Fall 2024 Seminar: Britain and the World Wars: The Scouring of the Shire
Ian Isherwood: Associate Professor-Interdisciplinary Studies
The Great War, the Great Depression, the Second World War – never before in its history had the island nation of Great Britain faced such a powerful crisis as it did in the period of the two world wars. In 1914, the British Empire was the largest of imperial power in the world and the envy of its rivals. By 1948, London was blitzed to rubble, the British economy deeply in debt, and its people bewildered and bereaved by the death and destruction wrought by two world wars. The nation that emerged from the Second World War was one bereft of purpose and struggling for a sense of identity beyond its imperial legacy. In many ways, the interwar crisis exposed the fault lines that still plague post-Brexit Britain to this day. This seminar will consider Britain in the period of the two world wars. It will examine both the history of this period and the lasting legacy of the world wars on contemporary Britain.
This seminar can satisfy an IDS requirement.