Abstract:
On 9 November 2013 the Prisoner of War Network, in conjunction with the War and Representation Network (WAR-Net), brought together forty academics and researchers at the University of Warwick to discuss ‘Representations of Prisoner of War Experience’. In response to Paul Gready’s claim that ‘to be a prisoner is to be variously written’, scholars from across Europe and North America and a wide range of disciplines (including history, film, politics, literature, history of art and archaeology) discussed the fascinating work being done in the emergent field of prisoner of war studies, as well as the possible future directions and challenges for such research. Eighteen speakers approached the question of the representation of prisoner of war experience, both by the historical actors who underwent forced dislocation (captors and captives alike) and by researchers themselves.
Keywords:
War; prisoner; history; politics; film; art; archaeology
In 1993, international
human rights specialist Paul Gready stated that ‘to be a prisoner
is to be
variously written’ (Gready 1993: 493). Whether it was in the text
of political
trials or through interrogations—such as in his case study of
apartheid South Africa—Gready
argued that the prisoner’s own voice was often bypassed, and that
the
authorities ‘wrote’ the prisoner’s experiences
instead. Gready’s statement
prompted Elodie Duché and me to consider the ways in which the
prisoner of war—the
captive figure in both of our PhD projects—was represented and by
whom. Gready’s
assertion was particularly pertinent to the studies of prisoner of war
life-writing that each of us were undertaking. My study concerns
British
prisoners of war in the Korean War (1950-1953), and Elodie’s
focuses on British
prisoners in Verdun during the Napoleonic Wars.
Heather Jones (London
School of Economics), a leading
figure in the new sub-field of prisoner of war studies, noted that the
prisoner
of war has until recently been a ‘missing paradigm’ within
historical research
(Jones 2008: 20). Elodie and I were therefore keen to understand how
prisoner
of war experience had been represented by the historical
actors who underwent forced dislocation as well as by researchers
in this new sub-discipline.
In order to understand these questions in more detail, we founded the
Prisoner
of War Network at the University of Warwick in January 2013. We held
our first
conference, entitled ‘Representing Prisoner of War
Experience’, on 9th
November 2013. In conjunction with the well-established War and
Representation
Network (WAR-Net), we brought together forty academics and researchers
to
discuss their work.
The growth of prisoner of
war studies in the last ten
years owes much to the development of two strands of historiography:
‘new
military history’ and the social history of the military (Bourke
2006: 258-280).
These two approaches, which incorporate historical, psychological and
literary
research, have prompted mainstream military history to take far greater
heed of
the cultural and social context of war, as well as the experiences of
the
people who lived through it. The prisoner of war was previously
somewhat
excluded from conventional military and social history. As Bob Moore
(University of Sheffield), the first keynote speaker at our conference,
remarked
‘military historians did not like losers and social historians
did not like
anything in uniforms.’ The conference at Warwick was, therefore,
the first
major gathering of a new generation of scholars examining the prisoner
of war.
In this one-day conference, we asked eighteen speakers to consider the
challenges in ‘representing’ the prisoner of war through
their particular
source material, and to reflect upon their own contribution to the
emergent historiography
on the subject.
The two keynote lectures at
our conference tackled the
issue of representation by historical actors and historians in
differing, yet
complementary, ways. Each keynote speaker based their comments on
developments
in their respective fields: history and archaeology. Bob Moore, offered
a
historiographical overview of the sub-discipline in the last twenty
years,
tracing its roots as what he described as a ‘Cinderella
subject’ to its current
expansion and popularity—a development demonstrated by the
conference itself. Moore
stressed the historical—indeed, even political—need to
study conflicts beyond
the world wars, and the evolving meaning of the prisoner of war in
modern
conflict. Moore questioned, for example, the location of Saddam
Hussein’s
Republican Guard after the Iraq War. Moore’s call for scholars to
widen their focus was met later in the day by a broad range of papers
on captive
contexts
other than the world wars. These included a paper by author Sean
McGlynn on
captivity in the ‘Age of Chivalry’, using the case study of
the Battle of
Agincourt (1415). In addition, Canadian scholar James Clark reflected
upon
Canadian narratives of internment in the post-9/11 era.
In his keynote talk, Moore
also highlighted important
conceptual challenges for prisoner of war researchers. For example, the
challenge of identifying moments of surrender and capture,
understanding the
unique experiences of prisoners of colonial armies, and deciphering the
uncertain position of the prisoner of war within international law.
This latter
point was particularly pertinent to my own research on the Korean War.
In the
case of the Korean War, the Geneva Convention was frequently used, but
to different
ends, by both the United States and the People’s Republic of
China in peace
negotiations.
Our second keynote speaker,
Gilly Carr (University of
Cambridge), used her archaeological fieldwork to provide a different
perspective on the representation of prisoner of war experience. In
exploring
the wealth of material culture produced by civilian internees from the
German-occupied Channel Islands during the Second World War, Carr
demonstrated
the importance of non-written sources to prisoner of war studies. She
showed a
range of objects crafted by prisoners of war, including kettles made
from tins sent
in Red Cross Parcels, and an astounding range of objects fashioned from
Players’ Navy Cut cigarette packets. Carr also referred to a
collection she
recently edited with fellow archaeologist Harold Mytum, Creativity
Behind Barbed Wire. This collection showed the range of
items constructed by prisoners of war, including an artificial spleen
in a
Japanese camp during the Second World War, and elaborates theatre
productions during
the First World War (Carr and Mytum 2012). Carr’s paper prompted
a wider
discussion about the meaning and ‘biography’ of objects,
both during and after
captivity, and the relationship between written and non-written texts
in prisoner
of war studies. Carr’s approach is potentially significant for
investigating
captive situations in which there was a large artistic output—as
in Elodie’s
research on British prisoners of war in Verdun—or where paper was
scarce and
prisoners could only ‘represent’ their experiences through
non-textual forms.
The conference raised
several other important points for
researchers of military captivity. Scholars discussed the spatial
representation of internment, through maps or artistic renderings of
camps or
internment areas, as well as other source material including oral
history and
life-writing. Delegates also explored how we should define the prisoner
of war
and the relative position of civilians, non-uniformed fighters and
children
being held captive in times of war. This in turn led to discussion of
the moral
expectations of captive and captor. For example, Erica Charters
(University of
Oxford) explored contemporary debates about what constituted the
‘humane’
treatment of prisoners of war in the mid- to late-eighteenth century
through an
analysis of French, British and American prisoner of war accounts. In
addition,
delegates discussed the societal expectation—particularly within
post-1945
British literature and film—that all prisoners of war should have
attempted to escape. Over the course of the
conference
it became evident that the notion that prisoners constantly hatched
cunning
escape plans, as represented by television programmes such as the
BBC’s Colditz (1972-4), clashed with more
common stories of everyday survival, resistance, privation and even
boredom.
Prisoner of war scholars must therefore understand the popular
preconceptions
of their subject matter today, particularly when communicating their
research
to a broader audience.
The centrality of escape to
the prisoner’s narrative also
led to questions about the limits set on representation by post-war
societies.
Gill Plain (University of St. Andrews and WAR-Net co-founder) explored
the
changing images of masculinity in post-1945 British prisoner of war
films,
including The Captive
Heart (1947), The
Wooden Horse (1950) and The Colditz
Story (1955). Similarly, Clare Makepeace (Birkbeck College,
University of
London) reflected on the often strained relations within British
ex-prisoner of
war organisations. The legitimacy and authenticity of prisoner of war
experience was therefore under continual debate, even after captivity
had ended.
Throughout the conference,
it was evident that prisoner
of war studies has given rise to exciting research topics and varying
approaches. Among the other thought-provoking topics explored during
the
conference, researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds offered
reflections on violence and economic exploitation, the importance of
‘reciprocity’
in early modern and modern contexts, the prevalence of trauma and
mental
illness among prisoners and the concept of ‘creativity behind
barbed wire.’ The
conference was therefore an important step in theorising the prisoner
of war
and in exploring the notion of ‘representation’ by
prisoners of war themselves
and scholars today. We hope that, as a result of events like ours, the
‘Cinderella subject’ of prisoner of war studies will no
longer be excluded from
mainstream military and social historical research.
The
‘Representing
Prisoner of War Experience’ conference was generously sponsored
by the
Department of History at Warwick, the Humanities Research Centre, the
Royal
Historical Society, the Centre for the History of Medicine at Warwick and the Warwick Oral History
Network. It was the first event of the Prisoner of War Network, founded
by
Elodie Duché and Grace Huxford. This interdisciplinary,
bilingual network has
over sixty members from Europe, Africa and North America. It
distributes
regular newsletters, and it plans to host future events to further
encourage
collaboration on prisoner of war studies across disciplines and
institutions.
For further information visit http://powstudiesnetwork.wordpress.com/.
References:
Bourke,
J. (2006), ‘New Military History’, in Hughes, M. and W. J.
Philpott (eds), Modern Military History, London:
Palgrave.
Carr,
G. and H. Mytum (eds) (2012), Cultural
Heritage and Prisoners of War: Creativity Behind Barbed Wire, New
York and
London: Routledge.
Gready,
P. (1993), ‘Autobiography and the “Power of Writing”:
Political Prison Writing
in the Apartheid Era’, Journal of
Southern African Studies.
Jones,
H. (2008), ‘A Missing Paradigm? Military Captivity and the
Prisoner of War,
1914 –18’, Immigrants & Minorities,
26: 1-2.