Transnational Identities and Agency: British and Dutch Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War and their home states

This research would be a comparative study of the formation of the British and Dutch volunteers' national and
transnational identities in the Spanish Civil War and their governments' responses. The aim of the research is to explore
how individual autonomy and nationality are negotiated in the context of internationalist ideologies and state sovereignty.
In recent years, there is an increased interest in foreign war volunteering, especially because of current geopolitical
developments. During the Spanish Civil War, about 40.000 foreign men and women travelled to Spain to join the combat
on the side of the Republican government. Although almost all democratic European government agreed to a policy of
non-intervention, some states, like Britain, were rather lenient in letting volunteers travel to Spain while others, like the
Netherlands, applied harsh measures in order to prevent their citizens to join the war as volunteers. In the case of the
Netherlands, most volunteers lost their Dutch nationality upon return and became stateless citizens. The research would
consist of two elements. The first one is a prosopography of both contingents, to explore how the volunteers experienced
their (trans-)national identities and how these were shaped and changed by their experiences as volunteers in Spain.
The central part of the research would then explore and compare the negotiation that took place in the interactions
between the home states and their subjects.