Exiting War: The British Empire and the 1918–20 moment. Edited by RomainFathi, MargaretHutchison, AndrekosVarnava, and Michael J. K.Walsh (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022), pp. ix + 212. £85.00 (hb).

“It was suddenly clear for a second in the thundering glare what war was about, what peace was about”. So wrote the American veteran and novelist John Dos Passos of the peacemaking of 1919. This book provides just such clarity, as its nine essays expose the “thundering glare” of the British Empire's tumultuous 1918–20 “moment”. The perceptive introduction by the four editors surveys the modern historiography. This now stresses the “long” Great War that did not end abruptly in 1918, the variety of experiences of sorties de guerre across the Empire, and the need to look beyond London to explore “forgotten colonialisms” in the “peripheral geographies”. Vital is the exploration of the clash between those forces seeking in victory a “reaffirmation of British imperial values and goals”, and those decolonising forces inspired by the Wilsonian bunting of “self-determination”. All the essays are supported by comprehensive notes and a very useful bibliography that list up-to-date studies on such intensely debated topics in the history of the British Empire as imperial and military culture, race, decolonisation, conflict and resistance. Hannah Mawdsley provides an opening essay on Australia during the influenza pandemic of 1918–19, when Australia enjoyed comparative success in containing the infection (compared, for example, with New Zealand). This was memorialised in the culture and politics of the time. It served to buttress Australia's “emerging national self-image” as a nation led by men fixated on “racial purity” and “imperial cleanliness”, and which aimed to secure the race through tight border controls and quarantines. Trevor Harris explores the changing “Anglo-imperial relationship” between London and the various Dominions through the troubled years of repatriation. He reviews the returning soldiers' varying experiences, the difficulties of demobilisation, the disillusionment of many men, the strikes, mutinies and race riots in some camps, and the disappointments of the soldier settlement schemes. He notes that “the bonds of empire” were scarcely strengthened when emerging “Dominion nationalism” resisted the idea of British ex-servicemen being placed within the soldier settlements. In the Dominions' contested relationship with London, “any veneer of victory quickly lost its sheen”. An essay from Panikos Panayi surveys the “ethnic cleansing” of Germans from the Empire after the armistice, fired by wartime Germanophobia and the harsh policies of internments of enemy aliens. Importantly, he places the effort to eliminate Germans from the British Empire through “forced migration” in the broader context of imperial history, finding it to be “a part of a long history of transporting millions of people throughout the world” for punishment, slavery and indentured labour. Two fine essays then swing attention onto the Empire's “military tradition” that was carried forth in the aftermath of victory. Samraghni Bonnerjee lays bare the processes of “colonial reaffirmation” through case studies of two British officers, both “coloniser-soldiers”, who returned to Africa and India after the armistice. She borrows freely from the officers' writings to show their racial contempt for the local military forces. She outlines their passion for hunting and shows how the elaborate associated rituals – such as the mounted trophies in exclusive clubs – were all part of a fierce “display of white dominance”. Kate Imy explores the Indian Army in the shadow of the Amritsar massacre of 1919, and brings to light such stratagems as the British officers' efforts “to win over Muslim soldiers” by subsidising their Hajj. Conflicts over empire are then explored in Canada, Cyprus, and the Middle East. Charles-Philippe Courtois shows how the authoritarian turn in wartime Canadian politics, and the conscription crisis of 1917–18 in particular, gave a fillip to modern Quebec nationalism. Andrekos Varnava demonstrates the defeat of British Liberal Philhellenists, who sought the cession of Cyprus to Greece in 1919–20, but could not prevail against the advocates of strategic security through an ever-expanding empire. As H. A. L. Fisher lamented, “we protest our virtue always, but somehow or other more and more of the map gets painted red”. Finally, Clothilde Houot plots the course of Britain's “expedient imperialism” in the newly conquered Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. She records the clashes between occupation forces and nationalist forces, the British resort to air power to achieve “imperialism on the cheap”, and convulsions such as the Iraqi Revolution of 1920. The four editors provide a thoughtful concluding essay, recapitulating the essayists' exposure of the hardships of war well beyond the armistices. They highlight the collision between imperial ambitions and such harsh realities as post-war shipping shortages, financial constraints, hostile political movements, and the poisonous persistence of notions of racial hierarchy. The book is an immensely valuable collection of concise and well-edited essays.

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