ABSTRACT
For historians of the twentieth century, explaining the links between social change and warfare has become a major concern, and the problem appears in its most acute form in studies of the aftermath of the First and Second World Wars. Should the major social changes which followed these two conflicts in Britain – the extension of the franchise to women following the First World War, or the introduction of the National Health Service following the Second, for example – be explained primarily in terms of the wars which preceded them, or should they rather be seen as a product of wider social and economic factors operating on a longer time-scale?
