Conference convener, Sophie De Schaepdrijver scd10@psu.edu

We tend to associate military occupations with World War II – and World War I with trenches and home fronts. Yet occupation regimes were a feature of World War I as well. Across Europe and beyond, from the Baltic to the Balkans and from the North Sea to Anatolia, invading armies set up structures of rule in conquered territory, and occupied populations faced a war of their own, different from the one experienced by their contemporaries on fronts or home fronts.

This workshop brings together experts on military occupation in the World War I era to examine how this dimension of the war sheds light on the social, cultural, economic, legal, and military universe that made this war thinkable—and to reflect on how this war’s occupations fit into the global history of modern imperial rule.

See the schedule and the participants