Project description
Understanding colonial veterancy during the interwar period
The application and impact of veteran policies within and between various empires, such as the French, Italian, American colonial, and British-ruled regions like East Africa and India, remains understudied. Nevertheless, the interwar period played a pivotal role in shaping the modern understanding of veterans. In this context, the ERC-funded COLVET project seeks to address this gap by offering the first comprehensive analysis of colonial veterancy during the interwar period. This research aims to deepen our understanding of veteran history by broadening its scope to include colonial veterans and reimagining the framework within which veteran history is understood. The project will explore crucial questions regarding the definition and regulation of veterancy, the political mobilisation of veterans, and the systems established to support and control veterans across colonial territories.
Objective
COLVET will develop the first comprehensive and comparative account of colonial veterancy in what was the foundational era for modern conceptions of the veteran, the interwar period. Grounded in a collaborative and comparative methodology, the project will trace and analyse the contrasts and commonalities in the evolution and reception of veteran policy within, across, and between the French Empire, the Italian Empire, the American colonial empire, British-ruled East Africa, and British-ruled India. This innovative research will not only deepen our understanding of veteran history around the world in the period but also help us reimagine the concepts we use to analyse veterans and their stories so they can better capture the diversity of veteran experiences.
The project has four principal aims:
1. To trace and compare the history of veteran experiences and policy across colonial contexts and imperial polities.
2. To use veteran policy and the responses it elicited to explore the nature of colonial rule across interwar empires.
3. To expand the imagined geography of veteran history in the period to include colonial veterans.
4. To reimagine the conceptual framework of veteran history so it can better incorporate colonial veterans alongside veterans from the rest of the world.
To achieve these aims, the COLVET team will explore key questions around the definition and regulation of veterancy, the political recognition and mobilisation of veterans, and the systems set up to cater for and control veterans across a range colonial territories and imperial polities. The project design ensures that the original research this generates will then be put into dialogue with scholarship on and scholars of veterans in other contexts, colonial and non-colonial. This collaborative and comparative approach will allow the team to co-produce a new analytical framework that will facilitate the writing of a truly global history of the veteran.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
W23 Maynooth
Ireland