Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-2n9c9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-14T16:01:40.487Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Institution of Conscription

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Margaret Levi
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Johnnie get your gun, get your gun, get your gun,

Take it on the run, on the run, on the run,

Hear them calling you and me,

Ev'ry son of liberty.

Hurry right away, no delay, go today,

Make your daddy glad to have had such a lad,

Tell your sweetheart not to pine,

To be proud her boy's in line.

George P. Cohan, “Over There”
The chronicle of mass conscription in modern democracies is the story of the changing relationship between the state and its citizens, and the Great War is one of the major turning points, especially in the Anglo-Saxon democracies.The institution of conscription significantly extends the obligations of male citizens and the reach of the state.

Information

Type
Special Section: Institutions and Institutionalism, part 2
Information
Social Science History , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , Spring 1996, pp. 133 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1996 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adams, R. J. Q., and Poirier, Philip P. (1987) The Conscription Controversy in Great Britain. 1900-18. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Elizabeth (1974 [1937]) The Crisis of Quebec, 1914-18. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.Google Scholar
Baker, Paul (1988) King and Country Call: New Zealanders, Conscription, and the Great War. Auckland: University of Auckland Press (distributed by Oxford).Google Scholar
Ball, Desmond (ed.) (1991) Aborigines in the Defense of Australia. Sydney: Australian National University Press.Google Scholar
Barrett, John (1979) Falling In: Australians and “Boy Conscription.” Sydney: Hale and Iremonger.Google Scholar
Beck, J. Murray (1968) Pendulum of Power: Canada's Federal Elections. Scarborough, Ont.: Prentice-Hall of Canada.Google Scholar
Beckett, Ian (1985) “The nation in arms, 1914-18,” in Beckett, Ian and Simpson, Keith (eds.) A Nation in Arms: A Social Study of the British Army in the First World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press: 1–35.Google Scholar
Castles, Francis G. (1985) The Working Class and Welfare: Reflections on the Political Development of the Welfare State in Australia and New Zealand, 1890-1980. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Chambers, John Whiteclay II (1987) To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Dangerfield, George (1979) The Damnable Question: A Study in Anglo-Irish Relations. London: Billings.Google Scholar
Denman, Terence (1992) Ireland's Unknown Soldiers. Dublin: Irish Academic Press.Google Scholar
Enloe, Cynthia (1980) Ethnic Soldiers. Athens: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Flathman, Richard (1972) Political Obligation. New York: Atheneum.Google Scholar
Gibson, M. (1963-64) “The conscription issue in South Australia, 1916-17.” University Studies in History 4 (2): 47–80.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Alan D. (1969) “The conscription referenda, 1916-17: The impact of the Irish crisis.” Historical Studies 14 (October): 54–72.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Alan D. (1971) “Religion, loyalty and conscription.” Politics 4 (1): 15–25.Google Scholar
Gooch, John (1980) Armies in Europe. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Granatstein, J. L., and Hitsman, J. M. (1977) Broken Promises: A History of Conscription in Canada. Toronto: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grey, Jeffrey (1990) A Military History of Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Grieves, Keith (1988) The Politics of Manpower, 1914-1918. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Robert A. (1989) The Black Diggers. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Hayes, Dennis (1949) Conscription Conflict: The Conflict of Ideas in the Struggle for and Battle against Military Conscription in Britain between 1901 and 1959. London: Sheppard.Google Scholar
Hazlehurst, Cameron (1971) Politicians at War: July 1914 to May 1915. London: J. Cape.Google Scholar
Inglis, K. S. (1968) “Conscription in peace and war, 1911-1945,” in Forward, Roy and Reece, Bob (eds.) Conscription in Australia. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press: 22–65.Google Scholar
Jauncey, Leslie C. (1935) The Story of Conscription in Australia. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Jordens, Ann-Mari (1989) “An administrative nightmare: Aboriginal conscription 1965-1972.” Aboriginal History 13 (1-2): 124-34.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Thomas C. (1981) The Hound of Conscience: A History of the No-Conscription Fellowship, 1914-1919. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.Google Scholar
Lake, Marilyn (1975) A Divided Society: Tasmania during World War I. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.Google Scholar
Levi, Margaret (1988) Of Rule and Revenue. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Levi, Margaret, and DeTray, Stephen (1993) “A weapon against war: Conscientious objection in the U.S., Australia and France.” Politics and Society 21 (4): 425-64.Google Scholar
Levi, Margaret, and Fricks, Shane (1992) “Refusing consent: Francophone opposition to the introduction of conscription in Canada.” Paper presented to the Public Choice Society, New Orleans.Google Scholar
MacLennan, Hugh (1990 [1945]) Two Solitudes. Toronto: General Paperbacks.Google Scholar
Mahon, John K. (1983) History of the Militia and the National Guard. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Main, J. M. (ed.) (1970) Conscription: The Australian Debate. 1901-1970. Melbourne: Cassell Australia Ltd.Google Scholar
McKernan, Michael (1977) “Catholics, conscription and Archbishop Mannix.” Historical Studies 17 (April): 299–314.Google Scholar
McKernan, Michael (1980) Australian Churches at War: Attitudes and Activities of the Major Churches, 1914-1918. Canberra: Australian War Memorial.Google Scholar
McKernan, Michael (1984) Australians in Wartime. Melbourne: Thomas Nelson Australia.Google Scholar
McQuilton, John (1987) A shire at war: Yackandandah, 1914-1918. Australian War Memorial (11 October), 3–16.Google Scholar
Miller, Carmen (1975) “A preliminary analysis of the socio-economic composition of Canada's South African war contingents.” Social History 8(16): 219–237.Google Scholar
Murdock, Eugene (1971) One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Murphy, D. J. (1974) “Religion, race and conscription in World War I.” Australian Journal of Politics and History 20 (2): 155-63.Google Scholar
Parker, H. M. D. (1957) Manpower: A Study of War-time Policy and Administration. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office.Google Scholar
Pearson, A. R. (1974) “Western Australia and the conscription plebiscites of 1916 and 1917.” RMC Historical Journal 3: 21–27.Google Scholar
Perry, F. W. (1988) The Commonwealth Armies: Manpower and Organization in Two World Wars. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Petersen, Roger (1989) “Rationality, Ethnicity and Military Enlistment.” Social Science Information 28 (3): 563-98.Google Scholar
Robertson, J. R. (1959) “The conscription issue and the national movement, Western Australia: June, 1916 to December, 1917.” University Studies in Western Australian History 3 (3): 5–38.Google Scholar
Robson, L. L. (1970) The First A.I.F.: A Study of Its Recruitment, 1914-1918. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.Google Scholar
Scarrow, Howard A. (1962) Canada Votes: A Handbook of Federal and Provincial Election Data. New Orleans, LA: Hauser.Google Scholar
Scott, Ernest (1938) Australia during the War: The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18. Vol. II. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. (1985) Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Shy, John (1976) A People Numerous and Armed. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shy, John (1986) “Armed forces in colonial North America: New Spain, New France, and Anglo America,” in Hagan, Kenneth J. and Roberts, William R. (eds.) Against All Enemies. New York: Greenwood: 3–20.Google Scholar
Simkins, Peter (1988) Kitchener's Army: The Raising of the New Armies, 1914-16. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Simkins, Peter (1995) Interview. Museum Historian, Imperial War Museum, London, 26 January.Google Scholar
Skelton, William B. (1986) “The army in the age of the common man, 1815-1845,” in Hagan, Kenneth J. and Roberts, William R. (eds.) Against All Enemies. New York: Greenwood: 91–112.Google Scholar
Smith, F. B. (1981 [1966]) The Conscription Plebiscites in Australia, 1916-17. North Melbourne: History Teachers Association of Victoria.Google Scholar
Spiers, Edward M. (1980) The Army and Society, 1815-1914. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Spiers, Edward M. (1985) “The regular army in 1914,” in Beckett, Ian F. W. and Simpson, Keith (eds.) A Nation in Arms: A Social Study of the British Army in the First World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press: 40–60.Google Scholar
Stanley, George F. (1974 [1954]) Canada's Soldiers: The Military History of an Unmili-tary People, 3d ed. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada.Google Scholar
Stephens, John (1979) The Transition from Capitalism to Socialism. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Stock, Jenny Tilby (1985) “Farmers and the rural vote in South Australia in World War I: The 1916 conscription referendum.” Historical Studies 21 (84, April): 391–411.Google Scholar
Symonds, Craig L. (1986) “An improvised army at war, 1861-1865,” in Hagan, Kenneth J. and Roberts, William R. (eds.) Against All Enemies. New York: Greenwood: 155-71.Google Scholar
Thomson, Janice E. (1994) Mercenaries, Pirates, and State Sovereignty. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Tickten, David (1969) “The war issue and the collapse of the South African Labour Party, 1914-15.” South Africa Historical Journal 1: 59–73.Google Scholar
Townshend, Charles (1983) Political Violence in Ireland: Government and Resistance since 1848. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Tyler, Tom R. (1990) Why People Obey the Law. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
U.S. War Department (1866) Report of the Provost Marshall General (39th Congress 1st Session, House Executive Document No. 1, vol 4, part 2, serial 1251).Google Scholar
Wade, Mason (1967) The French Canadians. Vol. 1–2. Toronto: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Wilcox, Craig (1994) “The Citizen Soldier Tradition.” Ph.D. diss., Australian National University at Canberra.Google Scholar
Winter, J. M. (1985) The Great War and the British People. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Withers, Glen (1982) “The 1916-17 conscription referenda: A cliometric appraisal.” Historical Studies 20 (78): 38–48.Google Scholar