Images at War: Illustrated Periodicals and Constructed Nations (review)

Images at War is an investigation of how the nineteenth-century illustrated press served in the thriving industry of nationality and nation-building. Martin (Professor of Journalism, Carleton University) wisely chooses the epochal events of the summer of 1870 and its Franco-Prussian War as fertile ground for researching press coverage. The volume offers an interesting account of the development of the illustrated press, a brief survey of the political events surrounding the outbreak of the war, analyses of the coverage of the war in papers from France, Germany, and Britain, and attempts to understand how the complex and at times opposing forces of accuracy, profit, ideology, and culture—forces that the conflict itself manipulated and sometimes altered—influenced the production of illustrated newspapers. The work's conclusion—that the illustrated press helped reinforce the powerful drug of nationalism for both literate and nonliterate "consumers"—will not surprise most historians, but will supply yet another powerful support for the emphasis that nationalities and nation-building receive in their work.

Images at War is not really a work of history, however, but an example of the "new scholarship" that evaluates a phenomenon, in this case the work of the illustrated press, according to modern disciplinary theory. The author is not a historian, and is on shaky ground summarizing the admittedly complex maneuvers that produced the War of 1870. Uncertainty of detail perhaps produced such apparent tautologies as describing the relationship between France and Britain as being derived from "the engagement of the French Army alongside British troops during the Crimean War—-bolstered by France's aid in the British victory over Russia at Inkerman" (p. 36); or in describing Prussia's gaining of three duchies in North Germany—"nearly the entire region north of the Main River"—as "an important asset in the formation of the Confederation of North Germany" (p. 35). A second historical problem of the work is its continued suggestion of determinism: France, "no doubt ignoring that it was at the end of the Second Empire" (p. 32) was unknowingly a part of Bismarck's unification strategy. Indeed the entire "Ems Despatch" episode was "a carefully planned strategy" (p. 33) by Bismarck.

As to the theories in play, Martin leans heavily on "notions of rupture" in the work of the French scholar Paul Ricoeur, and on "discourse analysis." "Rupture" is a "strategy" used in the construction of collective memory, and refers to the need to suppress or reconstruct aspects of reality. "Discourse" refers to both written and illustrated "texts," and their interplay with the consumer and with each other: thus, "The 19th century commercialization of the press led to the commodification of its discourse" (p. 18).

The utility of this approach will emerge to each reader. This reviewer can only wish that less time had been spent on the procrustean bed of theory, and more on the interesting story of how illustrated newspapers were assembled thirteen decades ago.