Introduction

Archives of War is about British Army Unit War Diaries from the two World Wars and about The National Archives (TNA) in Kew (U.K.), where these records are held. Despite being crucial to the British Army’s ability to wage war and to historiography, Unit War Diaries have never been investigated as mediated objects with their own history. The Introduction sets out how Archives of War addresses that gap. It explains how this book integrates research into the British Army’s organisational practices with insights from the fields of information, documentation and archival studies to reveal what happens to the records of war as they cycle through different technologies and institutions. It details how this book draws on research into war, media and emotion to reveal Unit War Diaries as a mediated site in which individuals, institutions, war and technologies converge. It outlines how this book sheds light, for the first time, on how the convergence of these elements has shaped the record of war and how in turn, Unit War Diaries have influenced how war is waged and understood.