Empire and war : Turkish and Indian experiences and remembrance of the First World War

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.Although the 1914-18 war is commonly known as the First World War, historiographically it has been conceived as a European War. Non-Europeans appeared to have been sucked into the war, the Ottoman Empire because of its geographic location and India because of its colonial submission to the British. However there has emerged in various disciplines together with trans-disciplinary studies an interest in what made the war truly global. In the last few decades, several works highlighted the military, political and social experiences of the war at micro, macro and subaltern levels in non-Western countries. This study goes one step further and explores non-European experiences of the war and its memorialisation from a transnational perspective. Focusing on colonial and post-independence India and the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, this study not only draws parallels between these two contexts but also examines the connections between them. A wide range of published and non-published sources is used in order to highlight the impact of the war on the emerging nationalisms, everyday politics and identities not only of the elites but also of subaltern people previously marginalised in history writing. Memorialisation process of the war in India and in Turkey are observed alongside commemorative practices in Australia to shed light on the transnational nature of remembrance. Interviews conducted with people from Turkish or Indian/Sikh backgrounds who participated in the Australian commemorations are particularly informative about how memories are constructed socially, how they travel across borders and are re-constructed within different social frameworks. This research contributes to the transnational understanding of the issues of imperialism, nationalism and class and gender underlying the First World War as well as its remembrance in non-Western countries