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Book Review
Canada and the United States
| Mark Moss. Manliness and Militarism: Educating Young Boys in Ontario for War. (The Canadian Social History Series.) New York: Oxford University Press. 2001. Pp. viii, 216. $21.95.
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| Part of the Canadian Social History Series, this book is centrally concerned with identifying and explaining a cult of manliness that developed in Victorian and Edwardian Ontario. It is Mark Moss's contention that young Ontario men rushed to volunteer at the beginning of World War I because they had been thoroughly socialized to embrace war. In the years preceding the war, Ontario's boys were persuasively trained by family, church, school, government, and the press, and through popular juvenile literature, on playing fields, through military drill, and by toys and games. Such an upbringing, according to Moss, instilled a strong sense of patriotism and a desire for adventure and going to war. Boys grew up to become loyal warriors for Canada. |
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Just as there is a large literature from the time demonstrating martial attitudes, so, too, is there a large and international scholarly literature on his topic for Moss to draw on. Despite the particular focus on Ontario, the first part of the book places the study in a wider context. Imperialism and militarism are covered in chapter two, and ideas, myths, and the modern state are the subjects of chapter three. Moss is thorough and reveals much useful contextual material, including the crisis of masculinity, Social Darwinism, eugenics, Protestantism, muscular Christianity, and chivalry. |
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