Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2015
Recent studies in social and cultural history underscore the modern war experience as a crucial event in which the collective and the individual merge together in an extensive and demanding encounter. This challenging convergence can affect, question, or reshape social and political structures and shared collective identities, as well as different individual self-identities or sub-identities of small communities. This encounter is not molded merely according to the ability and coercive force of the modern state to superimpose its will upon its subordinated citizens; rather, it is formed by an ongoing negotiation between the state, through its various agencies, and the citizens, in order to win the latter's support and willingness to participate in the war effort. With the onset of general mobilization in nineteenth-century Europe, the need to persuade the citizens to join forces with the state produced many new forms of propaganda. An assortment of texts and activities conveyed the establishment's messages, with the intention to garner wide public support for the war's aims and to increase cohesion among its citizens. The various means of propaganda used by the state, combined with diversified responses from below, shaped the cultural arena of the war.