The First World War on the Streets: Urban Conformity and Citizenship in the United States

Abstract

This chapter examines how city streets across the United States became a key site in controlling and mobilising citizens during the First World War. Mass immigration and unfettered capitalist development in the nineteenth century had ensured that urban areas were viewed by some politicians, religious leaders and reformers as centres of dissent and radicalism. With the advent of conflict in Europe, the city streets of the United States became a focus of concern for national and municipal authorities as diverse populations with cultural connections to the combatant nations were viewed as potentially subversive. In response, a range of initiatives were introduced, from direct policing to patriotic parades, which sought to ensure conformity and citizenship. This chapter will expand upon the recent development of the study of cities during wartime to create a new way of understanding how the war came to the streets of the United States from August 1914.