Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 235-248
Author(s):  
Kathryn N. Jones ◽  
Carol Tully ◽  
Heather Williams
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Religious Revival ◽  
Home Culture ◽  
The First World War ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Multilingual Research ◽  
First World

The concluding chapter draws together the book’s key themes, focusing on the various prisms – Celtic, Breton, English, sublime, Romantic, industrial, modern, touristic, colonial – through which Wales has been viewed. These distorting prisms are shown always to reflect the home culture, whether it be France’s need to reconnect with her Celtic ancestry following the trauma of Revolution, or the German-speaking lands’ anxieties about their own slow democratic and industrial advance. The importance of Wales as a haven constitutes a significant trope in Continental travel writing from the French Revolution and 1848, to the First World War, which brought thousands of Belgians to Wales, the Spanish civil war, and Nazi-occupied Europe. Over the centuries Wales is discovered, lost and rediscovered, shifting in and out of view, from blind spot to blank canvas. It is only really in the twentieth century that Wales is treated on its own terms in travel writing, beginning with the French narratives of the 1904-05 religious revival. The book ends by stressing the value of travel writing and multilingual research as a means to interrogate centre-periphery and, importantly periphery-periphery relations.

The Return of Alsace to France, 1918-1939

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Carrol
Keyword(s):  
National Policy ◽  
Third Republic ◽  
French Society ◽  
German Empire ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
The First World War ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
A Site ◽  
First World

In 1918 the end of the First World War triggered the return of Alsace to France after almost fifty years of annexation into the German Empire. Enthusiastic crowds in Paris and Alsace celebrated the homecoming of the so-called lost province, but return proved far less straightforward than anticipated. The region’s German-speaking population demonstrated strong commitment to local cultures and institutions, as well as their own visions of return to France. As a result, the following two decades saw politicians, administrators, industrialists, cultural elites, and others grapple with the question of how to make Alsace French again. The answer did not prove straightforward; differences of opinion emerged both inside and outside the region, and reintegration became a fiercely contested process that remained incomplete when war broke out in 1939. The Return of Alsace to France examines this story. Drawing upon national, regional, and local archives, it follows the difficult process of Alsace’s reintegration into French society, culture, political and economic systems, and legislative and administrative institutions. It connects the microhistory of the region with the macro levels of national policy, international relations, and transnational networks, and with the cross-border flows of ideas, goods, people, and cultural products that shaped daily life in Alsace. Revealing Alsace to be a site of exchange between a range of interest groups with different visions of the region’s future, this book underlines the role of regional populations and cross-border interactions in forging the French Third Republic.

scholarly journals Pandemic Avant-Garde Urban Coexistence in Mário de Andrade’s Pauliceia Desvairada (1922) after the Spanish Flu

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Klengel
Keyword(s):  
Blind Spot ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Famous Book ◽  
Spanish Flu ◽  
First World

The radical aesthetic of the historical avant-garde movements has often been explained as a reaction to the catastrophic experience of the First World War and a denouncement of the bourgeoisie’s responsibility for its horrors. This article explores a blind spot in these familiar interpretations of the international avant-garde. Not only the violence of the World War but also the experience of a worldwide deadly pandemic, the Spanish flu, have moulded the literary and artistic production of the 1920s. In this paper, I explore this hypothesis through the example of Mário de Andrade’s famous book of poetry Pauliceia desvairada (1922), which I reinterpret in the light of historical studies on the Spanish flu in São Paulo. An in-depth examination of all parts of this important early opus of the Brazilian Modernism shows that Mário de Andrade’s poetic images of urban coexistence simultaneously aim at a radical renewal of language and at a melancholic coming to terms with a traumatic pandemic past.

Safe Haven, Literary Paradise and Present-Day Adventureland

2020 ◽  
pp. 189-234
Author(s):  
Kathryn N. Jones ◽  
Carol Tully ◽  
Heather Williams
Keyword(s):  
Travel Writing ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Safe Haven ◽  
Unknown Quantity ◽  
Welsh Language ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
Peripheral Site ◽  
First World

This chapter analyses the new interpretative frameworks offered by travel narratives published between the late 1980s and the present day. As a prelude, the chapter offers a snapshot of the ‘lost decades’ of the interwar and post-war years, when travel accounts on Wales were far less frequent than before the First World War. It explores how the trope of a hidden, undiscovered and unknown Wales has proven to be surprisingly persistent, with the continued common portrayal of Wales as a quasi-invisible unknown quantity, a peripheral site of inspiration and alterity. Once Wales resurfaced in mainstream Continental travel writing in the 1980s, it was viewed as an entity and often a country in its own right. Yet paradoxically, Wales’s increasing accessibility, through the proliferation of dedicated guidebooks and travel websites as well as improvements to its travel infrastructure, also led to the atomization and fragmentation of visions of Wales and modes of experiencing the nation. These include a sensory or physical ‘consumption’ of Wales, the ‘internationalization’ of Wales for a global visitor and a shift away from engagement with the Welsh language and its cultures, leading to their neutralization and dilution.

Kultureller Raum und Bewegungskrieg. Raumerfahrungen und Raumdeutungen zu Osteuropa in Selbstzeugnissen deutschsprachiger Kriegsteilnehmer der k.u.k. Armee

2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-388
Author(s):  
Wolfram Dornik
Keyword(s):  
Local Population ◽  
Cultural Images ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Kurt Lewin ◽  
Surrounding Space ◽  
War Experience ◽  
Trench Warfare ◽  
First World

Abstract Due to the permanent shift between mobile and trench warfare as well as conquest and occupation, the soldiers of the First World War in Eastern Europe were brought into more intense relationship to the surrounding space and the local population than on other theatres of war. This article focuses on cultural interpretation of space on the Eastern Front by German-speaking Austro-Hungarian soldiers. Using eleven diaries and unpublished memoirs of subaltern officers, non-commissioned officers and ordinary soldiers, it seeks to analyse the perceptions of cultural space, Kriegslandschaften (Kurt Lewin) and the image of the »East«. It is shown to what extent the specific war experience shaped the cultural images of the soldiers during the war, and which interpretations they offered in their writings.

The Virtues of Violence

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Duong
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Legal Regime ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
Paris Commune ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

This book uncovers an unfamiliar vision of political violence that nonetheless prevailed in modern French thought: that through “redemptive violence” the people would not rend but regenerate society. It homes in on invocations of popular redemptive violence across four historical moments in France specifically: the French Revolution, Algeria’s colonization, the Paris Commune, and the eve of the first World War. In each of these cases, the book reveals how French thinkers experienced democratization as social disintegration. Yet, before such danger, they also proclaimed that virtuous violence by the people could repair the social fabric. The path leading from an anarchic multitude to an organized democratic society required, not violence’s prohibition, but its virtuous expression by the people. Understanding this counterintuitive vision of violence in French thought offers a new vantage point on the meaning of modern democracy. It alerts readers to how struggles for democracy do not merely seek justice or a new legal regime but also liberating visions of the social bond.

scholarly journals Self-Determination along the Austrian Frontier, 1918-1920: Case Studies of German Bohemia, Vorarlberg, and Carinthia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Matthew Vink
Keyword(s):  
Local Population ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Successful Resolution ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Paris Peace Conference ◽  
Czech Lands ◽  
First World

<p>The First World War led to the collapse of a number of prominent European empires, allowing for the spread of new ideas into Europe. US President Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric of national self-determination attracted particular symbolic importance because it legitimised popular sovereignty through the use of plebiscites. German-Austrians, like other national groups within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, used self-determination to justify establishing independent successor states after the war. The German-Austrian Republic, founded in 1918, claimed all German-speaking regions of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire on the basis of self-determination. This thesis examines claims to self-determination in three different cases: German Bohemia, Vorarlberg, and Carinthia. Representatives from each region took their case to the Paris Peace Conference, appealing to the Allied delegations to grant international recognition. These representatives faced much opposition, both from local non-German populations and occasionally even from the German-Austrian government itself.  German-Austrian politicians in the Czech lands opposed the incorporation of German-majority lands into Czechoslovakia, and instead sought to establish an autonomous German Bohemian province as part of German-Austria. In Paris, Allied delegations supported the historic frontier of the Czech lands, and therefore opposed local German self-determination outright, refusing demands for a plebiscite in German Bohemia. Vorarlberg representatives sought Vorarlberg’s secession from German-Austria, hoping instead for union with Switzerland. Vorarlbergers held a plebiscite to join Switzerland on their own initiative, initially with some degree of international support, but ultimately the international community, fearful of the disintegration of Austria, refused to allow Vorarlbergers to realise their wishes. Carinthian German representatives opposed Yugoslav claims to sovereignty over the region, seeking to remain part of German-Austria. Disagreements between and within the Allied delegations over Carinthia resulted in a decision to hold a plebiscite, which showed a majority in favour of remaining part of Austria. The thesis suggests that the implementation of self-determination in the Carinthian case resulted in a more successful resolution of border disputes. Unlike in the other two cases, the new Carinthian border mostly reflected the desires of the local population. Despite idealistic rhetoric, the final Austrian frontier suggested that Allied delegations at the Paris Peace Conference routinely favoured strategic justifications over self-determination.</p>

Roger Kingdon

1971 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-58
Author(s):  
J. W. L.
Keyword(s):  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
First World War ◽  
London School ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
The First World War ◽  
University College London ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
First World

One of the most distinguished members of our Association has, since our last issue, celebrated his eightieth birthday. Roger Kingdon's earliest connections were with the West Country and London. He was born in the borough of Greenwich and went to the City of London School. His working career began at Plymouth on the Western Morning News in 1908, but by 1912 he had begun at Barcelona his long series of stays abroad. During the first world war he enlisted in the Artists' Riflės and was later commissioned in the Royal Engineers. Between 1920 and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War he spent much of his time teaching English in Barcelona. In the session of 1936–37 he was a student at University College, London, Phonetics Department, staying on two further years to teach in the Department.

1914–18—Keeping the Spiritual Home Fires Burning

2019 ◽  
pp. 141-174
Author(s):  
Clive D. Field
Keyword(s):  
Birth Rate ◽  
First World War ◽  
Religious Revival ◽  
World War ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World ◽  
Novel Agent ◽  
Jewish Populations

The First World War has traditionally been thought to have had a catastrophic and long-standing impact on organized religion in Britain, but this bleak picture has been qualified in recent historiography. By seriously disrupting the Churches’ work and Sunday observance, and broadening the range and affordability of secular leisure opportunities, the war proved an ‘accelerant’ rather than a novel agent of secularization. Religious allegiance held fairly steady, although the Free Churches continued to lose ground, there was (speculatively) some increase in religious ‘nones’, and growth in Spiritualism. One million Sunday scholars were permanently lost during the war, partly as a consequence of the falling birth rate. In Protestant Churches, there was a short-lived surge in attendance at the start of the war, fuelling hopes of religious revival, but it quickly gave way to ongoing decline, which was not reversed after the conflict. There were modest rises in Catholic and Jewish populations.

The French Revolution, the Union of Avignon, and the Challenges of National Self-Determination

2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 717-747
Author(s):  
Edward James Kolla
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
Domestic Affairs ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World ◽  
The French Revolution

National self-determination was one of the most important and controversial concepts in twentieth century international relations and law. The principle has had a remarkable history, from Woodrow Wilson's assertion that the peoples of Eastern Europe ought to form their own national states in place of ruined multiethnic and multilinguistic empires after the First World War; to decolonization after the Second World War, when populations worldwide invoked a right to throw off the yoke of imperialism; to the breakup of and war in the former Yugoslavia at century's end in precisely the same area in which a nation's self-determination was first intended to be a panacea for the region's diverse peoples. And yet, national self-determination, if not always called that, has a much longer lineage. Some note its earliest appearance in 1581, when the Dutch claimed independence from Hapsburg Spain. However, it was not until the French Revolution when, as Alfred Cobban remarks, “the nation state ceased to be a simple historical fact and became the subject of a theory,” that a people's right to determine its destiny in international as in domestic affairs was first articulated and applied. The clearest instance of this articulation and application during the Revolution was the union of Avignon and France.

Roman Catholicism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniele Menozzi
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World ◽  
The Church

The Catholic Church faced a number of issues during the development of modern society from the French Revolution to the beginning of the First World War. After examining the Catholic response to secularization of society, the chapter analyses three currents which played an active role in the first half of the century: supporters of the ancien régime, intransigents, and liberal Catholics. As a consequence of the European revolutions the papacy condemned the modern world and promoted hierocratic medievalism. Pope Leo XIII encouraged a distinction between thesis and hypothesis as entryway to modernity: Catholics could enter the modern world, almost in order to use all it possessed to combat its results. But his successor, Pius X, thought that the modernization of the Church had degenerated into the illegitimate inclusion in it of the pernicious principle of modernity. Modernism became for more than half a century the main enemy of Roman Catholicism.

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