This chapter considers the strategic dimension of conflict in North America between the outbreak of fighting between the French and colonial Americans in the Ohio valley in 1754 and the formal end of the War of American Independence in 1783. While this thirty-year period saw several local struggles between colonists and Native peoples, the focus here is on the two major conflicts – the Seven Years War (1754–1760 in North America, 1756–1763 in Europe) and the War of Independence (1775–1783). Both wars were global struggles, extending well beyond North America – the Seven Years War from its outset, and the War of Independence from 1778, when the French became belligerents. Even so, the chapter will concentrate on the American aspects of these struggles, and only indirectly address the Caribbean, west African, European and Asian dimensions. It will aspire to cover all the participants in the North American parts of the two wars – settlers, Native peoples and Europeans, particularly the British and the French.

Mexican independence was the result of a complex process initiated in 1808 due to a problem of dynastic legitimacy and ended in 1825 with the surrender of the last Spanish fortress in Veracruz. In 1810, armed uprisings began, led by hundreds of clergymen who rejected the authorities that were supposedly foisted on the colonies by orders of Napoleon Bonaparte. In the absence of an army capable of subduing the rebels, the government had to form it with armed civilians. Without a political and government program to define the course to be followed by the rebels, little by little the territories they controlled fell into the hands of the king’s defenders. In the territories affected by the war, governability was guaranteed through civic-military self-governments. Everything changed after 1820, with the reestablishment of the Constitution of Cadiz, when the militarized self-governments gave way to liberal governments. The military reacted against them a year later with the military pronunciamiento led by Agustín de Iturbide. He proposed an independence subordinated to the House of Bourbon. In the end, a republic was imposed as the form of government in Mexico.

The 1948 war is regarded by Israel as its war of independence in which it managed to repel attacks by all the neighboring Arab States. The Arab population of Palestine regard the war as a catastrophe, al Nakba, that caused the exodus of some 750, 000 Arabs. As a result of the 1948 war, Israel occupied the Western Galilee and Beersheba, Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt occupied the Gaza strip, all territories allocated to the proposed Arab State. Israel and Jordan divided Jerusalem between them. International law issues arising from the war include complaints from both sides of deliberate killing of civilians, clearly a violation of the laws of war. Expulsion of civilians, where it occurred, was justified by Israel as an act of legal military necessity, this is disputed by the Palestinians who viewed it as an illegal act. A smaller number of Jewish civilians were expelled from areas held by Arab forces.A legal issue in dispute is whether the objection of the Arabs of Palestine to partition allowed them to use force and whether the intervention of the neighbouring Arab States was a legitimate exercise of the right of collective self-defence.

The introduction to A Battlefield of Memory provides the reader with an understanding of the societal importance of the foundational pasts under review while highlighting existing trends of denial. Readers are also familiarized with polls conducted among Palestinians and Israeli-Jews on attitudes toward the other’s foundational trauma and failed reconciliatory attempts, which shed light on the materialization of mnemonic delegitimization efforts. Interviews conducted with the Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian individuals responsible for these initiatives demonstrate that they have, ironically, been accused of the same perfidious conduct, namely “selling out to the enemy.” The introduction further provides a synopsis of scholarly approaches to collective memory theory and the key research methodologies that have been applied in the collection of primary source material. It is in this particular context that the reader is informed of important caveats that should be taken into account during the reading of this work. One such provision concerns this work’s simultaneous deliberation of the Holocaust and the Nakba, which does not mean equating them or promulgating a causal linkage. Such a conflation would not only be historically – and ethically – erroneous, but equally fail to recognize the divergence in historical culpability. Nevertheless, as this work illustrates, a more relational linkage does exist: as dominant national metanarratives, the Holocaust and the Nakba have bolstered exclusive identities within the two groups, both centering on unique claims of ongoing victimhood and loss and a consequential devaluation – if not denial – of the other’s catastrophe

The Textbook of Memory, the first of three parts that make up this work, examines the state educational systems in the post-Oslo era in Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian society. In contravention with the stipulations of 1993 Declaration of Principles, which declared that Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) should foster mutual understanding and tolerance, Part I reveals the existence of incompatible narratives in Israeli and Palestinian textbooks based on a negation or minimization of the other’s seminal history. Beyond examining the presentation of the other’s historical narrative in the Israeli and Palestinian curricula, the two chapters that make up Part I emphasize the exclusive and ethnocentric presentation of both societies’ own foundational history. Through an analysis of the presentation of the in-group’s own history and (the existence of) the out-group’s historical narrative, Part I of this study identifies the ways in which schooling contributes to – and justifies – the continuance of conflict narratives. By outlining the existing content pertaining to the 1948 War and the Holocaust in Israeli and Palestinian textbooks, the chapters’ dual analyses illuminate the mechanisms that remain hidden from those socialized and indoctrinated by these narratives.

Chapter 2’s analysis of fifteen textbooks published since 1993 for Israeli middle and high-school students demonstrates that an exclusive presentation of the Holocaust in the curriculum has relied on the explicit portrayal of the Holocaust as a uniquely Jewish tragedy with universal relevance to the entire Jewish nation and, therefore, pertinent to every Israeli-Jewish youth. Simultaneously, the overt minimization of other groups’ suffering as a result of Nazi genocidal policies is deemphasized through the conveyance of anachronistic historical information and the usage of numerical aggregation practices. The chapter’s identified Zionist metanarrative lays the foundations for further exclusionary manifestations, namely the minimization of Palestinians’ fate in the 1948 War. Textbooks that illustrate a teleological movement from the center(s) of Jewish destruction, “there” in the galut (Hebrew: exile), to revival “here” in Israel, advocate a post-Holocaust justification for the Zionist enterprise and, consequently, necessitate an untainted recovery from the preceding crisis. By differentiating between Zionist, Zionist-critical, and revisionist narratives of the war, the chapter’s secondary analysis illustrates that while new historiographical writings on the 1948 War have emerged, the beneficial and practical effects of the mass Palestinian exodus are stressed in textbooks. In line with this narrative, a systematic policy of expulsion is firmly cast aside and, instead, overt reminders of traditional Zionist historiography formulating a miraculous rebirth remain.

This chapter examines the immediate impact of the ending of the war for Irish women in the public and private spheres before considering the longer-term effects of the war for women in Ireland.While the cessation of hostilities brought enormous relief to women anxiously awaiting the return of their loved ones, in many cases it accentuated the trauma and grief of those bereaved by the war. This chapter argues that Irish women faced particular difficulties arising from the swift demobilisation of war workers which resulted in high levels of unemployment, the more limited relief available from the British government, and the political instability in the years immediately following the war. The impact of ex-servicemen returning home to family and domestic life and women’s role within the home is examined, making use of autobiographical novels. Towards the end of the war, the press returned repeatedly to the vexed issue of women’s role in society, raising the spectre of the ‘superfluous woman’. Despite the wartime loss, the chapter’s examination of the 1926 census reports for the Free State and Northern Ireland concludes that such fears were unfounded and marital prospects were little changed by the war.

The emergence of organizational culture in the Israeli Defence Forces can inform scholars and practitioners how military cultures are formed and evolve, and how they shape organizational habits and patterns of actions in newly established military organizations. This chapter examines the vision, plans, and means the IDF’s early leadership deployed in a conscious attempt to create a shared pool of values and practices in the armed forces of the young State of Israel. It offers three different examples illuminating the dynamics of the IDF’s self-fashioned culture, defiantly independent and idiosyncratic from its very inception: the early emergence of an offensive approach in conventional and sub-conventional conflicts; the desire to learn from other armies but emulate none; and the IDF’s relations with the Israeli government characterized by agency and self-promotion. Together, these shed light on the IDF’s early organizational culture, imprinted into the organization’s cultural DNA and persisting many decades to follow.

The American Civil War presented an exceptional state of affairs in modern warfare, because strong personalities could embed their own command philosophies into field armies, due to the miniscule size of the prior US military establishment. The effectiveness of the Union Army of the Tennessee stemmed in large part from the strong influence of Ulysses S. Grant, who as early as the fall of 1861 imbued in the organization an aggressive mind-set. However, Grant’s command culture went beyond simple aggressiveness – it included an emphasis on suppressing internal rivalries among sometimes prideful officers for the sake of winning victories. In the winter of 1861 and the spring of 1862, the Army of the Tennessee was organized and consolidated into a single force, and, despite deficits in trained personnel as compared to other Union field armies, Grant established important precedents for both his soldiers and officers that would resonate even after his departure to the east. The capture of Vicksburg the following summer represented the culminating triumph of that army, cementing the self-confident force that would later capture Atlanta and win the war in the western theater.