The Discourse of “Civilisation” in British Cabinet Papers during the First World War

This article investigates the deployment of the term “civilisation” in the deliberations of the British Cabinet during the First World War. While the concept has frequently been examined as a legitimising tool of colonial expansion, this study shifts the analytical focus to its mobilisation within intra-European conflict. Rather than serving solely to differentiate the imperial centre from its colonial periphery, “civilisation” became a rhetorical device through which British political elites distinguished themselves from their European adversaries. Employing a content-analysis approach, this article examines Cabinet conclusions, circulated memoranda, and internal notes to identify the principal semantic domains within which the concept was employed. Five dominant clusters are identified: the colonial and orientalist lexicon; perceptions of Germany and its allies; articulations of national selfhood (“Ourselves”); evaluations of the political futures of Russia, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe; and the contrast drawn between “civilisation” and the nature of war itself. The analysis reveals that each semantic bloc comprised both a stable conceptual core and a more fluid periphery, thereby allowing for considerable rhetorical flexibility. The discourse thus accommodated a range of meanings, at times even contradictory ones, reflecting the complex and evolving political landscape of wartime Britain. The study further examines the extent to which the invocation of “civilisation” correlated with the departmental affiliations and political identities of its proponents. By illuminating the Cabinet’s use of “civilisation” not merely as an imperial trope but as a wartime instrument of domestic and international mobilisation, this article contributes to broader debates on the cultural and ideological dimensions of the First World War. It also underscores the enduring political utility of the term, which has resurfaced in strategic discourse during the early twenty-first century.

civilisation, Great Britain, British empire, World War I, content analysis, colonialism, Orientalism