New Issue – Cahiers d’histoire

Posted on by Jeff Koehler

A new issue of Cahiers d’histoire has been published

This issue is dedicated to the history and images for critical education and contains the following articles:

 

Introduction: Aux sources de l’histoire syndicale française, retour sur les Bourses du travail

David Hamelin To get the text click here

 

Pour la liberté du travail : retour sur les origines des Bourses du travail

Nicolas Gallois

Les Bourses du travail, fondées à la fin du xixe siècle, relèvent de la volonté des syndicats de pouvoir se réunir pour établir des liens forts entre les ouvriers et peser dans la lutte des classes. Ces institutions évoluent à contre-courant de ce qu’avait espéré leur fondateur, Gustave de Molinari (1819-1912). Cet économiste de l’école libérale française voit dans la télégraphie électrique et les chemins de fer le moyen de faire circuler librement et rapidement les ouvriers grâce à l’instauration de Bourses du travail fonctionnant à l’image des Bourses de valeurs. C’est à travers le développement de cette liberté tant recherchée (et non à travers le droit de coalition) que les différents maux de la société (la question sociale) pourraient enfin disparaître.

David Rappe

Durant près de 30 ans, les Bourses du travail ont été un élément constitutif et incontournable du syndicalisme français. Au moment où, de la fin du xixe siècle à la Première Guerre mondiale, celui-ci se développe, s’affirme et se structure, les Bourses du travail et leur fédération jouent un rôle central, déterminent et marquent profondément la nature du syndicalisme et, particulièrement, de la Confédération générale du travail (CGT). Elles donnent naissance à un modèle complet et autonome de syndicalisme basé sur une tactique, une stratégie et un projet de société. Le modèle dominant de syndicalisme qui se développe au sein des Bourses du travail propose en effet une tactique de lutte au travers de l’action directe, une stratégie de transformation sociale par la grève générale et des structures d’organisation immédiates et futures, les Bourses du travail et les syndicats ouvriers, appelés à remplacer l’État et le patronat.

Benjamin Jung

L’installation en France de Bourses du travail à partir de la seconde moitié des années 1880 lie dans une communauté de destin – à Paris en particulier – la revendication en faveur de l’abolition des bureaux de placement payants, objets de la colère des ouvriers contraints d’y avoir recours, et l’aménagement local d’espaces de substitution investis par les syndicats. Dans le cadre de la Fédération nationale des Bourses du travail née en 1892, la logique de substitution impose sa primauté sur l’option abolitionniste. Il faut y voir l’empreinte de Fernand Pelloutier, décidé à faire du service de mutualité des Bourses l’outil central de l’émancipation du prolétariat.Mais au début du xxe siècle, alors que les résultats enregistrés sont très en deçà des attentes, la victoire paradoxale de la revendication par la loi de 1904, qui programme la fin des placeurs et encourage les offices municipaux, compromet le rôle des Bourses en matière de placement.

Les Bourses du travail en France et les Labour Exchanges britanniques: une comparaison impossible ?

Malcolm Mansfield

En tant que systèmes de placement, les Bourses du travail françaises et les Labour Exchanges britanniques sont difficiles à comparer. Non seulement leurs fonctions sociales mais aussi leurs modes de fonctionnement se distinguaient nettement. L’article explore ces différences selon un axe politique : les Bourses facilitaient la participation active des ouvriers dans la politique locale et avaient des ramifications nationales. Les Labour Exchanges, par contre, se positionnaient uniquement sur le plan économique, leur gestion se déterminait au niveau national et était inaccessible aux ouvriers. En filigrane, l’article se fonde sur le rapprochement entre le système de travelling benefits et le viatique géré par les Bourses, base d’une comparaison intéressante.

Jean-Michel Steiner

Si le mouvement de construction de Bourses du travail dans les villes industrielles françaises s’inscrit dans le contexte national de la reconnaissance officielle du mouvement syndical des années 1880-1900, il n’en reste pas moins que les paramètres locaux ont pesé pour donner à chaque cas des aspects particuliers. Ainsi la Bourse de Saint-Étienne occupe-t-elle un bâtiment qui ressemble plus à un musée ou à un théâtre sur le fronton duquel on n’a pas jugé utile de graver les mots « Bourse du travail ». Ces caractéristiques singulières, parmi d’autres, résultent d’une histoire complexe, pleine de rebondissements, révélatrice des enjeux politiques et idéologiques qui ont agité les « élites » municipales1 préoccupées des demandes croissantes d’une population ouvrière parfois remuante.

Sylvain Leteux.

Rolande Trempé affirme que « les Bourses du travail sont l’une des institutions qui ont le plus profondément et le plus durablement marqué le mouvement ouvrier français1 ». En partant de l’exploitation d’un dossier de suivi policier, l’auteur tente de vérifier si cette affirmation se justifie dans le cas d’une branche artisanale de l’alimentation, la chambre syndicale ouvrière de la boucherie de Paris, fondée en août 18862. Le cadre chronologique correspond à celui imposé par la source : les rapports de police du dossier prennent fin en 1904. Mais il couvre aussi une période spécifique du mouvement ouvrier français : l’étude s’étend en effet entre deux dates clefs au niveau national, la légalisation des syndicats professionnels en 1884 et le vote de la loi sur les bureaux de placement en 1904, et deux dates majeures au niveau local, l’ouverture de la Bourse du travail de Paris en 1887 et l’expulsion de la CGT en 1905. Dans cette période d’émergence et de structuration des organisations syndicales ouvrières, en quoi la mise en place d’une Bourse du travail va-t-elle répondre ou non aux attentes des ouvriers bouchers parisiens ? Le propos s’articule autour de trois thèmes : le problème des locaux pour les réunions syndicales, le problème du placement des ouvriers (la lutte contre les bureaux de placement privés étant la principale revendication syndicale des ouvriers de l’alimentation jusqu’au vote de la loi de 1904) et le problème du positionnement par rapport au syndicalisme révolutionnaire.

Alain Prigent et François Prigent

Les fonds d’archives inexploités permettent de revisiter la configuration locale des filières syndicales et leurs implications politiques durant l’éphémère expérience de la Bourse du travail de Saint-Brieuc (1904-1909). La naissance de la Bourse survient dans un moment de séparation politique entre le pouvoir des élites républicaines et les ramifications de la jeune organisation socialiste, avant de s’achever dans la foulée de la crise municipale de 1908, qui voit un militant socialiste de la Bourse accéder temporairement à la mairie. L’objectif est ici de confronter le portrait collectif des militants de la Bourse avec l’œuvre littéraire de Louis Guilloux, La Maison du Peuple, où s’entremêlent histoire(s) et représentations. La micro-histoire de la Bourse briochine est ainsi l’occasion de réfléchir à la nature des rapports complexes entre les forces du mouvement ouvrier et les réseaux politiques. Traversée par des courants, des identités et des stratégies contradictoires, la Bourse s’avère la matrice d’une pluralité de milieux militants dans les Côtes-du-Nord.

Marjorie Gaudemer

Les pratiques artistiques au sein du mouvement syndical, en France avant 1914, sont méconnues. Cet article, issu d’une recherche doctorale, porte sur l’activité théâtrale dans les Bourses du travail. Il fait notamment découvrir une troupe au dynamisme et à la longévité exceptionnels : le théâtre du Peuple d’Amiens.

 

Pierre Bertoncini

L’article prend appui sur l’analyse de quatre temps forts de l’historiographie corse des trente dernières années : Le Mémorial des Corses, L’Encyclopaedia corsicae, L’Atlas ethnohistorique de la Corse et Le Dictionnaire historique de la Corse. Il apparaît que le terme « Bourse du travail » n’apparaît qu’exceptionnellement dans leurs pages. Plus généralement, la place attribuée à l’histoire du syndicalisme dans chacune de ces sommes a été identifiée en elle-même puis comparée. L’article montre ensuite comment des mémoires diverses liées au syndicalisme cohabitent aujourd’hui dans l’île. Il présente le résultat d’une série d’entretiens réalisés auprès de militants des principaux syndicats de salariés de l’île, ainsi que de partis politiques liés historiquement au mouvement ouvrier. L’article cherche à évaluer dans quelle mesure la Bourse du travail, intégrée à une histoire sociale française qui oublie cette institution, dans une île où l’historiographie et la vie politique sont marquées par la lutte entre légitimistes français et nationalistes corses, est un objet qui peut être qualifié de « non-lieu de mémoire ».

New Issue – European Review of History

Posted on by Jeff Koehler

A new Issue of European Review of History: Revue europeenne d’histoire Volume 19 Issue 1, 2012 has been published and contains the following articles.

A Colonial Sea: the Mediterranean, 1798–1956

Manuel Borutta & Sakis Gekas

 

The Mediterranean has been a colonial sea since ancient times. While historians of the pre- and early modern world still tend to describe this region with the Braudelian paradigms of unity and continuity, the historiography of the modern Mediterranean suffers from the widespread fragmentation of national and regional studies, including important contributions on the colonial history of North Africa and the Middle East. In this context, the editors invited scholars to re-think the Mediterranean of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century as a colonial and, most importantly, a colonised sea. Therefore the special issue brings together historians and geographers from North Africa, Europe and North America in order to reconstruct colonial interactions, relationships, entanglements and shared experiences between Europe, the Maghreb and the Middle East from late eighteenth century, when the European colonisation of the Mediterranean began, until the erosion of the imperial order in the 1950s.

 

 

The general belief of the world’: Barbary as genre and discourse in Mediterranean history

Lotfi Ben Rejeb

 

Europe re-invented North Africa as Barbary – at once a toponym and a trope – when this region became an extension of Ottoman imperial power following the Spanish Reconquista. Barbary emerged in modern Mediterranean history as a key genre and discourse which, in the record of Western perceptions of the Islamic world, constituted a link between the crusading mentality of the Middle Ages and the Orientalism and imperialism of the modern era. Barbary informed a Eurocentric view of relations between Europe and North Africa from the late fifteenth century until the nineteenth, consistently equating the Ottoman borderlands (the Regencies of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli) and the Kingdom of Morocco, with barbarism, denying the history and indeed the very idea of Islamic civilisation, and furnishing the essential ideological argument for the colonisation of that region. Using Barbary as a contrasting foil to their emergent national identities, Europeans fixed the region as an unparalleled seat of piracy and slavery, and the unrelenting source of hostility towards Christendom and civilisation. The Barbary discourse conveyed a mental map of the Mediterranean sharply divided between civilisation and barbarism, between Good and Evil. Powerful in its sheer reductionism, it prevailed and persisted despite the more nuanced and complex realities of Mediterranean life and politics. Although concern with piracy and slavery became minor by the end of the seventeenth century, the discourse steadily intensified as a locus of imperial advocacy and rationalisation. When the central part of North Africa was carved out in 1830 to become an extension of France overseas, Barbary as a homogenising toponym no longer had a raison d’être, but the discourse lingered on as a trope in the new colonial context.

 

The Mediterranean, a territory between France and Colonial Algeria: imperial constructions

Hélène Blais & Florence Deprest

 

The geographical concept of the Mediterranean, born during the nineteenth century, has often been the object of scholarly attention. Many works have highlighted the progressive adjustments in the learned representations of this maritime space. From the Classical concept of a dividing border, which prevailed until the end of the eighteenth century, arose the idea of a junction sea, in the late nineteenth century. Though these studies all set the rise of the concept of a Mediterranean territory within the imperial context of the nineteenth century, such as the scientific and military explorations of Morea and Algeria, they do not explore the hypothesis that the Mediterranean was invented because it had become a colonial sea. Was the emergence of the Western Mediterranean, as an area of practices and representations, directly linked to the context of Algerian colonisation, to the chronology of its appropriation and to the evolution of French settlement on the banks of the Maghreb? This paper explores how, within the Franco-Algerian colonial situation, the Mediterranean was initially fashioned as a bridge between Europe and Africa, as a suture between the Orient and the Occident. The Mediterranean became a structuring feature of the French Empire.

 

Etre algérien en situation impériale, fin XIXème siècle – début XXème siècle: L’usage de la catégorie «nationalité algérienne» par les consulats français dans leur relation avec les Algériens fixes au Maroc et dans l’Empire Ottoman

Noureddine Amara

Among the many problems posed by colonial citizenship laws regulating Algerians was the special case of people born within the confines of Algeria and their descendants who had emigrated outside of the country. Algerians in Algeria already inhabited an imprecise place of incomplete French citizenship. And those living abroad, the ‘Originaires d’Algérie’, had to contend with the decisions of French consular authorities, who laboured to interpret and implement the rules established by the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Justice to define the legal status of Algerians living abroad. The French state claimed this category of people as « French » according to the legal theory of State succession. Then, the Indigenat served as an Algerian nationality. This paper argues that this Algerian nationality was an imperial nationality for internal use.

 

Colonial migrants and the making of a British Mediterranean

Sakis Gekas

 

This article examines the concept and colonial reality of the British Mediterranean through the imperial network of trade and migration from and to areas under British political and/or economic control. The hybrid identities of many citizens in the colonial Mediterranean can best be seen in the perception and reality of the ports of the Eastern Mediterranean as cosmopolitan. The article also argues that the role and experience of these migrants as intermediate groups was determined by the form of rule British colonial authorities imposed in each dominion.

 

Making a living in pre-colonial Tunisia: the sea, contraband and other illicit activities, c. 1830–81

Julia Clancy-Smith

 

Employing pre-colonial Tunisia as a site, this article investigates ways of ‘making a living’ in an age of migrations. It studies occupations linked to the sea, such as fishing or coastal trading, that integrated North Africa and the nearby islands into trans-Mediterranean and larger exchange systems. It argues that subsistence migration increased the volume of extra-legal transactions whose nodal points were the Tunis region, the Cap Bon, Bizerte, Algeria and nearby islands. Estimates of the trade’s volume or value, impossible to determine given the sources, are less important than charting dense flows of labour, goods, services and capital under-girding the political economy of contraband in relationship to labour migration. That the actors involved hailed from different religions, ethnic groups and classes renders this a perfect vantage point for probing inter-communal and intra-confessional relationships as well as the declining political fortunes of the Tunisian state.

 

Entangled communities: interethnic relationships among urban salesclerks and domestic workers in Egypt, 1927–61

Nancy Y. Reynolds

 

This paper examines the relationships among salesclerks and other lower-level commercial and domestic employees in inter-war and post-Second World War urban Egypt, especially Cairo. It argues that the Italians, Greeks, local Jews, Armenians, Syrian Christians, Maltese, Coptic Christians and Muslims who often worked side by side on the floors of department stores and private homes participated in multiethnic occupational subgroups, formal unions and leisure cultures that created a series of networks linking lower-middle-class people in workplaces, public and neighbourhood space as well as commerce. These networks spanned ethnic, religious and linguistic boundaries, and they reveal a complex shared Mediterranean culture, underpinned by a juridical system shaped by European colonialism. Although historians have documented the vertical relations within ethnic groups and the horizontal relationships among the business elite of different communities, horizontal relationships among the lower and lower-middle classes of locally resident foreigners or Egyptians, who made up the bulk of the different communities, evidence both deep entanglement and regular conflict. The history of lived Mediterranean or cosmopolitan experiences thus challenges contemporary uses of both terms.

 

Connecting colonial seas: the ‘international colonisation’ of Port Said and the Suez Canal during and after the First World War

Valeska Huber

 

The Suez Canal played an essential role in transforming the Mediterranean into a colonial sea by changing its geopolitical features from a lake to a lane connecting faraway possessions of European empires more closely (at least geographically speaking) to the metropoles. At the same time the Suez Canal region itself was colonised in a very specific way, under British occupation on the one hand, yet carrying features of a ‘global locality’ on the other. Besides shedding light on the larger connections of the Suez Canal with the colonial world, this article attempts to understand the colonial situation of Port Said and the Canal, a place built from scratch in an effort to colonise (in the primary sense of the word) a part of the desert. Tracing Port Said and the Suez Canal Zone through different time periods – particularly during the First World War and the inter-war era – this paper tries to pin down the shifting meanings of ‘international’ and ‘colonial’ by highlighting the specificities of this ‘international colonisation’, regulated by agreements and treaties and marked by the influence of competing colonial powers

 

Italians in Tunisia: between regional organisation, cultural adaptation and political division, 1860s–1940

Leila El Houssi

 

This article analyses the case of the Italian community in Tunisia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Italian presence in Tunisia dates back to the age of the so-called Repubbliche marinare (Maritime Republics), when Italy was still not a unitary entity, but rather a collection of states that had their own relationships with the Ottoman Empire. The Italian community in Tunisia is an example of a diaspora resulting from migrations in the Mediterranean region. The case study of the Italians in Tunisia is a sort of ‘diaspora from inside’. Indeed it is reductive to see Italians in Tunisia just as nationals, because they had different regional, religious, class and cultural backgrounds to native Tunisians. Local identities characterised their community. This perspective is also apparent in the multitude of mutual-aid associations and ethnic organisations. A heterogeneous group, including political refugees, emerged. Nonetheless, during the twentieth century the ‘defence of italianità’ reinforced the cohesion of the community itself. This paper places this group into the framework of Mediterranean Studies. It aims to understand the interaction between the Italian community in Tunisia and the native population. It follows philosopher Albert Memmi’s perspective on the unrelated relationship between the coloniser and the colonised. This relationship represented an interesting example of unusual tolerance thanks to a steady relationship between Italians and the Tunisian population, characterised by openness and profitable coexistence, even in the sphere of religion, which was not the case in other areas of Mediterranean sea.

New Issue- History and Memory- Spring/Summer2012

Posted on by Natalia Gomez

The new issue of “History and Memory” of Spring/Summer 2012 is now available and includes the following articles:

The Paradox of Regret: Remembering and Forgetting the History of Slavery in George W. Bush’s Gorée Island Address by Bradford Vivian

Ceremonial statements of regret from state actors may appear to lack discernible gains compared to historic procedures of reconciliation or political reunification; yet the ceremonial language of these statements influences public perceptions of historical justice, moral wisdom and democratic virtue. This essay analyzes President George W. Bush’s historic address on the transatlantic slave trade as an excellent case study in the rhetoric of regret (distinct from that of official apology and the like). Such occasions warrant scrutiny because a critical paradox–the inherent divide between dutiful remembrance of past wrongs and practical political duties that would set them aright–shapes state officials’ increasingly prevalent use of ceremonial lamentations in pursuit of geopolitical legitimacy.

 

Reinscribing Schlesien as Slask: Memory and Mythology in a Postwar German-Polish Borderland by Andrew Demshuk

The waves of ethnic cleansing in the 1930s and 1940s uprooted millions of East-Central Europeans and forced them to make sense of new surroundings. The Polish settlers who replaced over three million Germans in the borderland of Silesia created a layered palimpsest of new, generally nationalized meanings on an unfamiliar territory. After exploring how and why Polish leaders and settlers reinscribed formerly German and Jewish sites of memory with Polish meanings, this article investigates how, when former residents returned to visit their lost homeland, both populations confronted the palimpsest’s conflicting layers and unwittingly engaged in a transnational exchange of meanings.

 

Occupation Heritage, Commemoration and Memory in Guernsey and Jersey by Gilly Carr

In the British Channel Islands today, the German Occupation of World War II and its heritage have an important place in the history, identity and psyche of islanders. This is reflected in the number of restored bunkers and Occupation museums, the popularity of Liberation Day, and the growing number of Occupation memorials in the islands. This article examines the history of the treatment of Occupation heritage in the Channel Islands over the last 65 years, focusing on sites of memory and counter-memory, victims of Nazi persecution, and the changing commemorative master narratives.

 

Fused Together and Torn Apart: Stories and Violence in Contemporary Algeria by Malika Rahal

This article explores the constraints of contemporary history writing about Algeria. It analyzes the historiographical blocks and blind spots to show the centrality of the question of unity/plurality within Algerianness. Borrowing from anthropologist Franççoise Hééritier, it uses the notion of entre-soi to elaborate a new chronological framework, a continual sequence of war between 1945 and 2002. It also examines the impact of the rapid succession of these episodes of political violence on individual memories, and how moments of paroxysmal violence are reactivated during interviews, and considers the emotional cost for historians when they become the last recipient of narratives of forms of violence intended to terrorize.

 

France and the Memories of “Others”: The Case of the Harkis by Géraldine Enjelvin and Nada Korac-Kakabadse

Historical narratives help construct social identities, which are maintained through differentiation between in-groups and ”others.” In this article, we contend that Fatima Besnaci-Lancou’s texts, as well as her reconciliation work–in which she enjoins Beurs and Harkis’ offspring to write a new, inclusive, polyphonic narrative of the Algerian War–are an example of the positive use of textually mediated identity (re)construction. Her work suggests the possibility of implementing a moderate politics of empathetic recognition of the (often migration-related) memories of ”others” so as to reinforce French national belongingness.

 

 


New Issue – European History Quarterly- January 2012

Posted on by Vanessa Freitas

The new issue of “European History Quarterly” of January 2012 is now available online and includes the following articles:

Rhetoric and the Writing of History in Early Modern Europe: Melo’s Guerra de Cataluña and Mascardi’s Ars historica

 

“In 1645 the Portuguese historian Francisco Manuel de Melo published the Historia de los movimientos, separación y guerra de Cataluña, an account of the so-called ‘Rebellion of Catalonia’ against the Spanish monarch Philip IV. Although the accuracy of the book has been the subject of controversy, very little has been said about its discursive strategies, in spite of its having been considered ‘an exceptional work’ (Menéndez y Pelayo 1893) and ‘full of perfections’ (Rosell 1852) in terms of its elocutio. The aim of this paper is to analyze the historiographical strategies that govern the construction of the Historia, in an attempt to place the early modern writing of history within a tradition that goes back to the ancient rhetoricians. In the particular case of Melo, the most immediate reference is that of the Dell’arte istorica (1639), a treatise by the Italian Jesuit Agostino Mascardi, specifically mentioned and praised by Melo.”

 

The Early Reception of Operetta in Russia, 1860s–1870s

 

“This article explores the popular and critical reception of operetta in Russia during its European heyday, which broadly coincided with the transformative reign of Tsar Alexander II (1855–1881). It argues that the genre consistently drew audiences from most social strata and should not be considered, as some historians have suggested, a uniquely ‘bourgeois’ form of entertainment closely associated with the rise of the middle classes. It also argues that operetta crystallized a range of wider concerns about Russian culture and politics during the era of the Great Reforms. Many critics attacked operetta’s frivolity and eroticism (held to be inconsistent with the aims of art), while radicals and conservatives regarded it as symptomatic of a new climate of political uncertainty (the former with hope, the latter with trepidation). The critical responses to operetta thus testified to its popularity and to the rapidity of change in Russia during the 1860s and 1870s.”

 

The French Veterans and the Republic: The Union nationale des combattants and the Union fédérale, 1934–1938

 

“Since Antoine Prost’s Les anciens combattants et la société française, 1914 – 1939 (1977), subsequent histories of the period have largely accepted the benign role of French Great War veterans during the interwar period. In focusing on the period between the riots of 6 February 1934 and the Daladier government in 1938, this article re-examines the history of the veterans from the perspective of their movement for state reform. The two largest associations, the Union nationale des combattants (UNC) and the Union fédérale (UF) undertook a campaign for an authoritarian reform of the Republic. Though united in their belief in reform, the associations’ motives differed starkly. Furthermore, activists and moderates fought for the meaning of their groups’ policies and for the meaning of their very associations. Circumstances dictated the strength of each faction. With a focus on the UNC and the UF, this article argues that neither their alleged Republicanism, nor their shift to authoritarianism were governed by an inherent nature. The article demonstrates that the political culture of the late Third Republic was complex and dynamic, with the politics of groups subject to internal and external influences and fluctuations.”

 

Nationalism, Myth and Reinterpretation of History: The Neglected Case of Interwar Yugoslavia

 

“This article discusses and challenges some popular myths and perceptions about interwar Yugoslavia in post-socialist (and post-Yugoslav) Serbia. These include discourses that blame ‘others’ – ‘treacherous’ Croats and other non-Serbs, the ‘perfidious’ west, especially Britain – and that are also self-critical, of Serbs’ ‘naivety’ as exemplified in their choosing to create Yugoslavia at the end of the First World War, and of, later, embracing communism. The article also offers a reassessment of the interwar period, often neglected by scholars of former Yugoslavia.”

New Issue – Histoire@politique

Posted on by Vanessa Freitas

The new issue of Histoire@politique is now available online and includes the following articles:

Alexandre Ribot, des principes libéraux au pragmatisme de guerre by Jean Garrigues

 “Alexandre Ribot, qui fut plusieurs fois ministre dans les années 1890, est revenu au pouvoir pendant la Grande Guerre, à la présidence du Conseil et au ministère des Finances, une charge qu’il a exercée de 1914 à 1917. Comment ce septuagénaire libéral s’est-il confronté aux impératifs de l’interventionnisme suscité par l’économie de guerre ? Qui sont les conseillers, les experts, qui vont l’ont orienté dans ses arbitrages financiers ? Quel regard a-t-il porté sur sa propre activité au ministère des Finances ? Peut-on trouver une cohérence entre son héritage, sa culture économique et les options pragmatiques qu’il a été amené à prendre face à la guerre ? Ces questions constituent le fil conducteur de cette étude sur un personnage méconnu de notre histoire politique.”

Le ministre à l’école du boutiquier : Charles de Lasteyrie by Albert Kéchichian

“Lors de son passage au ministère des Finances de 1922 à 1924, Charles de Lasteyrie ne parvint pas à enrayer la spéculation contre le franc, fomentée par des opérateurs financiers méfiants envers la dette publique se montant à 168 % du produit intérieur brut, creusé par le coût vertigineux des armements et de la logistique pendant la Grande Guerre de 1914-1918 ainsi que par la nécessité de reconstruire l’infrastructure des territoires dévastés par les combats. Les gouvernements successifs avaient eu davantage recours aux emprunts qu’aux impôts, dans l’espoir de tout rembourser grâce aux réparations de guerre imposées à l’Allemagne par le traité de Versailles. Lasteyrie récusa catégoriquement toute consolidation forcée de la dette publique, par crainte de spolier l’épargne des rentiers. Sous la IIIe République, un très large consensus valorisait l’épargne comme gage d’une méritocratie fondée sur le labeur et la prévoyance. Élus et citoyens, dans leur grande majorité, redoutaient qu’une banqueroute ou une dévaluation ne sape les fondements des compromis républicains entre progrès social pour les humbles et préservation du patrimoine pour les nantis. Charles de Lasteyrie était persuadé que sa connivence professionnelle d’ancien banquier avec les manieurs d’argent suffirait à assurer le renouvellement de la dette flottante à des taux d’intérêt avantageux pour le Trésor public, sans avoir à décaisser des fortunes à chaque échéance ni dépasser le plafond de la circulation fiduciaire, imposé par la convention de 1920 avec la Banque de France. Lors de l’occupation de la Ruhr en 1923 pour contraindre l’Allemagne à payer les réparations, Lasteyrie priva Poincaré des moyens financiers de gérer l’économie rhénane, au nom du refus de toute mesure d’exception attentatoire aux règles de gestion comptable.”

 

De la pensée à l’action économique : Étienne Clémentel (1864-1936), un ministre visionnaire by Clotilde Druelle-Korn

“La découverte dans les archives Clémentel de deux manuscrits initialement mal datés, révèle que dès 1900, ce notable radical d’Auvergne avait, à partir de lectures dans lesquelles le rôle de Charles Gide apparaît essentiel, analysé avec finesse l’histoire et les ressorts de l’économie politique de son temps. Influencé par le Solidarisme et pourvu d’une doctrine économique, Clémentel la met en pratique dans le cadre de l’économie de guerre à partir de 1915. Jusqu’au milieu des années 1930 il est un acteur majeur de la modernisation économique au sens le plus moderne du terme. Il est à l’origine de nombreuses institutions économiques, parmi lesquelles la Chambre de Commerce Internationale.”

Aristide Briand: defending the Republic through economic appeasement by Robert Boyce

“Aristide Briand, for thirty years a leading politician in the Third Republic, had little direct interest in economics, but he was prepared to advocate economic innovation, including radical changes in domestic and international policy, where this seemed necessary to safeguard the Republic.”

 

André Tardieu, les Modérés and the Politics of Prosperity: 1929-1932 by Gareth Davies

“Cet essai historique a pour but d’examiner les idées économiques d’André Tardieu, l’un des dirigeants des modérés, président du Conseil de 1929 à 1932. Tardieu développe une critique et lance un défi au modèle républicain en place que beaucoup jugeaient inadéquat et en grand besoin de réformes. Le développement d’un certain type d’économie expansionniste est au centre de la critique qui, elle-même, fait partie d’un débat plus large lié à la réforme de l’État. Rejeté de son vivant, l’essentiel de la critique de Tardieu s’intégrera au programme des nouveaux républicains développé à la fin du XXe siècle, prouvant ainsi sa propre contribution et celle du libéralisme à la France contemporaine.”

 

La culture économique de Léon Blum : entre libéralisme juridique et socialisme by Nicolas Roussellier

“Si Léon Blum semble être éloigné du concept de « culture économique », son itinéraire politique l’amène à s’en rapprocher petit à petit. Par sa formation juridique et par son activité au Conseil d’État, il valorise la notion de « service public ». Dans sa pratique des joutes parlementaires au cours des années 1920 et au début des années 1930, il est amené à multiplier au nom du groupe socialiste les propositions et contre-projets en matière de politique financière et fiscale. Aussi, quand il aborde la crise des années 1930, on peut considérer qu’il a finalement constitué une véritable « culture économique ». Cette culture reste cependant marquée par un certain attachement au libéralisme à la fois politique et juridique. Blum occupe ainsi une position ambiguë et critique à l’égard du concept nouveau de politique économique, synonyme d’une emprise de l’État sur la marche de l’économie et qui séduit pourtant la nouvelle génération socialiste.”

New Issue – European Integration online Papers (EloP)

Posted on by Domenico Molina

The new issue of “European Integration online Papers (EloP)“ is now available online.

Multidimensionality of EU attitudes in France

To be submitted soon as part of the special mini-issue, ‘Beyond Euro-skepticism: Understanding attitudes towards the EU’ in European Integration online Papers. Please check back in Mid-March.

Trust in the institutions of the European Union: A cross-country examination

Trust in political institutions is one of the key elements which make representative democracies work. Trust creates a connection between citizens and representative political institutions. Democratic governments which enjoy a large degree of trust also tend to have higher degrees of legitimacy and policy efficacy. In Europe’s multi-level governance structure, it is imperative to understand the determinants of trust in the institutions of the European Union. With the increasing salience of the European Union, are domestic proxies still a key determinant of evaluating its institutions? Are there differences across the institutions and across the member states? We demonstrate that country-level corruption levels are what drives the relationship between domestic and European institutional trust. The majority of the variation in trust in the institutions of the European Union is, however, driven by individual-level predictors. We also find that individuals across Europe evaluate the institutions of the European Union through a single attitude dimension of political trust rather than through separate evaluations.

Support for Europe: Assessing the complexity of individual attitudes

Recent scholarly work has underlined the importance of being cautious about the notion of Euro-skepticism by putting stress on alternative concepts and measures. This theoretical and empirical contribution has enriched the debate on support for Europe and its potential multidimensionality. However, the fit between theoretical conceptualization and measured attitudes is still under-investigated. Do European citizens actually express different types of support? To what extent are these attitudes structured as we think? This paper investigates the different dimensions that individuals associate with “support for Europe” and whether it varies across national context. We test the empirical validity of three conceptualizations of support for Europe: (a) diffuse versus specific support, (b) identity versus diffuse support, (c) static versus dynamic perception of the European Union. To investigate these patterns, we relied on survey data from Eurobarometer. Methodologically, we use item-response theory modelling. This paper demonstrates that attitudes towards Europe are structured but in a less fine-grained manner than hypothesized in the literature. The distinction between diffuse and specific support is robust at the European scale as well as within each national context. Consequently, we provide an empirical tool to comparatively measure support in all member states. However it is not the case for the other dimensions of support, especially identity, and we advocate caution in using this variable as an explanatory variable.


New Issue – Contemporary European History

Posted on by Morgan Kuntzmann

A new issue of  the Journal of Contemporary History (N°21) is now available and contains the following articles:

In Search of Meaning: Foreign Volunteers in the Croatian Armed Forces, 1991–95 by NIir Arielli

Foreign war volunteers are a recurring phenomenon in modern warfare. The Yugoslav Wars (1991–95) saw the participation of foreign fighters on all sides. The article focuses on foreigners who joined the Croatian armed forces (excluding returning Croatian émigrés). It examines where the volunteers came from, what brought them to the Balkans and how they represent and commemorate their wartime experiences. It argues that their participation in the conflict can be understood as part of an individual search for meaning, comradeship and empowerment.

Selling Germany in South-Eastern Europe: Economic Uncertainty, Commercial Information and the Leipzig Trade Fair 1920-40 by Stephen Gross

On the eve of the Second World War Germany dominated the exports and imports of south-eastern Europe. Yet the institutions that supported Germany’s trade in the 1930s were formed during the previous decade. This article shows how one institution, the Leipzig trade fair, helped overcome many of the problems that had disrupted German commerce with Yugoslavia after the First World War. During a decade when German firms were only slowly returning to the region, the fair built an extensive trading network in south-eastern Europe that relayed economic news, found agents for German firms, and advertised for German products. By the 1930s the fair’s representatives had become the backbone of Germany’s trade network in south-eastern Europe.

Surviving in the Global Market: ‘Americanisation’ and the Relaunch of Italy’s Car Industry after the Second World War by Francesca Fauri

This contribution sheds light on the successful recovery strategies developed by the Italian car industry after the Second World War and in particular the ‘innovation through creative imitation policy’ that characterised its relationship with American producers. This policy was feasible because the Italian car sector, and Fiat in particular, was fairly well prepared to measure itself against the American model and aimed at technology-transfer-based Americanisation in order to make itself competitive in the global market. Mass production adapted to Italian plants and necessities, combined with Italian style and design, was seen as a path towards international relaunch. Fiat’s subsequent development of its own technological resources and innovation strategy enabled it to weather the ups and downs of its long-term business history. When in 2009 an alliance with Chrysler was signed, Fiat’s technological capabilities in the field of innovative ecological and fuel-saving technology and its long-standing attention to style and interior design were judged important inputs to help the American car-maker (and Fiat itself) to survive in the global market.

France’s Renewed Commitment to Commercial Diplomacy in the 1960s by Laurence Badel

The political and strategic aspects of General de Gaulle’s policies, his grandeur rhetoric and his hostility to European integration have between them taken up the attention of historians. It has therefore been overlooked that the 1960s were a period of unprecedented mobilisation by the French state in the promotion of French exports. This policy is not only due to the history of commercial diplomacy. The senior civil servants in charge of this process were interested not only in selling but also in creating a fundamental change to the perception of France by those abroad. It was a keen fight, involving not only official and semi-official bodies, but also private enterprise, who together furthered the neo-corporatist programme of the French state.

 

 

New Issue – Journal of Contemporary History

Posted on by Jerry Schroeder

A new issue of  the Journal of Contemporary History is now available and contains the following articles:

Eugene Kulischer, Joseph Schechtman and the Historiography of European Forced Migrations by Antonio Ferrara

This article deals with two prominent figures in the historiography of twentieth-century European forced migrations: Eugene Kulischer and Joseph Schechtman. Their studies, although published between 1946 and 1962, are still among the standard works on the subject and are as yet unsurpassed in their scope and breadth of outlook, despite the flurry of new publications on the subject after the opening of East Central European archives after 1989. In this article I strive to explain how and why they were able to accomplish such a scholarly feat, paying special attention to their biographies which I have tried to reconstruct, using, for the first time, not only their own writings but also personal testimonies from their students and disparate archival sources located in the United States and Israel. I also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of their works by comparing them with more recent works on the same subject. This is, to my knowledge, the first attempt to reconstruct on the basis of archival evidence the lives and works of the two most important historians of a phenomenon whose impact on the overall history of Europe (and especially of its East Central part) is now generally recognized.

Reframing the Interwar Peace Movement: The Curious Case of Albert Einstein by Ofer Ashkenazi

The diversity of transnational interrelations within the peace movement has been commonly overlooked in studies on the anti-war struggle in the interwar years. Consequently, these studies have often provided an over-simplified view of the formation of anti-war ideologies, worldviews, and objectives. Contrary to this tendency, this article examines Albert Einstein’s engagement with the peace movement in a way that emphasizes its transnational facets. Associating Einstein’s worldview with ideas that were prevalent in transnational organizations in the decade preceding the second world war, it explains the scientist’s propensity to endorse seemingly incompatible ideas as inherent to the nature of these organizations. Focusing on his relationships with two apparently contradictory organizations – the War Resisters’ International and The New Commonwealth Society – I argue that Einstein’s views reflect a set of principles that were held by many supporters of both organizations. Mainly, these principles constituted a revision of nineteenth-century liberal thought which sought to marginalize the impact of nationalist sentiments, redefine the social responsibilities of the state, and restrict its sovereignty. Thus, shifting the emphasis to the transnational aspects of the peace movement would not only make sense of Einstein’s ‘confused’ politics, but also shed new light on interwar pacifism, its objectives, popularity, and enduring influence.

H.M. Hyndman and the Russia Question after 1917 by Markku Ruotsila

In the last four years of his life the eclectic veteran of British Marxism, H.M. Hyndman (1842–1921), was intimately involved in a transatlantic socialist effort to destroy the Russian Bolshevik regime. Historians have rarely investigated this effort, because it appears not to fit into the customary categories constructed about Marxian socialism. Utilizing Hyndman’s extensive published writings and hitherto mostly ignored private correspondence with his many American socialist collaborators, this article reconstructs Hyndman’s thinking on Russia after 1917 in an attempt to shed further light on our understanding of socialist anti-Bolshevism in Britain and in the United States. It argues that Hyndman was a much more influential figure in the construction of socialist anticommunism in the English-speaking world (in particular in the United States) than has been generally recognized. His writings and activities in 1917–21 were key not only in setting the ideological bases for much of the English-speaking world’s socialist anticommunism but in pioneering the abiding, considered willingness by a significant section of its adherents to use military force to destroy the Soviet regime before and during the Cold War.

Foreign Involvement and Loss of Democracy, Estonia 1934 by Jaak Valge

Estonia, where influential major powers have often had competing interests, is able to provide a specific example of how involvement from foreign countries can influence the collapse of democracy. Both the undemocratic Soviet Union, with 150 times the population of Estonia, and 60 times more populous Germany, which had become undemocratic in 1933, were seen in Estonia as security risks. In contrast to this, the democratic United Kingdom was seen as Estonia’s best friend. The United Kingdom and Germany were also Estonia’s main trading partners. But London was primarily concerned to limit the influence of Germany in the Baltic States, and Estonia’s internal situation was of interest in this context. The co-operation by Estonian socialists with Moscow undoubtedly aggravated the Estonian domestic political situation, but the initiators of this co-operation were more the Estonian socialists themselves. Germany’s attempts to influence Estonian domestic politics were of a limited nature. But there is no doubt that events in Germany had a major influence on Estonia’s domestic politics.

 

 

New Issue – Zeithistorische Forschungen (Studies in Contemporary History)

Posted on by Domenico Molina

The New Issue of “Zeithistorische Forschungen” of January 2012 is now available online and includes the following articles:

Frank Bösch                                                 Umbrüche in die Gegenwart
Globale Ereignisse und Krisenreaktionen um 1979

When interpreting the 1970s today, special emphasis is placed on the socioeconomic and sociocultural changes which accompanied the oil crisis of 1973. By contrast, this article focuses on the reforms and reactions to the crises at the end of the 1970s. In 1979, in particular, a number of events with global repercussions prompted paradigm shifts. This article addresses historical events relating to energy, economics, and political and cultural transformation, and pays special attention to the significance now commonly ascribed to religion and history. All these occurrences and long-term trends can also be understood as manifestations of and practices of globalisation. Distant events such as the nuclear accident near Harrisburg, the change of power in Nicaragua, or the revolution in Iran, led (even in the Federal Republic of Germany) to new perceptions and patterns of behaviour. A transnational approach to events occurring before and after 1979 makes it possible to interpret anew key issues of contemporary history – issues which can only partially be answered with reference to the upheavals of 1989/90.

Imanuel Baumann/Andrej Stephan/Patrick Wagner                                       (Um-)Wege in den Rechtsstaat, Das Bundeskriminalamt und die NS-Vergangenheit seiner Gründungsgeneration

The Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Police Office, abbreviated in German as BKA) was founded in 1951 and initially recruited its officers from the ranks of the National Socialist police force. A research project funded by the BKA in 2008 (the essential findings of which are presented in this essay) focused on three key questions. First, to what extent were the former Nazi staff able to influence the BKA ’s concepts and practice? Second, in what way did the experiences of policemen prior to 1945 shape the BKA? Third, how did people within the BKA talk about those members of the founding generation who had worked there during the National Socialist period? This essay shows that the former Nazi policemen employed by the BKA during the 1950s were keen to see if they could continue working according to concepts which had been adhered to before 1945. While these officers were increasingly urged to adapt to new circumstances during the 1960s, the reorganisation of the Criminal Police Office during the 1970s brought their influence to an end. Finally, the former National Socialist police members employed by the BKA after 1945 did not represent a realistic threat to the constitutional state. Nevertheless, their post-war careers continue to be a source of scandal, particularly for former victims of the National Socialist police. In this context, the authors’ analysis of different cultures of organisation and their transformation is relevant to studies in contemporary history as a whole.

Peter Hoeres                                                                                                                   Reise nach Amerika
Axel Springer und die Transformation des deutschen Konservatismus in den 1960er- und 1970er-Jahren

It is broadly assumed that the Axel Springer Press is pro-American. This fact has even been stipulated in the company’s guidelines since 2001. However, this article questions this assumption by drawing on media sources and unpublished German and American materials. It highlights Springer’s scepticism towards the USA, which has rarely been addressed in historical research. During the 1950s and 1960s, Springer expressed harsh criticism of America. The American administration therefore identified him as an opponent of their policies. Springer’s pro-American stance emerged later, during the struggle against the protest movement of the late 1960s and the conciliatory policies towards East Germany and Poland (Neue Ostpolitik). From this moment, anti-Americanism was sharply criticised in favour of what Springer called, in 1973, the ‘continuation of our course of action’. This development is characteristic of the history of German conservatism, whose pro-American stance from this moment onwards constituted a historic turnaround.

Stefanie Middendorf                                                                      Modernitätsoffensiven, Identitätsbehauptungen:
„Bandes dessinées“ und die Nationalisierung der Massenkultur in Frankreich

After having originally been perceived as a threatening exponent of mass culture, comics (bandes dessinées) have now become a legitimate element of French national culture. The nationalisation of comics was achieved via the close surveillance of the youth press market, counter-cultural interpretations of the new medium by Catholics and Communists alike, the discovery of comics by the social sciences and, since the 1980s, by state funding. By scrutinising this complex process of national integration, this article suggests that it was precisely the comics’ ambivalence, on the borderline between commercial product and cultural commodity, which enabled them to be appropriated in France. This national adaptation of comics on the basis of an assault on ‘America’ and on the idea of ‘European culture’ is characteristic of national identity construction in Europe throughout the twentieth century.

New Issue – European Integration online Papers (EloP)

Posted on by Domenico Molina

The new issue of “European Integration online Papers (EloP)“ is now available online.

EU Law as Janus bifrons, a sociological approach to “Social Europe”

On the basis of sociological research focused on actions and appreciations of “social policy” actors, this paper contends that, apart from the powerful constraint of macroeconomic governance, the main governance instrument has been hard law, even in an area where member states are deemed to have retained most of their jurisdiction (Leibfried and Pierson, 1995, Ferrera, 2005; Barbier, 2008). The sociological material is systematically cross-checked with legal literature and with material drawn from 26 EU law specialists. The authors focus on the relationship between EU law and “social law” (social protection, labour law and social services). The main finding is the confirmation of the jeopardization of systems of social protection in the “old member states”. On the other hand, though, the Court of Justice of the European Union and the Commission have been able to display continual advances on the subject of “fundamental rights”, thus producing key sources of legitimacy among various actors. With the classically documented support of big business and corporations, and the active support of non-governmental organizations in favour of expanding individual fundamental rights, the on-going dynamics of EU law seems to inexorably lead to the demise of the late 19th century born systems of social protection, as F. Scharpf argues. This deterministic analysis however does not take into account the current uncertainties about the role of actors

Deconstructing EU old age policy: Assessing the potential of soft OMCs and hard EU law

When it comes to EU old age policy, the political science literature primarily focuses on soft governance through the OMC (Open Method of Coordination) on social inclusion, pensions and health care. However, a mapping of EU old age policy instruments shows that developments started earlier and are broader and more influential. Employing a policy analysis perspective, I explore problem perceptions and actor constellations to explain the development of a number of directly or indirectly relevant policy instruments and discuss their (potential) effects. On this basis, I show that the governance capacity of soft steering instruments that seek to trigger reforms in the area of pensions is typically overvalued. In contrast, we tend to underestimate how much the EU shapes national room to manoeuvre on ageing and old age security through legislative instruments establishing individual rights for equal treatment or through the free movement of capital and persons. What is more, tracing when and how a range of instruments developed brings to the fore a number of different actors and arenas, interest constellations and conflict lines. Thus, contrasting with the OMCs, the present analysis provides for an understanding of EU governance as a complex, at times contradictory and inherently political process.

European social dialogue as multi-level governance: Towards more autonomy and new dependencies

Almost twenty years ago the Maastricht Treaty introduced procedures for European Social Dialogue, as part of a larger package of measures to strengthen the social dimension of European integration. Through the Treaty provisions (articles 154-155 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union), the European social partners received the competence to become, in principle, co-regulators of the European labour market. The conventional reading of the evolution of European social dialogue since its inception is that it has evolved from a relationship of dependency of the European social partners on the European institutions for the implementation of their framework agreements, towards a more autonomous position in which the social partners themselves take charge of implementation. Since the early 2000s, the argument continues, the social partners have taken a more proactive and independent stance and opted to focus on autonomous framework agreements, and other ‘new generation texts’, including joint reports, recommendations, compendia of good practices, etc., which are not directed at the European institutions in order to secure implementation. In this paper we want to challenge and move beyond this rather linear and one-dimensional conceptualisation of the evolution of European social dialogue. Empirically, we will show that there has not been a straightforward move away from the ‘implementation through Directive’ mode in favour of autonomous agreements. Whereas this may seem the case if we take a view of the cross-sector dialogue only, the picture changes when we have a closer look and include developments in the European sector social dialogue in the analysis. Analytically, we will argue that framing the issue in terms of dependency or autonomy does not do justice to the complexity of relationships that are involved in the European social dialogue and the European sector social dialogue, and in the implementation of framework agreements and other new generation texts. Also it accords little attention to the role of power in the relationships involved. We draw on a multi-governance perspective to analyse the dynamics of European social dialogue, which allows us to capture the relevant multiple horizontal and vertical relationships, or interdependencies, between the European and national, and public and private, actors involved. Interdependency implies the presence of both autonomy and dependence in a relationship, and our central proposition is that these interdependencies simultaneously enhance and limit the capacity of the European social partners to make and implement agreements.

EU governance and social services of general interest: When even the UK is concerned

The level of autonomy afforded to Member States to define certain services as ‘services of general interest’ and to shelter them from the market so as to promote social objectives has become in recent years a highly sensitive topic among EU and national policy actors and organisations. The increased activity in this area of the European Commission and the general absence of guidance on the conditions necessary to render such services of general interest by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) have resulted in uncertainty concerning the interaction of EU law with social services and more generally public services in the EU Member States. By focusing on the EU regulation on social services of general interest, the paper evaluates how the nature and provision of such services in the UK has been susceptible to changes as a result of the Services Directives, EU public procurement and competition law. The implementation of liberalisation plans in the UK well before any EU initiatives in this area meant that such services have been open to market forces well before other Member States. However, this has not led to the absence of concerns regarding the precise impact of EU law in this area. Recent policy initiatives by the Coalition government may expand further the degree of marketisation and increase the scope for interaction between EU and national-level regulation.