The Bureaucratization of Death

The First World War, Families, and the State

Bibliographic Data

ID12239204
AuthorsAnn-Marie Foster (0000-0003-3451-8601, Northumbria University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume33
Issue4
Pages475-497
Publication date2022-01-12
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTwentieth Century British History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0955-2359 • E-ISSN: 1477-4674
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/tcbh/hwac001
PMID39471451
OpenAlexW4205222956
LanguageEN
Citations received2

After the First World War the British state tried to show the families of the dead their thanks, and memorialize the dead, through the two-minute silence and the creation of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. However, before families of deceased servicepeople encountered the state through national commemorations they encountered it through the administrative paperwork of death. Other than brief mentions in wider works, the bureaucracy of death is remarkably absent from discussions of death, yet the paperwork associated with death was a significant part of family experiences of bereavement, particularly in wartime. This article argues that state bureaucracy played a key role in defining people's experience of wartime bereavement, both practically, through the paperwork sent, but also temporally, by controlling when and how families could carry out grave-related elements of mourning, such as choosing an epitaph. Over the course of the early inter-war period, the bureaucracy of death encountered by the families of the war dead could profoundly shape their experience of loss

Ancient history · Bureaucracy · First world war · Political science · Politics · State (computer science · Computer Science · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies · History · Law

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