Enemy Encounters in Modern Warfare

“Rigorously researched and delicately textured, these essays are instructive for our times, making us think afresh about the varied and complex lives of ‘enemy encounters’, with their roots in geo-political histories and propaganda machineries on one hand and the innermost recesses of our psyche on the other.” – Santanu Das, University of Oxford, UK “A rich and interdisciplinary collection which blends historical and literary approaches into an original collaborative study of representations of enemy encounters in modern war. The volume’s historical scope sometimes reveals that very contemporary debates about, for instance, killing and emotion actually have echoes in pre-twentieth-century war.” – Catherine Baker, University of Hull, UK While the 1914 Christmas truces have a mythological status in British culture, intimate interactions with the enemy are, this interdisciplinary edited collection shows, a staple of modern warfare. Spanning multiple conflicts around the world, from the nineteenth century to the present Russia/Ukraine war, the chapters consider how fellow-feeling with the enemy during war has been both fueled and limited by constellations of class, gender, nationality, race, religion, sexuality, and shared experience. Scrutinizing asymmetries of power in enemy encounters, the instability of divisions between allies and enemies, and the heterogeneity of experiences within one army or side, contributors to this book confront a central question: how far is thinking of the enemy as an ‘equal’ in some way a precondition for non-violent interactions with them in war? In some cases, the ease of fraternization and reciprocity between the lines raises questions about the necessity of a clear feeling of enmity for fighting to continue, while in others, exclusionary attitudes based on racial or colonial hierarchies or the criminality of irregular warfare result in extreme violence and differential valuations of enemy lives. Holly Furneaux is Professor at Cardiff University, UK. Matilda Greig is a Historian at the National Army Museum in London, UK.