IN addition to its devastating toll on living things, the Second World War caused the destruction of countless historic buildings, paintings, books and manuscripts. In Leipzig alone, aerial bombing incinerated fifty million volumes held in publishers’ warehouses. In London, bombs caused major damage to the British Museum Library in Bloomsbury and demolished much of the newspaper library at Colindale. By the autumn of 1941, one year after Germany and Britain began to attack each other's cities, bombing had consumed an estimated twenty million books in Britain and an untold number of unpublished documents. Although the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane emerged from the war relatively unscathed, bombs and rockets destroyed vast numbers of irreplace- able documents held at the War Office and the Treasury, and in numerous local archives, businesses and homes across Britain.

Yet military action was not the only thing that threatened Britain's cultural inheritance in wartime. Large numbers of books, as well as business correspondence, personal papers and government records, disappeared in British ‘wastepaper’ drives between 1939 and 1945. The historical documents at greatest risk of being recycled were not those held in archives but rather ones in houses, businesses and government offices. W.C. Berwick Sayers, elected president of the Library Association just before the war, estimated that in 1943 alone Britons contributed 600 million books for recycling – thirty times as many volumes as the Luftwaffe destroyed during its most intensive year of raids against Britain. This chapter examines how wartime paper recycling, although promoted as an embodiment of thrift and efficiency, functioned as a form of unsustainable consumption. While fighting to save their civilization, the British people paradoxically destroyed vital parts of their nation's heritage.

Through an escalating process of exhortation and compulsion, government officials worked hard to promote ‘salvage’, and for the most part they succeeded. Never had the British people recycled materials with so much zeal or thoroughness, and no comparable recycling effort has taken place in Britain since then. In their attempt to maximize the use of domestic raw materials in the war effort, Britain's leaders sought to redefine all ‘unnecessary’ items as devoid of value. Once deemed useless, these ‘wastes’ could be recycled into weapons or other necessities.

THE first time a world war erupted, famine and extreme deprivation struck Greater Syria. Conservative estimates put the deaths from starvation at half a million. Tripoli, Junieh, Haifa and Acre ‘underwent years of extreme deprivation’. Incidences of cannibalism were reported as the hungry perished on the streets. These were the memories that haunted Palestinians at the start of the Second World War. They also haunted colonial officials, who faced the economic consequences of their brutal containment of the Great Revolt (1936–39) and its innovations in guerrilla warfare. By 1938 the signs of economic devastation from closed workshops, increased unemployment and the spectre of famine were everywhere. The onset of war compounded these conditions with further shortages and inflation. Colonial officials hoped to confront these issues with ‘extreme sensitivity and caution’. By 1940 everything from sugar to shoes was out of reach. Blockades and the effort to secure arms shipments meant prices soared, shops were emptied and trade routes closed.

To manage these crises, the British colonial government developed new institutional technologies of rule such as ‘the calorie’, austerity schemes such as rationing and new institutions such as the Middle East Supply Centre. Officials initiated a broad austerity regime (beginning in 1939) and an ambitious rationing scheme inaugurated in 1941. Throughout the war British colonial officials introduced new conceptions of development, poverty, health and productivity. Their failures reveal the politics of basic needs and disrupt the colonial panopticon that tempts us with its coherence.

Settler Colonialism and Revolt

Palestinians survived the economic duress and famine of the First World War only to face a new regime – colonial control – dubbed ‘mandatory rule’ by the League of Nations. In 1919 the Covenant of the League of Nations divided the world into ‘advanced nations’ and those peoples who were ‘not yet able to stand by themselves’. Based on the principles of ‘well-being and development’, the Covenant sought to provide ‘tutelage’ to these not-yet-peoples of the former German and Ottoman territories, which the document further divided into a three-tiered hierarchy (A, B, C) based on potential for self-rule. The Covenant graded the Arab provinces of the former Ottoman Empire, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq as A- territories, whose independence could be provisionally recognized.

CEYLON, an island with a mixed-race population of about 6.2 million people at the time of the Second World War, was annexed by Britain because of its strategic importance during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815). Left in Dutch hands, the risk of French corsairs using Colombo and Trincomalee as bases to intercept British shipping in the Indian Ocean was too great, and so these key ports were occupied. Ceylon's strategic significance escalated in the Second World War as Britain's maritime empire, and the shipping lanes that underpinned it, were challenged from both the east and the west.

While Singapore is famed as an imperial military base that failed, and Malta heralded as an imperial military base that held, Ceylon remains uncelebrated in general histories of the war. Yet its enormous strategic significance was recognized by leaders and commanders at the time: Stanley Bruce, Australia's High Commissioner in London and former prime minister, wrote that ‘the defence of Ceylon was a matter of importance, second only to that of the British Isles’. Winston Churchill described Ceylon as ‘that indispensable island’. In conversation at the British Embassy in Washington in 1946, the former prime minister said that:

the most dangerous moment of the war, and the one which caused me the greatest alarm, was when the Japanese fleet was heading for Ceylon and the naval base there [April 1942]. The capture of Ceylon, the consequent enemy control of the Indian Ocean, and the possibility at the same time of a German conquest of Egypt would have closed the ring and the future would have been black.

IN 1940 Winston Churchill's coalition wartime government introduced a brand-new institution: the communal feeding centre. These not-for-profit government-run canteens provided nourishing, healthy and warm midday meals for the public at cost and off the ration. Rebranded ‘British Restaurants’ by Churchill himself, these institutions represent a striking new phenomenon: for the ‘first time in the history of [the United Kingdom]’ the government was providing nourishing and nutritious meals at below true market value to all of its citizens in a manner that could not be classed as ‘charity’. This provision of communal feeding facilities for ‘the general public under Government auspices’ was, according to the Ministry of Food [MOF], ‘an entirely new development since the War’. But, given that they served only 618,000 meals across the United Kingdom per day, and there were almost six times as many industrial canteens in operation during the Second World War, many historians have paid little attention to this innovation in government feeding. Instead, most have downplayed their significance, arguing that British Restaurants contributed only ‘marginally to wartime feeding’ and thus made only a ‘slight difference in relation to women's need to purchase food and then prepare it at home’. While acknowledging their limited contribution when measured in terms only of the number of meals put into hungry bellies, this chapter argues that, by loosening the ties that bound women to the kitchen and thus to the home, these institutions played an important cultural role in wartime Britain and beyond. Unlike rationing, which did not fundamentally alter domestic roles, the introduction of a state-run meals service opened up the possibility that the cooking of meals for oneself or one's family – an often-onerous duty – need no longer structure a woman's day and thus limit her economic, political and social choices. While domestic roles within the family were slow to change, debates over the British Restaurant were part of this process and exposed a variety of tensions around gender, food and the British family that circulated during the Second World War and in planning for reconstruction.

IN 1946 the British Crown Film Unit, part of the Ministry of Information, released the Humphrey Jennings documentary short A Diary for Timothy (Humphrey Jennings, 1946) which documented the closing months of the Second World War. It contained within it a glowing depiction of Britain's wartime civilian male workers, portraying them as central to the war effort and eventual victory. The narrator, actor Michael Redgrave, declared:

The militaristic vocabulary used in describing these workers makes evident the filmmakers’ wish to present them as central components of the war effort and the equals of their counterparts in the fighting forces. Moreover, the production notes for the film confirm that the filmmakers were consciously making parallels between these civilian jobs and the armed forces. The notes portray Bill's occupation as a ‘vital war job’ and, more tellingly, Goronwy is, when injured in a mining accident, described as being in ‘permanent danger as compared with temporary as airmen.

NATIONALISM and nation-building in various countries have been the focus of many books and articles in recent decades. These works show that, in modern times, the strong force of nationalism catalysed the emergence of new nations within the global landscape, providing the framework for the future growth of the nations that gained independence from Britain after the Second World War, and subsequently the fertile ground for the development of nationalism. However, nationalism is a complex concept. It can be expressed in different ways and styles, and can occur at different times before finally becoming grounded. The complexities of nationalism were intensified by the Second World War. It destabilized colonialism and left imperial states such as Britain fractured and weakened. However, in some circles, nationalism has been defined as resisting domination or the dominant beliefs of the established elites. Quite often, the growth of nationalism in the context of imperialism complicates the concept of nationalism by introducing categories of gender and race. This was the case in the Indian subcontinent, where resistance to domination and dominant beliefs was quite common. The histories of resistance impacted nation-building in India after independence from the British after the Second World War.

The nation-building that follows the success of nationalism is a vitally important phase in the growth of a nation. A sense of nationalism remains active in this phase and throughout the nation's life. The active nationalism in the nationbuilding process, at the nascent stage of the nation, is at least in part defined by the socio-cultural experiences of the people involved in its ‘grand plan’. How the nation-building process is shaped may well be traced by considering numerous contemporary published literary documents, each of which may project different lights on the constitutive organs of the body of nationalism that continue as a viable force in the development of the nation. A fruitful insight into the force of nationalism at play that shaped the very early phase of a nation's growth may be gained by examining specific writings that appeared in some regions of India immediately following independence from the British on 15 August 1947.

THE Second World War had a significant political and social impact on the British colony of Kenya. The 1941 propaganda film ‘War Comes to Kenya’ offered an almost idyllic portrayal of an imperial territory that had become a key strategic base and a centre for the production of food and raw materials. While white settlers joined the Kenya Regiment to help fight against the Axis forces in neighbouring Italian East Africa, their wives, daughters and native labour remained at home to run the all-important farms providing much needed supplies for the war effort. This was, in part, true, although the actual story of the military campaign was much more complicated, and the apparent calm and tranquillity of the home front was not quite as all-encompassing as was suggested. Kenya had, however, proven itself an excellent location to assemble and train military forces, and it acted as a major logistics centre, helping sustain the British Empire's second global conflict in less than thirty years.

This now important colonial territory was established formally in 1895 when the East African Protectorate was declared. This remained for more than twenty-five years until June 1920, when Kenya became a crown colony with a governor appointed to represent the monarch. At the beginning of the First World War there were estimated to be several million native Africans and nearly 20,000 Asians but fewer than 4000 Europeans living alongside them. At the time of the 1926 census, the first set of official figures showed there were in fact 12,529 Europeans in Kenya and 2.5 million Africans and, by the outbreak of the Second World War, the gap had widened considerably, with approximately 21,000 Europeans and nearly 4.5 million Africans. For the most part, white settlers came from the ‘gentlemanly stratum’, hence the description of the colony as ‘the officers’ mess’. For one Kikuyu chief it was ‘an island of white settlers surrounded by much larger African and Asiatic population groups’.

WHEN the imperial Japanese army invaded and occupied Malaya in December 1941, Britain lost access to raw rubber. The ramifications of the invasion for the British war effort were undeniably great, but the impact of the rubber shortage on civilians was no less significant. The lack of rubber consumer products created problems for infants, mothers and midwives. By February 1942, rubber gloves for home births were rationed, the manufacture of rubber teats for infant feeding bottles was only 25 per cent of pre-war levels and the production of contraceptive rubber diaphragms and condoms for civilians had ceased. As the war progressed, the lack of rubber teats for feeding infants created mounting difficulties for mothers with young babies. While a public outcry forced the government to restart production in late 1944, the lack of rubber contraceptives led to unwanted pregnancies and a surge in venereal diseases. This public health crisis did not restart the production of diaphragms or condoms for civilians, but resulted instead in the establishment of treatment centres for sexually transmitted diseases. Appeals to the government for more gloves for midwives failed, leading many midwives to leave the profession. This produced a critical shortage of birth attendants at the very moment the birth rate in Britain increased dramatically.

The literature on wartime shortages, rationing and austerity in Britain is rich and detailed. Recently, Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska and Mark Roodhouse have explored wartime policies and the implementation of rationing, as well as the black market that developed alongside official channels. Earlier scholarship has focused on the shortages and state policies aimed at increasing food production and maintaining equitable access to food supplies. R.J. Hammond's ‘official history’ of the development of those policies, and recent comparative work by Lizzie Collingham, signal that all the major powers connected the control of food to the maintenance of civilian morale. Britons’ nutrition improved markedly during the Second World War. Many citizens reused, repurposed and recycled consumer items for personal use and, as Peter Thorsheim argues, for weapons. Nevertheless, some items could not be reused indefinitely. These included medical rubber gloves, condoms, diaphragms (or ‘Dutch Caps’) and rubber teats for infant feeding bottles.

‘DANGER’, real and imagined, has been an undercurrent in Australian life and culture since settlement. In 1788 convicts arrived in a strange and unfamiliar land. Life-threatening creatures – snakes, spiders and crocodiles – abound, and children wandering off were ‘lost in the bush’. Indigenous peoples were removed from the land, ‘dispersed’, murdered and starved, and forced onto missions and government reserves. The descendants of the ‘first fleet’ and consequent arrivals in boats developed a special anxiety about Australia's coastlines. In one of the volumes of the official history of the First World War, the chapter on Australia's tropical forces visualizes this danger with a map on ‘possible disease invasion’: thick arrows from the North and North-East target neighbouring Pacific islands – Dutch New Guinea, ex-German New Guinea and Papua, the British Solomon Island Protectorate and the Condominium of the New Hebrides – that form an arc behind which Australia shelters. If this barrier fell, the map seems to say, Australia would be defenceless. This ‘oriental’, at times Russian, at times Chinese, Indo-Chinese and Japanese threat was countered in Australia with diverse measures of securing the nation: coastal forts and quarantine stations were built and policies on migration legislated, forming the so-called ‘White Australia policy’ that restricted migration on racial terms. In this chapter I examine how themes of danger from outside and from within were an influence on the home front during the Second World War, and what was done through policies and government actions to remove danger by internment. The chapter examines the changing needs of the home front, the internal debate about service to the Empire and, finally, the reasons why internal danger ceased.

War

On 3 September, at 9.15 p.m. Australian time, Robert Menzies, prime minister of Australia, announced to the British subjects of Australia his ‘melancholy duty to inform you officially that … Great Britain has declared war upon her [Germany] and that, as a result, Australia is also at war’.

THE role of technology and the communications network in the prosecution of a war effort is crucial. The growing complexity of warfare has, if only implicitly, given those with access to finer technology a feeling of superiority over their enemies. The major facilitator of the communications network in Britain in war and peace was the Post Office. Arguably one of the Post Office's most important functions during the Second World War was the provision of telephones and telegrams as a communication method for the public and also for the government. Yet a systematic analysis of its importance to the nation has not yet been undertaken. Indeed, the historiography of the American Post Office remains more fruitful, with Richard John's numerous works highlighting the telegraph's importance to and development in American society. As a government department, the Post Office occupied a central part of the British public service. Yet the responsibility bestowed on the Post Office for maintaining the nation's communications put massive strains on the department during wartime. The latest analysis by Duncan Campbell Smith contains some description of its work in wartime, although it is largely contextualized within the post-war debates concerning the impact of war on modernization.

This study builds on David Edgerton's earlier argument that the Second World War was a war of technology. In challenging previous assertions that Germany was technologically superior to its wartime counterparts, Edgerton deftly argues that it was British confidence, and their academic prowess, that helped the nation build a successful defence against Nazi aggression. This was seen with the work of numerous communication workers, including the Bletchley Park code-breakers. Nevertheless, without the academic and practical skills of Post Office engineers (perhaps most famously Tommy Flowers and the development of the code-breaking machine Colossus), much of these and later communication developments would not have been possible. Furthermore, little attention has been afforded to the instrumental role of women in sustaining the nation's communications during the war.