Research - Dr. Michael Childs
Dr. Micheal Childs
Department of History
The literature on World War I is vast: the military, political, economic, social and cultural effects of the war on Britain have all been subjects of both scrutiny and lively scholarly debate. Yet although institutions, regiments, industries, specific parties, unions, etc. have been the focus of monographs, a major gap in the literature has been studies of the effects of the war on specific localities. The examination of towns or cities whose industrial and social characteristics can be defined with some rigour may provide models for similar ventures elsewhere; but beyond this, local histories are the probably the best way to test broader variables, generalizations, theories and interpretations in a discipline such as history, where the experiment can never be repeated. Northampton was chosen for this study: it is a market town dating back to the early Middle Ages, and although it was industrialised to considerable extent in the nineteenth century, especially by the boot and shoe industry, it never lost many of the rural and territorial (and often aristocratic) connections of its older identity. For an English city, it was also relatively isolated from large conurbations. Finally, Northampton was conspicuously successful in raising volunteer regiments for Kitchener's Army in 1914-15, most of which found themselves in the major British battles and theatres of the war. It is a therefore an excellent choice to explore the ways in which the war was experienced by a mid-sized British urban centre, industrially, politically, and culturally, but also in respect to the ways in which the actual fighting affected its citizens both at home and in the trenches.
