Abstract
Warfare on a global scale has the potential to affect all layers of society, those that govern quotidian thoughts and actions. Here, everyday items can be turned into weapons. A hostile attitude was to seep into every layer of society, much of it nationalistic and reactionary rather than beneficial to Great Britain’s security. It was almost as if the country’s morale demanded this what is, to our modern sensibilities, a ridiculous overreaction. The first of the two Case Studies in this chapter examines and analyses two objects, biscuit tins almost identical in form, function and contents but, because of a slight change in their decoration between 1909 and 1914, have perhaps became polar-opposite representatives of a world once at peace but now at war. One way of galvanising the country against an enemy was to turn as much of society as possible ultra-patriotic and/or anti-German. This is where ordinary household objects, and, arguably more interestingly, consumables, could become ‘weaponised’ to join the fight. It is here that material culture studies and its foci on objects, touch, taste, smell and embodiment, can offer deep insight into the civilian dimension of conflict. Food, in this instance biscuits, and the tobacco tins investigated in the second Case Study in this chapter embody this notion of consumables. Many of the CRMB examples throughout this book concentrate mostly on the tin, not necessarily the contents, but here the contents played an important part in the original object’s biography and its interpretation.