'Trevor Royle has done First World War history a great service.' - Professor Gary Sheffield
‘a fine and unsentimental account of Scotland’s contribution to, and effects from, the war of 1914–18’ – Financial Times
‘Trevor Royle’s illuminating book is . . . much more than a military history. His unique perspective is the social effect of the war.’ – Despatches (magazine of the Friends of the Imperial War Museum)
’This fascinating book has easily earned its place as a historical record of the Great War and its aftermath.’ - Scots Magazine
Today we are as far away from the First World War as the Edwardians were from the Battle of Waterloo, but it casts a shadow over Scottish life that was never produced by the wars against Napoleon. The country and its people were changed forever by the events of 1914–1918. Once the workshop of the empire and an important source of manpower for the colonies, after the war, Scotland became something of an industrial and financial backwater. Emigration increased as morale slumped in the face of economic stagnation and decline. The country had paid a disproportionately high price in casualties, a result of the larger numbers of volunteers and the use of Scottish battalions as shock troops in the fighting on the Western Front and Gallipoli – young men whom the novelist Ian Hay called ‘the vanished generation [who] left behind them something which neither time can efface nor posterity belittle’. There was a sudden crisis of national self-confidence, leading one commentator to suggest in 1927 that ‘the Scots are a dying race’.
Royle examines related themes such as the overwhelming response to the call for volunteers and the subsequent high rate of fatalities, the performance of Scottish military formations in 1915 and 1916, the militarisation of the Scottish homeland, the resistance to war in Glasgow and the west of Scotland, the boom in the heavy industries and the strengthening of women’s role in society following on from wartime employment.
Trevor Royle is a broadcaster and author specialising in the history of war and empire. His most recent books include Patton: Old Blood and Guts and The British Civil War: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1638–1660. He is associate editor of the Sunday Herald and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
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