Men and Soldiers: British Conscripts, Concepts of Masculinity, and the Great War

This book chapter in the edited volume Borderlines: Genders and Identities in War and Peace, 1870-1930 explores the discourse on concepts of masculinity in the British public during World War I in the context of the move from an army based on professional soldiers and male war volunteers to an army based on universal conscription, which was introduced in 1916, after extreme losses. In this way the British military followed the model of the Continental armies that had done this step much erliers during the nineteenth century.