Congratulations to Dr. Michael Westcott
We are pleased to announce that Michael Westcott successfully defended his PhD thesis, “Transforming the Liberal State: Gender, Class, and Ethnicity on the Newfoundland Home Front, 1914-1918,” on 21 May 2020. His thesis examiners were Dr. Margot Duley, Professor Emerita of History, Eastern Michigan University and Dean Emerita, University of Illinois, Springfield; Dr. Jonathan Vance, Distinguished University Professor and J.B. Smallman Chair, Western University; and Dr. Jeff Keshen, Professor of History and Vice-president (Grenfell Campus), Memorial University. Michael Westcott's supervisory committee – Sean Cadigan (supervisor), Justin Fantauzzo and John Sandlos – attended the defence as did the Department of History’s Graduate Coordinator, Dominique Brégent-Heald. Dr. Liam Swiss, Sociology, chaired the defence.
Michael Westcott’s thesis examiners agreed that his thesis was a significant and original contribution to scholarship, an “important” study of the home front and a major contribution to Newfoundland history.
Congratulations Mike!
Transforming the Liberal State: Gender, Class, and Ethnicity on the Newfoundland Home Front, 1914-1918
PhD thesis by Michael Richard Westcott
Department of History, Memorial University, May 2020
Abstract:
"In 1914, the Dominion of Newfoundland was thrust into a total war effort. Like other British Dominions, Newfoundland committed its entire civilian population, economy, science, and technology to fighting the war. This dissertation examines how such commitment led to reconceptualizations of gender, class, and ethnicity for the sake of the war effort. Such reconceptualized identities were evident in wartime social phenomena such as prohibition, price control, food rationing, taxation, women’s war work, the treatment of enemy aliens, conscription, and food rationing. In each of these cases, Newfoundland’s commitment to the war effort reconfigured gender, class, and ethnicity to help Newfoundland prosecute the war effort, and cope with conditions on the Homefront.
This dissertation will argue that alterations to wartime conceptions of gender, class and ethnicity not only allowed Newfoundland to maintain a total war effort, but drastically changed the nature of liberal governance in the Dominion. Prior to the war, liberal thinkers focused on the rights of the individual, believing that the government should interfere with the daily lives of individuals as little as possible. As the war progressed, both liberals and Progressives argued that the government owed a duty to maintain the ranks of the Newfoundland Regiment. In return for soldier’s service, many argued that the government owed it to citizens to interfere in free markets, prohibit alcohol, and impose taxation to ensure that citizens maintained a certain standard of living.
As a result of the demands of both liberals and Progressives, the Newfoundland government abandoned the traditional liberal focus on the rights of the individual, and committed to protecting the rights of all citizens by focusing on the rights of the community. By the end of the war, liberalism in Newfoundland looked much less like Classical Liberalism, and much more like a burgeoning Social Liberalism that focused far less on the rights of the individual, and far more on the rights of the community."