Penser la Grande Guerre: un essai d'historiographie (review)

This synthesis begins by noting the continuing fascination that the war exerts as evidenced by its immense bibliography and a plethora of films, documentaries and exhibitions. The aim is to structure and analyse this proliferation by charting why certain types of approaches have been privileged at different historical moments, and how these approaches to the construction of the historical 'object' that the war represents have developed and changed over the course of a century. Three generations of historians are identified. The first, who experienced the conflict, focused on the conflict between nation states, and on military and diplomatic history. The second, writing after the Second World War, emphasized social history as the identification of power moved away from individuals to social groups, privileging a history of mass movements and of societies at war. The third, writing towards the end of the twentieth century, emphasize notions of violence and suffering, placing the war in a perspective informed by later developments in the twentieth century. The authors also communicate a real sense of the dynamism of historical debate, and in doing so provide a serious reflection on the nature and evolution of history as a discipline. Most welcome is the opening onto a comparative dimension that is sketched out here. As the authors note in the final chapter, the vast majority of histories of the First World War still remain focused on one geographical and cultural area with all the partial (in both senses) focus that this entails. This analysis goes some way to suggesting how a European history of the war might develop, while noting that a truly global perspective is still nonexistent. The recognition of the place of such varied cultural production as Churchill's memoirs, Barbusse's Le Feu, the British war poets, letters and postcards, painting, publications for tourist visits to the battlefields, and television history, notably in Britain, should interest those concerned with literary and cultural studies as well as historians. There is also an attention to language and cultural differences, rare among more traditional historians, and to the ways in which British, French and German national cultures have developed different ways of thinking and writing about the war, particularly around notions of victory and defeat, necessity and futility. Penser la Grande Guerre fulfils the description of both its title and subtitle. The survey of the historiography of the war is presented with authority and insight, while showing an awareness of necessary omissions. A wide-ranging bibliography, thematic index and index of names add to the usefulness of this aspect of the book. Beyond that, the authors provide a multi-faceted and sensitive approach to thinking about the war. Evoking Pierre Renouvin, a war veteran himself and essential in the historiography of the war in the 1920s and 1930s, the authors conclude that his readers end by feeling more intelligent and more tolerant, and posing the rhetorical question of whether there can be a better ambition for any historian. Prost and Winter have continued the work of Renouvin.