Republican Identities in War and Peace Representations of France in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

by Prost, Antoine; Winter, Jay; McPhail, Helen

• ISBN13: 9781859736265
• ISBN10: 1859736262
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-12-01
• Publisher: Berg Pub Ltd

Summary

Translated by Jay Winter with Helen McPhail Antoine Prost's contributions to French history have enabled us to understand the failure of fascism in France and why the Republic survived the humiliation of occupation and collaboration in the Second World War. He is the pre-eminent historian of civil society in France. For the first time his seminal articles have been translated into English and collected in this single volume. Beginning with his classic account of war memorials, through his pioneering study of the people of a popular quarter of Paris in 1936, and of the troubled history of commemorating the Algerian war, this book expertly takes us through republican representations of war and peace, urban spaces and social identity, and discourse and social conflict in republican France. Amongst this range of topics, Prost considers the notion of social class and deference, the multiple uses of myth, the secularization of religious imagery, the centrality of primary schools in French political culture, and insults as staples of French political rhetoric. Included here are his famous essays 'Verdun' and 'War Memorials of the Great War', which have been hailed as indispensable additions to the study of European cultural history. Also notable is his fascinating investigation of rites de passage in Orléans, which artfully reveals how complex and semiologically rich rites de passage can be. This book is essential reading for anyone wishing to gain a firm understanding of the history of nineteenth and twentieth century France and of the work of one of the most influential cultural historians of our day.

Author Biography

Antoine Prost is a Professor Emeritus of History, at the University of Paris PanthTon-Sorbonne

Table of Contents

List of Maps and Figures	vii
Preface	ix
Introduction: Antoine Prost and the History of Civil Society	1	(10)
Jay Winter
I. National Identity
War Memorials of the Great War: Monuments to the Fallen	11	(34)
Verdun: The Life of a Site of Memory	45	(28)
The Contribution of the Republican Primary School to French National Identity	73	(20)
Representations of War in the Cultural History of France, 1914-1939	93	(14)
The Algerian War in French Collective Memory	107	(20)
II. Identities and Civil Society: Urban Space, Social Identities and Youth
The People of Paris: The Eighteenth Arrondissement in 1936	127	(26)
Celebrating Joan: A Feast of Collective Identity in Orleans Since the French Revolution	153	(22)
Marriage, Youth and Society in Orleans in 1911	175	(46)
Youth in France Between the Wars	221	(16)
III. Identities and the Discourse of Political Conflict
Votes and Words	237	(20)
Workers, Others and the State: A Comparison of the Discourse of the French, German and British Labour Movements at the End of the Nineteenth Century	257	(20)
The French Contempt for Politics: The case of Veterans in the Inter-War Period	277	(34)
The Strikes of 1936: The Occupation of Factories and the Decline of Deference	311	(28)
Index	339