Conceptualising the ‘Administration of the Dead’: Cadavers, war and public health in the early 20th century

Abstract

This article examines the relative absence of historical literature pertaining to the battlefield disposal of military corpses during and shortly after the First World War. It posits that while First World War Studies constitute an enormously rich field of research, scholars are yet to consider corpses and their disposal as a central topic of investigation, as is the case with other disciplines and historians of other conflicts.To address this lacuna, this article proposes the notion of 'administration of the dead' that may serve to both conceptualise and explore how First World War battlefield body disposal was performed. This article demonstrates the rich avenues that this topic opens to historians and sketches out areas of investigation such as the administrative, medical and technological dimensions of body disposal in the First World War.