Anna Maguire was awarded her Doctorate in 2017. A partnership between IWM and Kings College London, her thesis explores the role of the colonial encounter during the First World War. It places the colonial encounter as a key framework through which historians of the First World War can determine the unheard and understudied voices of the colonial troops.
The thesis looks specifically at men from the West Indies, South Africa and New Zealand (both Pakeha and Maori), using their diverse racial demographics and colonial status to examine imperial and racial hierarchies destabilised by war. The detailed interdisciplinary analysis uses personal accounts in archival sources of letters, diaries and memoirs, newspapers from the metropolis and the colonies, literature and visual culture. It explores the specific circumstances of war that saw the West Indian, South African and New Zealand soldiers make contact with a range of peoples, cultures and places in complex and nuanced ways. These could determine individual experience and shape identity.