Juvenile Nation - Youth, Emotions Making of Modern British Citizen, 1880 1914

In the first five months of the Great War, one million men volunteered to fight. Yet by the end of 1915, the British government realized that conscription would be required. Why did so many enlist, and conversely, why so few? Focusing on analyses of widely felt emotions related to moral and domestic duty, Juvenile Nation broaches these questions in new ways. Juvenile Nation examines how religious and secular youth groups, the juvenile periodical press, and a burgeoning new group of child psychologists, social workers and other ''experts'' affected society''s perception of a new problem character, the ''adolescent''. By what means should this character be turned into a ''fit'' citizen? Considering qualities such as loyalty, character, temperance, manliness, fatherhood, and piety, Stephanie Olsen discusses the idea of an ''informal education'', focused on building character through emotional control, and how this education was seen as key to shaping the future citizenry of Britain and the Empire. Juvenile Nation recasts the militarism of the 1880s onwards as part of an emotional outpouring based on association to family, to community and to Christian cultural continuity. Significantly, the same emotional responses explain why so many men turned away from active militarism, with duty to family and community perhaps thought to have been best carried out at home. By linking the historical study of the emotions with an examination of the individual''s place in society, Olsen provides an important new insight on how a generation of young men was formed.>

Product details

• Authors: Stephanie Olsen
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 16.01.2014
• EAN: 9781780936956
• ISBN: 978-1-78093-695-6
• No. of pages: 256
• Dimensions: 165 mm x 242 mm x 20 mm
• Subjects: Non-fiction book; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, European History, HISTORY / Social History, Social & cultural history, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / Georgian Era (1714-1837), HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / 20th Century, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / Victorian Era (1837-1901), c 1800 to c 1900, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, 18th century, c 1700 to c 1799, British & Irish history, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Social and cultural history, C 1900 - C 1914, c 1900 to c 1909