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Minorites, military service, and the legacies of post-war reconstruction in the British Isles, 1918-1939 https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.111856 Grace, Fearghal Thomas, Geraint This thesis aims to create a greater understanding of democratic citizenship in post-First World War Britain as it relates to minority status in the period 1918-1939. Arguing that histories of interwar politics have been slow to recognise the role and experiences of Britain’s minority communities in shaping notions of citizenship during the first decades of British mass democracy, the thesis focuses on the role of military service in the formation of minority rights agendas. Scholarship on the political culture of the period has interrogated the nature of British democracy between the wars, but the position of minorities in these debates is less clear. While New Imperial histories have considered the legacies of claim-making on the part of non-white colonial subjects in this period, rarely has analysis been set in the context of post-war reconstruction, memory of wartime pledges, and the impact of military service on both the self-history and identity of minorities, and how they were perceived by others. After the First World War, British Governments faced an expectant mass citizenry, and a growing field of civic participation in the form of associations, clubs, and pressure groups: testament to the new politics of the post-war age. On this field, minority agendas were founded and articulated, while dominant notions of citizenship, what it meant to belong, were contested and reshaped. Contributing to a history of minorities, and interwar political culture more broadly, the thesis considers the formation of minority-focused ex-service organisations by Jewish and Irish veterans of the Great War. University of Cambridge 2023-10-18 Thesis Doctoral Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) eng Chalke Valley History Trust, Royal Historical Society, Sir John Plumb Charitable Trust, British Association for Irish Studies, Gilchrist Educational Trust. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/373463 controlled.access https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/043f7e78-5d4b-478b-883a-299dd2027173/download 66b2d68ee6d94dcee305ca3a7be9d1cf https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/5f98a6a2-0831-4c2d-b376-e7f7a59da18e/download 87eda9de84448d1f82354d60eee3eb5f https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/ Ex-servicemen Voluntary organisations Interwar Political history Modern British Modern Irish Loyalism Irish Free State First World War Jewish ex-servicemen Irish ex-servicemen British Legion