"Faire Front": The many non-Western theatres of the Great War

"Faire Front": The many non-Western theatres of the Great War

Veranstalter
Fabrice Bouthillon / Sébastien Carney / Gwendal Piégais, Université de Bretagne Occidentale; Mathieu Panoryia, Université de Lorraine
Veranstaltungsort
Faculté Victor Segalen
Ort
Brest
Land
France
Vom - Bis
19.09.2019 - 20.09.2019
Deadline
20.02.2019
Von
A Greater War (Une Plus Grande Guerre)

The network “A Greater War” (+GG) is dedicated to a generation of early career scholars that has emerged during the Centenary of the First World War. The network is based upon the idea of going beyond the borders that have thus far organised the study of the Great War in France, whether chronological, geographical, or disciplinary. The goal is to ensure that the vitality of the research continues after the commemorations, maintaining the quality and intensity of the debate.
The network’s second workshop will interrogate the lesser-known theatres of the First World War, particularly the non-Western ones. The event will take place at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale
(Brest) on 19-20 September 2019.

While the Great War broke out in Sarajevo, in the heart of the Balkans, the attention quickly turned from the Serbian mountains towards the battlefields of France and Belgium. A similar paradoxical shift happened on the Eastern Front, where France hoped to see her great efforts rewarded with a defeat of the Central Powers.
The commemorations of the Great War have reinforced, in a certain way, this phenomenon and placed the emphasis on the great battles fought on the Western Front: Verdun, the Somme, the Chemin des Dames or the battles of Arras and Saint-Quentin. They provided the occasion for many scientific meetings and exchanges between academics and researchers. There has also been a widespread diffusion and mediatisation of the stakes and tensions of these key moments of the First World War. The Centenary was also able - on a much smaller scale - to highlight theatres of operation and neglected
actors in historiography and collective memory. It has been possible to reassess the importance of fronts and operations in Africa, naval clashes in the Atlantic Ocean, battles in the Caucasus, and even to
draw attention to the fate of the soldiers of the Eastern Front.
Despite these opportunities provided by the effervescence of scholarship around the Centenary, these theatres of operation have not been fully integrated into the narrative of the Great War. Our outlook is still largely euro-centred, not to mention focused on Western Europe. Recent studies, however, have questioned the chronological and geographical limits of the Great War, inviting us to rewrite the history of the conflict in a resolutely global perspective. Thus Cloé Drieu and Julie d'Andurain invite us to look at the interactions between the Ottoman, Russian and French colonial empires during the conflict, to rethink the relationship between centre and periphery within belligerent powers. In the same way, Pierre Purseigle and Olivier Compagnon insist on the necessity to consider the circulatory phenomena in their full geographical extent in order to rethink the Great War in a connected perspective.
This decentralisation going beyond Western Europe and beyond the usual places and moments of the conflict contribute to outline the contours of a "Greater War" whose global history is yet to be written.
Focusing on other fronts, other combat conditions and other configurations of actors reveals the existence of a field favourable to an enlarged approach of the conflict, where geography, geopolitics and ethnology would be associated with history to highlight the impact of the war on territories thus far neglected. For example, as environmental history renews our understanding of the 20th century, outlining how historians might better take into account the relationships between fighters and their operating areas on a global scale. If integrated into analyses, seas, deserts or steppes would help overcome the "European" dichotomy between lowland war and mountain war.

A generation of young researchers has been engaged in the studies of cases and phenomena that challenge traditional national categories. Nonetheless, these approaches remain dependent on regional
and national case studies, a framework that cannot be ignored. Furthermore, the access to many sources and their comparison is conditioned by the knowledge of several languages. The delicate but
invigorating articulation between "global" and "local" does not seem possible without a pooling of efforts and a confrontation of perspectives. This is the objective of the workshop organised by the
“Greater War” network in Brest, at the Université de Bretagne : to help fuel the dialectical effort of young researchers studying these fronts and theatres often seen as « secondary » or « peripheral ».
Postgraduate students and early career scholars (from second year Master’s students to scholars whose doctorate has been awarded within the last three years) are invited to participate in round table
discussions about papers which will have previously circulated amongst all participants. Each participant will comment the work of another early career researcher, with the moderation of senior scholars.

These papers may address one or many of the indicated theatres (amongst others):
- Middle East Front (Caucasus, Iraq, Egypt, etc.)
- Balkans, Macedonia
- Atlantic (naval issues)
- Eastern Front
- Latin America
- Asia
- Africa

The organisers will prefer papers addressing the neglected weight of these theatres in strategic decision-making and in the development of a coalition war with global implications. These theatres of operation must also be considered individually, reflecting the specific nature of combat and the living conditions of European or indigenous forces. We will also welcome papers proposing a finer geographical approach, considering both urban/logistical and social/human aspects of these fronts, such as the study of cities like Salonika or Athens.
This decentring would not be complete without an insistence on the home front and on logistical links: how the fronts were fed and furnished, with networks stemming from the metropolis but also
between peripheral theatres themselves. Through the example of Saint-Nazaire, Erwan Le Gall has recently shown that researchers can draw new studies on European ports understood as interfaces receiving human and material reinforcements and redistributing them to the front. The aim of the workshop is therefore to go beyond a simple reunion of studies on different fronts but to question the interconnections between these fronts and that which has been perceived as the epicentre of the conflict.
Finally, the interconnection of these fronts would not be fully apprehended if the circulation of images, objects, and narratives of these distant wars beyond the seas and oceans and their persistence or obliteration in the after-war period were not considered.

Communication proposals (to a maximum of 300 words, accompanied by institutional affiliation and current year of study) should be sent to uneplusgrandeguerre@gmail.com before 20 February, 2019.
After being notified of their acceptance by the scientific committee, the papers (between 6000 and 8000 words) are expected by August 2019, to ensure their circulation before the event, which will take place on 19-29 September 2019 at the Faculté Victor Segalen (Brest).
In order to include a maximum of participants, we welcome videoconference presentations and questions via online live transmission.
We invite participants to explore funding opportunities offered by their home institutions. The organisation will cover accommodation fees, depending on available funds.
The publication of articles issued from these debates is envisaged.

Scientific committee :
- Damien Accoulon (Université Paris Nanterre)
- Julie d’Andurain (Université de Lorraine)
- Fabrice Bouthillon (Université de Bretagne Occidentale)
- Sébastien Carney (Université de Bretagne Occidentale)
- Emmanuelle Cronier (Université Picardie-Jules-Verne)
- Cloé Drieu (EHESS)
- Frédéric Guelton (H.M.A.)
- Franziska Heimburger (Université de Paris Diderot)
- Gwendal Piégais (Université de Bretagne Occidentale)
- Julia Ribeiro Sanchez (Université Paris Nanterre)

Organizing committee :
- Fabrice Bouthillon (Université de Bretagne Occidentale)
- Sébastien Carney (Université de Bretagne Occidentale)
- Gwendal Piégais (Université de Bretagne Occidentale)
- Mathieu Panoryia (Université de Lorraine)

Confirmed keynote : John Horne (Trinity College, Dublin)

Bibliography :
- Julie d’ANDURAIN et Cloé DRIEU, « Par-delà le théâtre européen de 14-18. L’autre Grande Guerre dans le monde musulman », Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée [En ligne], 141|juin 2017, mis en ligne le 25 octobre 2017, consulté le 15 novembre 2018. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/9788.
- Sébastien CARNEY (dir.), 1917-1919, Brest ville Américaine ?, Brest, CRBC, 2018.
- Olivier COMPAGNON, Pierre PURSEIGLE, « Géographies de la mobilisation et territoires de la belligérance durant la Première Guerre mondiale », Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 2016/1 (71e année),
p. 37-64.
- Olivier COMPAGNON, L’adieu à l’Europe. L’Amérique latine et la Grande Guerre, Argentine et Brésil, 1914-1939, Paris, Fayard, 2013.
- Frederick R. DICKINSON, War and National Reinvention: Japan in the Great War, 1914- 1919, Cambridge, Harvard University Asia Center, 1999.
- Cloé DRIEU, « Situation révolutionnaire au Turkestan », Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, n° 135, juillet-septembre 2017.
- Étienne FORESTIER-PEYRAT, « Faire la révolution dans les confins caucasiens », Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, n° 135, juillet-septembre 2017.
- Peter HOLQUIST, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914- 1921, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2002.
- Erwan LE GALL, Saint-Nazaire, les Américains et la guerre totale (1917-1919), Les Cilonautes-Éditions Codex, 2018.
- Jean-Yves LE NAOUR (dir.), Front d’Orient, 1914-1919. Les Soldats oubliés, Actes du colloque européen « Le Front d’Orient. 14-19, les soldats oubliés » tenu les 12 et 13 décembre 2014 à l’auditorium du musée d’histoire de Marseille, Marseille, Éditions Gaussen, 2016.
- Joshua A. SANBORN, Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire, New York, Oxford University Press, 2014.
- Lawrence SONDHAUS, The Great War at Sea: A Naval History of the First World War, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014.
- Kristian Coates ULRICHSEN, The Logistics and Politics of the British Campaigns in the Middle East, 1914-22, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
- Jay WINTER, « The Second Great War, 1917-1923 », Revista Universitaria de Historia Militar, Vol. 7, No 14 (2018), pp. 160-179.

Programm

Kontakt

Damien Accoulon

TU Braunschweig
Schleinitzstraße 13. D-38106 Braunschweig

uneplusgrandeguerre@gmail.com

https://uneplusgrandeguerre.wordpress.com/lereseau/
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