Preliminary Programme

In todays research on the Finnish Civil War in 1918 it has been pointed out that the notion that the brutalising effects of the First World War contributed to the dramatic developments in, for example, Germany and Russia in the aftermath of the worlds war, is not relevant when it comes to the developments in Finland in 1918. The Grand Duchy of Finland was not a theatre of war during 1916 and 1917 and the Russian soldiers who were stationed in Finland were being sent home during 1917 and were for the most part not involved in the conflict in Finland.
Because of this one has to look for other types of arguments in order to explain the relative brutality (the amount of dead in connection with the conflict in comarison to the population in Finland in general at the time) of the Finnish Civil War. The factors that have been singled out in recent research is the ideologisation of the conflict, which made it possible to organize paramilitary groups, the proportion of very young people involved, their lack of military training as well as the possibilities duringa period of practically no governmental control to deal with enemies on a personal basis without the interference of any local authority.
When it comes to the Swedish participation in the conflict a similar paradox is apparent: Sweden was not a theatre of military conflict and on the Swedish territory there were no bands of soldiers brutalized by war.
Yet it is apparant from the written testimonies and war memoirs that the Swedish volunteers in the Finnish Civil War took full part in the conflict as well as in it's brutal aftermath and that they did not in particular reflect on this as a specific dilemma.
The aim of this paper is to discuss what contributed to the degree of violence in the conflict, with the Swedish volunteers as a case study and in a transnational perspective. How did they explain the purging of the workers movement in the late spring of 1918? How did they explain the harsh treatment of the losing side and the Swedish participation in this harsh treatment? To what extent did the Swedish volunteers take part in these activities? How did they relate this information when they appeared in public in Sweden after the Finnish Civil War? In the Swedish Brigade an old warrior ideal was celebtrated but the people involved were also agents of an at the time highly modern imperalistic (or emire-building) position. A hypothethis is that the Swedish volunteers acted from a highly, at the time, contemporary elitist and imperialistic discourse where violence was reagarded as a disciplining instrument when it came to control foes and opponents. (Show less)

The paper is built around the often tensed relation between the civil service and the army, in Hungary, during World War I, focusing on the administrative elites. In Hungary, the counties (the main administrative units) enjoyed a relatively high degree of autonomy compared to the Western part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, although this autonomy have been up to a point restrained after 1867 by the government, who controlled them through the Lord Lieutenants named by the monarch. During the war, some territories became theatres of operations, thus the authorities considered they needed to be consolidated by introduction of a special regime, and this applied in particular to border regions. In order to ease communication with the army, to coordinate the activity of administration and military and to solve urgent issues raised by the war, Government Commissioners have been appointed. They were often the same persons as the Lord Lieutenants, but their jurisdiction covered from one county to larger regions. Government Commissioners also enjoyed a far greater power and extended fields of activity than the Lord Lieutenants. Based on archive materials and memoirs, the paper studies those holding this new, war-generated, position within the ranks of the administrative elite, approaching topics such as: who were the Government Commissioners (social origin, education background, previous career path, etc.), their self-image, their conception about this new role, and the way they have tried to cope with the exceptional situation generated by the war, reconciling both civil service and military needs and expectations. (Show less)

The Triestine political elite consisted of die-hard italian nationalists organized in the liberal party of this city. Because of un-equal voting rights before 1914, this party could keep a majority in the city council. After the outbreak of World War One, many high ranking members of this party emigrated to the Kingdom of Italy, where they used pre-existing ties to politicians of the country to establish contact with the government. They acted as fierce lobbyists for the italian participation in the war. Their actions and their (masonic) networks before and during World War One as well as their careers after 1918 will be subtect of this paper.

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