again after the First Battle of Ypres. When the British were perceived to be doing badly in the war men wished to help their nation. Military misfortune, therefore, not jingoism or ‘War Enthusiasm’, was, Pennell argues, the most powerful stimulant for

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