1st Edition

Arming the Western Front War, Business and the State in Britain 1900–1920

By Roger Lloyd-Jones, M.J. Lewis Copyright 2016
432 Pages
by Routledge

432 Pages
by Routledge

432 Pages
by Routledge

The First World War was above all a war of logistics. Whilst the conflict will forever be remembered for the mud and slaughter of the Western Front, it was a war won on the factory floor as much as the battlefield. Examining the war from an industrial perspective, Arming the Western Front examines how the British between 1900 and 1920 set about mobilising economic and human resources to meet the... Read more
Contents: Introduction; The road to war: the Edwardian economy, military preparedness, and war planning; The pre-war procurement system: the War Office, the Admiralty, and the private armaments producers; ’Business as usual’ and the challenges of war; The rise of the engineer’s war and the origins of the Ministry of Munitions; The Ministry of Munitions and industrial warfare; Producing for the industrial battlefield: the Ministry of Munitions and the Somme; Oh what a costly war: managing and paying for industrial warfare; Coping with crisis: the war economy in 1917; The intractable problem of manpower: the western front and the home front in transition; The transition to a peace economy and the challenge of reconstruction, 1918-1920; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

Biography

Dr Myrddin John Lewis and Professor Roger Lloyd-Jones teach at Sheffield Hallam University, UK.