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After outlining the development of military conscription in the Habsburg army and provision for military invalids, this chapter focuses on the core subject of this book, namely military veterans’ associations. In the Austrian half of the Dual Monarchy, military veterans’ associations expanded rapidly in the last third of the nineteenth century, thereby constituting a vital area where military and civilian spheres intersected. The early impetus towards the creation of these groups came very much from below. The growth of a veterans’ movement constituted an important phase in the politicization of the lower-middle and lower classes, particularly in smaller market towns, villages, and rural areas.

After 1900, the Austrian state sought to build a unified, official organization for veterans in imperial Austria. This chapter shows how the Imperial and Royal Austrian Military Soldiers Corps was designed to provide a countermodel to nationalist organizations and to act as a loyal core of supporters who could function as a reserve force in time of war. However, the project came up against a series of obstacles which meant that the Soldiers Corps was not established until 1914. The government policy of militarizing the veterans’ associations met with opposition in parliament and among sections of the veterans’ movement itself within a context of growing anti-militarist activity before 1914.

Military peace movement members were outsiders in both the military and the peace movement because they tried to be connected to both, but they believe that this combined identity enhanced the movement’s attempts to effect change. Four social-psychological motivations for unlikely activists (information, value redefinition, hardship, and networks) are identified.

This chapter takes the analysis of the veterans’ movement a step further by providing a case study of one of the Habsburg Monarchy’s Italian-speaking areas, which have been less well served by recent research. In the southern Italian-speaking part of Tyrol, unofficially known as Trentino, military veterans’ associations emerged in the 1870s, before expanding more rapidly after 1900 as part of a new wave of socio-economic organizations in the countryside. As well as analyzing in detail the main types of patriotic activity undertaken by veterans, the chapter discusses their role in the process of politicization as political Catholicism challenged the dominance of National-Liberal elites.

This chapter complements the previous chapter by looking at other regions of the Habsburg Monarchy with a significant Italian-speaking presence. It concentrates on the activities of military veterans in the port city of Trieste, as well as surveying developments in other parts of the Austrian Littoral, namely the princely county of Görz and Gradisca, and the peninsula of Istria. Here, social and ethnic fault-lines were exacerbated by contestation over military culture. Particular tensions arose in certain towns with a strong army or navy presence, where ethnic politics took on anti-militarist dimensions.

Embedded in a wide spectrum of military-identified organizations critical of U.S. government policies, the military peace movement had four main organizations. Activists within these faced greater risks for peace movement participation than their civilian counterparts, and these risks helped to bind this movement together.

Activists strategically deployed their combined military/peace identities in order to attract attention, demonstrate legitimacy, reframe “patriotism” and “troop support” in ways that promoted peace, and reach those unconvinced by traditional peace movement frames. Identity strategies were controversial, though.

This chapter demonstrates the moment of Quebec. The story of Tristram Bates is also discussed. It then investigates the spectacle of the military veteran in more detail, concentrating on the popular figure of Laurence Sterne's uncle Toby. In Tristram Shandy, Toby's blend of virtue and nature is feared while the novel at once points out his childlike innocence and powerlessness in an unjust world. The irony in Toby's case is that the language of his body provides both a critique and an explanation for violence. It is expected that Toby's bodily display of ‘benevolence’ expressed the contradictions of an ideology that both services and protests against this economic imperative. The sacrifice of the soldier is famously held to secure one powerful manifestation of the ‘imagined community’ of the nation. The British expansionist project encountered ‘barriers in its own nature’, although it was articulated in terms of the universalising of ‘benevolence’.

This chapter opens showing the heartbreak behind the military peace movement and then lays out its theoretical and informational context. Briefly describes the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars (with timeline), differences/similarities between Iraq and Vietnam, relationship between U.S. civilians and military, and social movement literature on emotions and identity.

The military peace movement organizations acted as a family, and this allowed activists to move beyond the negative emotions of powerlessness (fear, guilt, shame and unfocused anger) brought on by war and develop emotions of resistance (righteous anger, love, and group pride). This emotional transformation helped sustain the movement.

A close examination of one tactic, anti-war war memorials, demonstrates how activists intentionally elicit emotions, such as grief and sadness, to increase the impact of their message. Activists drew on emotional symbols of death to draw bystanders into their tactics and encourage resonance with their message.

Although the Iraq War ended, the military peace movement continues organizing to stop the over-extension of the military and better address the traumas facing servicemembers returned from war. The book’s findings are used to deepen theory about the civilian-military divide and the role of emotions and identity in social movements.

This chapter focuses on the homecoming of military veterans of New France from both the marine service and the army, which tells us much about how the French Crown interpreted and dealt with its reversal of war fortune, and about how New France proved to have been a colony worth giving up and erasing from the nation’s memory. The stunning first blow to the veterans was the suppression of the compagnies franches de la marine as a separate military service in November 1761. Then, a commission impaneled on December 18, 1761, one month after the disbanding of la marine service, began investigating the reasons for the loss of New France, in particular the officers accused of “corrupt practices, embezzlement, and robbery in the fulfillment of their duties in Canada.” When the court rendered judgment, it closed the royal book on two hundred years of imperial aspirations in the North Atlantic.

With a large number of severely wounded military veterans returning home from various wars, sport is seen as vehicle to achieving rehabilitation goals. Introducing injured veterans to sport experiences can also have important mental health benefits. The purpose of this chapter is to review research on physical activity and wounded warriors. Sport- and physical activity–based recreation experiences have helped wounded warriors to re-engage in life and give their lives purpose. Other benefits include a renewed recognition and value of family relationships. In camps that lasted multiple days, participants reported that feeling respected and cared for enhanced their quality of life. Gaining sport skills has also led to improved physical self-concept. Some injured soldiers have reported being inspired by other injured veterans. PA experiences providing benefits often go well beyond traditional disability sports, such as surfing, scuba diving, yoga, horseback riding, white water rafting, mountain climbing, fly fishing, ballet, and Outward Bound programs.