Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction
- Part One Basic Questions
- Part Two Nationalism, Leadership, and War
- Part Three Mobilization and Warfare
- Part Four The Home Front
- 16 Loyalty and Dissent: The Home Front in the American Civil War
- 17 “The Better Angels of Our Nature”: Lincoln, Propaganda, and Public Opinion in the North during the Civil War
- 18 The Permanence of Internal War: The Prussian State and its Opponents, 1870-71
- 19 French Public Opinion in 1870-71 and the Emergence of Total War
- 20 Women and War in the Confederacy
- 21 German Patriotic Women's Work in War and Peace Time, 1864-90
- Part Five The Reality of War
- Part Six The Legacy
- Part Seven Conclusions
- Index
21 - German Patriotic Women's Work in War and Peace Time, 1864-90
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2013
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction
- Part One Basic Questions
- Part Two Nationalism, Leadership, and War
- Part Three Mobilization and Warfare
- Part Four The Home Front
- 16 Loyalty and Dissent: The Home Front in the American Civil War
- 17 “The Better Angels of Our Nature”: Lincoln, Propaganda, and Public Opinion in the North during the Civil War
- 18 The Permanence of Internal War: The Prussian State and its Opponents, 1870-71
- 19 French Public Opinion in 1870-71 and the Emergence of Total War
- 20 Women and War in the Confederacy
- 21 German Patriotic Women's Work in War and Peace Time, 1864-90
- Part Five The Reality of War
- Part Six The Legacy
- Part Seven Conclusions
- Index
Summary
In the early 1970s, a new generation of women's historians opened the discipline to searing attack. The critics rightly pointed out that the field's standard themes - among the most time-honored were wars and state building - had shaped the larger conceptual grid surrounding the historical narrative. Indeed, historical turning points, the basis of periodization as well as the very understanding of historical significance - all matched, more or less perfectly, major political events, wars, or revolutions. And, as traditionally defined, these topics failed to include anything about women's roles, experiences, and contributions. Not surprisingly, women's history tended early on to ally with social or labor history and made pathfinding steps across the disciplinary borders to adopt innovative theories and methods of inquiry. But time has a way of changing history, and recently women's historians have come full circle. What once was a declaration of war on the topic of war now emerges as a fruitful arena for meaningful dialogue.
Gender inquiry has a lot that is new to say about war. And once military historians move beyond biographies of generals, battle tactics, and weapons - important as these themes may be on one level - and into society, they too must confront the gender implications of their subject. For war culture rests squarely on powerful assumptions about gender roles, and the disruption of war itself seems to crystallize the complex systems of gender embedded in state structures and social values.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- On the Road to Total WarThe American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871, pp. 449 - 478Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997