Guerre De Research Articles

‘Flying the late King’s Colours’: Royalist privateering during the First Anglo-Dutch War, 1652–1654

This article examines the service of royalist privateers during the First Anglo-Dutch War, 1652–4. Most scholarship has focused on the remnants of Prince Rupert’s royalist fleet and its eventual retreat to France in 1653, which is taken as the conclusion of the naval theatre of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, 1639–55. Rather than focusing on Prince Rupert, this article identifies the principal royalist privateers operating outside of his fleet. In turn it demonstrates that these royalists pursued a vigorous guerre de course against the Commonwealth and Protectorate, continuing the Civil Wars at sea. This article demonstrates the ways in which the Cromwellian navy dealt with these privateers and concludes by arguing that they operated within a wider royalist naval strategy spearheaded by the exiled Charles II and James, Duke of York.

Seeing the War Coming

Staging, writing, editing – war. In the sequence of these three acts, the path of this essay unfolds. From the play La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu we get the idea that war is a spectral presence hovering everywhere. As difficult as it is to see, it appears inescapable. Its ambivalence questions the human gaze itself in its in-ability to see war coming, even when the signs are more than evident. The analysis of the regimes of visibility that, yesterday as today, superintend the event of a conflict constitutes the point of arrival of this interrogation.

Inside the US Navy of 1812-1815 by William S. Dudley

Reviewed by: Inside the US Navy of 1812-1815 by William S. Dudley Michael A. Verney (bio) U.S. Navy, Military history, Naval history, War of 1812, Logistics Inside the US Navy of 1812-1815. By William S. Dudley. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. Pp. 348. Cloth, $54.95.) In the vast field of the early U.S. republic, there are few acres better tilled than the naval aspects of the War of 1812. The U.S. Navy's performance in that conflict has fascinated scholars for generations. Given the extensive historiography on the subject, it may be surprising to hear of a historian with a new angle—particularly one who does not examine the topic in terms of race, class, gender, culture, emotions, empire, borderlands, law, or citizenship. Nonetheless, William S. Dudley accomplishes this with his new book, Inside the US Navy of 1812-1815. His central theme is logistics or naval administration. His goal, in his words, is "to explain what it took to build, maintain, man, fit out, provision, and send fighting ships to sea for extended periods of time" (xii). Unlike many naval histories, much of his book stays in port. Inside the US Navy recounts how Madison's three secretaries of the Navy and their commanders managed the Navy's material and human resources. These included recruiting and deploying officers and seamen; constructing and overseeing shipyards; building vessels; and ordering and dispatching weapons, cannons, powder, rations, and medical supplies. Successive chapters detail the organizational and clerical structures of the Navy Department; the challenges of managing the oceanic, Great Lakes, and Gulf Coast theaters of the war; the effects of the British blockade on naval finances and operations; and the lives and hardships of naval seamen. Dudley's central argument is that the outcome of naval battles often hinged on logistics. This was especially true on the Great Lakes and on Lake Champlain, where U.S. and British forces competed to build and launch freshwater navies. While leadership in battle was important, Dudley demonstrates that commanding officers also had to be adept administrators. Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's squadron, for example, [End Page 124] emerged victorious in the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813 not only through Perry's daring change of ship command but also through meticulous planning with the full backing of the Navy Department and U.S. Army officers. In contrast, British shortcomings in supplying their own Lake Erie squadron hampered Commodore Robert Barclay's ability to contend with Perry's forces. Among Barclay's challenges was the diverse array of ordnance aboard his flagship, which made it harder for the gun crews to deliver the right balls and powder bags to each class of cannon during the battle. A similar dynamic was at play on Lake Champlain, where Commodore Thomas Macdonough's ability to surmount a "logistical nightmare in recruiting sailors, ordering provisions, and requisitioning guns" contributed to his success in that theater (205). While Dudley pays close attention to how logistics shaped the U.S. Navy's victories, he also discusses logistical failures. In common with most naval historians, he is critical of Democratic-Republican leaders like Thomas Jefferson and Albert Gallatin for neglecting the Navy in the opening years of the nineteenth century. He recounts how the British blockade contained much of the U.S. Navy, forcing Secretary William Jones to invest in new war machines and in what Benjamin Armstrong has called "guerre de razzia" or war by raiding."1 Dudley believes that naval forces could have contributed much more to the defense of New Orleans in 1814 and 1815 had they been adequately supported. Finally, and most importantly, Dudley narrates how the strains of war led to new modes of naval organization. Managing the logistics of the Navy Department was an onerous, even herculean, task. It broke Madison's first Secretary of the Navy, Paul Hamilton, and wore out his more qualified successor, William Jones. Near the end of his tenure in late 1814, an exhausted Jones drafted a bill to reorganize and expand the Navy Department. Congress acted swiftly on his proposals, establishing a Board of Navy Commissioners in 1815 to assist the Secretary with...

Haiti's Paper War: Post-independence Writing, Civil War, and the Making of the Republic, 1804–1954 by Chelsea Stieber

Reviewed by: Haiti's Paper War: Post-independence Writing, Civil War, and the Making of the Republic, 1804–1954 by Chelsea Stieber James J. Fisher Haiti's Paper War: Post-independence Writing, Civil War, and the Making of the Republic, 1804–1954. By Chelsea Stieber. New York: New York University Press, 2020. ISBN 978-1-4798-025-9. 380 pp. $30.00 US. Chelsea Stieber's Haiti's Paper War offers an incisive examination of Haiti's guerre de plume between the royalist governments of Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe and the republican governments of Alexandre Pétion and Jean-Pierre Boyer, as well as its legacies and repercussions. She takes as her source base the intellectual production of Haitian writers, artists, and political actors from the birth of an independent Haiti to the growth of a fascist, nationalist movement that culminated in the Duvalier dictatorships. In using these sources, Stieber traces the development of the Haitian Revolution's aftermath in order to demonstrate the "contestation, mutual definition, and continual (re)inscription" (2) of Haiti's meaning throughout the nineteenth century and beyond. She points out that although the Haitian Revolution has often been cast as the instantiation of a radical, liberal, and universal project that culminated in the founding of the Haitian Republic, this ignores the realities and internal tensions at play in the Revolution's aftermath and has established what the author calls the "myth of the universal Haitian Republic" (130). Stieber's innovative use of documents that have previously gone underexamined greatly contributes to our understanding of Haitian politics and history, particularly the guerre de plume. Stieber argues that the radical critique of Western Enlightenment liberalism offered by Dessalines and his political descendants has resonated in Haitian society and politics since 1804 (5–6). Likewise, she asserts that the assassination of Dessalines by Pétion and the republicans in 1806 has been viewed as a "historic stain" on the independence of the nation, remaining a key theme that later Haitian writers would return to again [End Page 170] and again (221–222). Ultimately, she concludes that the heritage of Haiti's radical critique of the Enlightenment and the resulting integral nationalism continued to resonate among a faction of Haitian thinkers, becoming a sentiment that François Duvalier would later tap into (245). Stieber's arguments add to a thriving body of scholarship that has examined the Haitian Revolution and its impact on intellectual production in the Black Atlantic.1 Stieber's examination of the radical critique of the Enlightenment in the foundation of Haiti points to the importance of the 1804/1806 divide. While 1804 represented a "radical anticolonial gesture," which Dessalinean writing helped consolidate, 1806 has too often been cast by historians as part of the "myth of the inevitable republic," ignoring the continuation of Dessalinean thought in Haitian politics (3). Her discussion of how Dessalinean political thought continued into the nineteenth century and was reinvented in the nationalist movement of the twentieth century contributes to our understanding of a longue durée in Haitian national politics, especially during less studied periods, such as the reign of Faustin Soulouque, the seventh Haitian president (and later emperor). Likewise, her following of how Dessalinean thought informs a longer history of Haitian political thought adds to the historical writing on Black radical thought in the Atlantic World (6–7). Such a tracing of Dessalines-inspired political philosophy can be seen especially in Stieber's examination of how the Haitian Revolution became a "central event for artistic reimagining in black radical thought" because as a subject, "it carries with it the full weight of its Enlightenment critique" (8). Similar examples of Haiti's uses in art might be noted in recent studies such as Ada Ferrer's Freedom's Mirror and Alyssa Sepinwall's Slave Revolt on Screen.2 One of Stieber's overarching arguments is that writing, particularly by Dessalineans, was used outside Haiti as an "anticolonial weapon" and internally as a "force of unity" (25). Writing is defined broadly in this sense, encompassing both traditional writing (newspapers, pamphlets, memos, etc.) and portraiture and other images (12, 15). Such mobilization of writing, art, and symbolic representation repeats throughout...

Scott et Zelda Fitzgerald

Scott et Zelda Fitzgerald

Songs of Sorrow: Bardic Women in Girodet, Ossian, and Staël

Songs of Sorrow:Bardic Women in Girodet, Ossian, and Staël Tili Boon Cuillé (bio) As we look at Anne-Louis Girodet's Apothéose des héros français morts pour la patrie pendant la guerre de la liberté displayed in the Salon of 1802, commissioned by Napoleon for Malmaison, and inspired by the epics attributed to his favorite poet Ossian, our eye is drawn toward the Scots bard and the French general at the canvas's center (Figure 1). The dove of peace betwixt Odin's eagle and the French cockerel above and the vessels raised in a toast below intensify our focus. We are also vividly aware of the contrast between the Romantic style of Fingal's troops on the left and the Neoclassical style of Napoleon's on the right.1 If we wrest our eyes from the vertical line that divides the painting, however, they are drawn to the winged victory flying down from above and the myriads of maidens surging up from below. In his gloss of the painting on the occasion of its return to Malmaison after a century's sojourn in Germany, Jean Bourguignon considers these maidens evocative of the Valkyries, on the one hand, and mythological painting, on the other.2 We may, accordingly, be inclined to view them as nereids or muses. Yet they also caught the eye of Girodet's pupil Hyacinthe Louis Aubry-Lecomte, for they are featured in a disproportionate number of the lithographs in his Collection de têtes d'étude of 1822, where he identifies them by name. What becomes apparent in these studies is that the maidens bear instruments (Figures 2–3). Who are these women and what was their role? Women appear in interpolated love stories throughout Ossian's poetry. Some die for men, others die at men's hands, still others take their own lives or simply fade away. Whether female warriors or hapless victims, they are uniformly of melancholy disposition. Yet beyond their fierce loyalty, moral fortitude, and tragic fates, these women are also [End Page 159] bards.3 Cómala—whose face is concealed by the eagle's wing in Girodet's painting but whose Celtic rebec is clearly visible—was betrothed to Fingal when he fell in battle. While all that is left of Fingal is a vision, what remains of Cómala is a voice.4 Malvina, betrothed to Ossian's son Oscar, likewise did not survive him. Leith Davis describes her as "the addressee of many of Ossian's poems and, more importantly, a bard in her own right."5 Girodet depicts Malvina alongside Ossian's wife Evirallin, both playing citheras.6 Evirallin was also a bard in her own right, for Ossian and Carril recall the days when they blended voices and she "touched the harp of music."7 While Ossian, Carril, and Ullin sing the tales that comprise Fingal, the epic nevertheless resonates with women's "songs of grief." Fingal's narrative structure embeds Brassolis's song of Grudar within Carril's song of Brassolis within Ossian's song of Carril. The metadiegetic bard is a woman.8 Girodet's painting, depicting women armed with instruments rather than weapons, recalls their status not as warriors or mourners but rather as musicians. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, Apothéose des héros français morts pour la patrie pendant la guerre de la liberté [The Apotheosis of French Heroes Who Died for Their Country During the War of Liberty], 1802. Chateau de Malmaison et Bois-Preau. (Photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY) [End Page 160] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Hyacinthe Louis Victor Jean-Baptiste Aubry-Lecomte, Comala, Plate 8 from Collection de têtes d'étude, 1821–1822. Chateau de Malmaison et Bois-Preau. (Photo: RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Hyacinthe Louis Victor Jean-Baptiste Aubry-Lecomte, Evirallina, Malvina, Plate 15 from Collection de têtes d'étude, 1821–1822. Chateau de Malmaison et Bois-Preau. (Photo: RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY) [End Page 161] Germaine de Staël heralded...

Nouveaux entretiens avec Maryse Condé: écrivain et témoin de son temps par Françoise Pfaff

Reviews 209 how in the face of senseless violence the picaresque pragmatics of “getting by” pervaded the Great War literary and pictorial imaginary, and how texts refashioned an erstwhile Spanish narrative mode known for its blend of epic “adventure time” and routine “everyday time” (19) and for its peripatetic working-class or peasant protagonist, who encounters an array of human types while remaining a non-entity or“everyman”(24). Accessible and witty, this exploration of French cultural memory does much to refocus our understanding of la guerre de 14–18 by retrieving the nimble-spirited ingenuity that sustained French society until 1930, when pessimistic narratives of heroic victimization displaced it. Johns Hopkins University (MD) Derek Schilling Pfaff, Françoise. Nouveaux entretiens avec Maryse Condé: écrivain et témoin de son temps. Paris: Karthala, 2016. ISBN 978-2-8111-1707-8. Pp. 200. Françoise Pfaff’s 1993 Entretiens avec Maryse Condé introduced the author to the public at a crucial time in her career and presented an exploration of the relationship between Condé’s life and her work as writer, academic and activist. Nouveaux entretiens updates readers on Condé’s trajectory since then, as she reflects on events that have transformed the world she engages in her work and reviews with Pfaff her publications since 1993 in an engaging give-and-take style that testifies to their twentyyear friendship. Some topics were seen in the first volume—the writer’s beginnings; views on feminism, the Black Diaspora, and racism. Drawing on interviews since 1993, Pfaff invites Condé to elaborate on other questions, like her relationship to the French language and what she meant by the statement “j’écris en Maryse Condé” (64). They discuss the intertextuality in her works, her ironic style, and a concept favored by Condé,“le cannibalisme littéraire”(60–61). Some views remain the same. Condé is as provocative as ever, nudging her readers to question both their view of the world and the one they think Condé is presenting. Other views have changed. The passage of time has taught her that a writer does not have to travel to discover human truths and has led her to query:“Est-ce qu’un voyage intérieur n’est pas aussi valable qu’un voyage physique?” (39). She is also less critical of her native Antilles and more realistic in her relationship with Africa. Condé’s approach to the world has not changed, but the world has, and current events have changed her approach to literature: “Maintenant, il faut concevoir une littérature qui ait la puissance de la vie sans tomber dans des travers de journalistes” (24). Globalization is less abstract to her as she considers writing about the young Martinican woman killed by a Malian terrorist on the streets of Paris (22– 23). Condé is no less politically active, but her activism has evolved into a passion for writing stories for children: “Je crois que c’est un reste de militantisme!” (158). Discussing with Condé her novels and children’s stories published since 1993, Pfaff provides both an overview of these works and insight into what inspired them. As Madeleine Cottenet-Hage writes in the introduction, Pfaff’s questions reveal a deep understanding of Condé’s writings and of her unique voice in world literature. This volume introduces new readers to an artist and activist who feels deeply about the human condition; readers who know Condé’s work will enjoy being in the company of her voice again. Wake Forest University (NC) Sarah Barbour Picherit, Hervé G. Le livre des écorchés: Proust, Céline et la Grande Guerre. Paris: CNRS, 2016. ISBN 978-2-271-08995-3. Pp. 368. Comment Proust et Céline,qui furent contemporains,répondirent-ils aux épreuves personnelles, familiales et sociales qui traversèrent leurs vies? C’est par cette question que ce livre rapproche deux écrivains qui semblent avoir peu en commun. Dans la première partie, Picherit définit tout d’abord le concept de “peau”, qui sert de fil conducteur à sa lecture. Cette “peau” est un imaginaire qui enveloppe, protège et structure un individu, une famille ou une communauté et que diverses catastrophes peuvent “écorcher...

The Art of Survival: France and the Great War Picaresque by Libby Murphy

charme propre” (266). Que diraient ces voyageurs s’ils revenaient aujourd’hui et voyaient les gratte-ciel qui ont remplacé les tentes et les puits de pétrole qui occupent le chimérique désert? Auburn University (AL) Samia I. Spencer Murphy, Libby. The Art of Survival: France and the Great War Picaresque. New Haven: Yale UP, 2016. ISBN 978-0-300-21751-3. Pp. 279. Were the countless French infantrymen who after summer 1914 marched off to war along flag-lined thoroughfares so many consenting victims resigned to the patriotic necessity of bloodshed? Seconding historian Leonard Smith who questions the Great War metanarrative as a tragedy of victimization, Libby Murphy restores to consciousness a neglected constant of wartime experience: even as they obeyed orders, ordinary soldiers were overwhelmingly concerned with saving their hide. Rather than epic or elegy, it was the picaresque mode—concretized by the haphazard wanderings of LouisFerdinand Céline’s Bardamu, a morally pliant being if ever there was one—that best exemplified the improvisational, come-what-may attitude of the French foot soldier portrayed in the literary cultures of the day. Unrivaled in his mastery of le système D and always seeking a lucky break, the Gallic picaro-in-arms comes across in Murphy’s generous account as an irreverent trickster whose independence of thought and, on occasion, of action places him at odds with his imagined German counterparts, strictly beholden to military authority, or to the phlegmatic Britons who sheepishly “muddle through” the war. But it is those armchair patriots à la Maurice Barrès who attracted the most biting criticism: as tenacious as a trench rat himself, le poilu saw through hypocrisy and refused to accept shirkers’ incessant propagandizing, or bourrage de crâne. Building on an impressive command of Great War historiography from Jean Norton Cru’s Témoins (1929) to Stéphane Audouin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, Murphy roundly takes issue with literary critic Evelyn Cobley (and presumably Pierre Schoentjes, author of Fictions de la Grande Guerre [2009]) who solemnly cast the foot soldier as brutalized victim. Laughter—given full literary expression through satire— was inseparable from the titular French “art of survival.” Eight chapters place in dialogue literary and journalistic texts from Le Crapouillot to Le Canard enchaîné, dime novels, illustrated caricatures, and film (released in France in 1919 as Charlot soldat, Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms is a lesson in picaresque resourcefulness). This eclecticism has the merit of desacralizing the Great War literary corpus: satirist Georges de La Fouchardière’s serialized Le bouif and Léon Werth’s messily episodic Clavel soldat receive more generous airings than do Henri Barbusse’s canonical Le feu or Céline’s début novel. Murphy draws apposite comparisons with British, German, and Czech sources; thus Bruce Bairnsfather’s Old Bill drawings stand alongside Francisque Poulbot’s depictions of Montmartre street children giddily playing war. At stake is 208 FRENCH REVIEW 91.3 Reviews 209 how in the face of senseless violence the picaresque pragmatics of “getting by” pervaded the Great War literary and pictorial imaginary, and how texts refashioned an erstwhile Spanish narrative mode known for its blend of epic “adventure time” and routine “everyday time” (19) and for its peripatetic working-class or peasant protagonist, who encounters an array of human types while remaining a non-entity or“everyman”(24). Accessible and witty, this exploration of French cultural memory does much to refocus our understanding of la guerre de 14–18 by retrieving the nimble-spirited ingenuity that sustained French society until 1930, when pessimistic narratives of heroic victimization displaced it. Johns Hopkins University (MD) Derek Schilling Pfaff, Françoise. Nouveaux entretiens avec Maryse Condé: écrivain et témoin de son temps. Paris: Karthala, 2016. ISBN 978-2-8111-1707-8. Pp. 200. Françoise Pfaff’s 1993 Entretiens avec Maryse Condé introduced the author to the public at a crucial time in her career and presented an exploration of the relationship between Condé’s life and her work as writer, academic and activist. Nouveaux entretiens updates readers on Condé’s trajectory since then, as she reflects on events that have transformed the world she engages in her work and...

The life and afterlife of French WWI songs: National identity then and now

Wartime music provides clear testimonial to the importance of melody and text in times of conflict. In the case of the Great War, which introduced the world to weapons of nightmarish capability, carefree popular ballads often stood shoulder to shoulder with sombre lyrics that called attention to the tragedy unfolding in the trenches. The first part of this article surveys the themes of French songs of the WWI era itself, such as ‘Ah! C’est la guerre’, ‘La Madelon’ and ‘La Chanson de Craonne’. The second concentrates on ‘La Madelon’, which underwent numerous transformations in response to events during the interwar years and World War II. The final section explores why the Great War took hold as a focus of French popular music in the late 1950s and continues to assert its presence to this day. A surprising number of contemporary artists have recorded World War I-themed songs, such as ‘La Guerre de 14–18’, ‘Jaurès’, ‘Verdun’, ‘Le No Man’s Land’, ‘Tranchée 1914’ and ‘La Chanson de Craonne’. What cultural phenomena might account for this in addition to the urge to memorialise? Examination of the internal and external forces that continue to fuel the ‘Grand débat sur l’identité nationale’ makes clear why songs of the Great War appeal to a citizenry determined to preserve the values of ‘Frenchness’ in the face of evolving demographics and increasing ‘Europeanisation’.

Spanish Naval Strategy and the United States, 1763–1819

This article examines the naval strategies conceived by the Spanish government to deal with Anglo-American expansion in North America. The political, social and diplomatic aspects of this process have been thoroughly approached by historiography. However, its impact on Spanish naval policy has received little attention. After the Louisiana purchase, the Spanish navy made a plan for a full-scale war against the United States, involving battlefleet action, blockade, amphibious operations and guerre de course. The War of the Third Coalition prevented it from taking place, and the Napoleonic invasion of 1808 practically obliterated the Spanish Navy. After the restoration of the Spanish Monarchy there were renewed tensions with the United States, and in 1816 the project was redrawn, albeit on a more modest scale. This article examines the contents of the war plans in detail, in order to understand the objectives of Spanish grand strategy and the manner in which naval forces were to be employed. Also, it aims at understanding the intellectual origins of the ideas expressed by the authors of these plans. Finally, it aims to underline the consequences that the failure to implement an effective diplomatic, military and naval strategy had for Spain's position in North America.

Reporting on 1962: the Evolution of pied-noir Identity across 50 Years of Print Media

This article offers a longitudinal review of print media representations of the European population in Algeria, from the final months of the Algerian war to commemorative coverage of the 50th anniversary in 2012. It traces the evolution of the métropole's relatively hostile view of the Français d'Algérie as a ‘foreign’ people to the depiction of an integrated group whose voice has become incorporated within official memory. With reference to the anniversary coverage of 2012, it argues that while the pied-noir lobby was partially successful in persuading the media to adopt aspects of their historical narrative, the socio-political context of the ‘guerre de mémoires’ produced challenges to that narrative, with the relativisation of the pied-noir experience as one aspect of a broader memorial mosaic of the war.

The Dutch wars of independence: warfare and commerce in the Netherlands, 1570-1680

In The Dutch Wars of Independence, Marjolein ’t Hart assesses the success of the Dutch in establishing their independence through their eighty years struggle with Spain ‐ one of the most remarkable achievements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Other rebellions troubled mighty powers of this epoch, but none resulted in the establishment of an independent, republican state. The volume investigates thoroughly the economic profitability of warfare in the early modern period and shows how smaller, commercialized states could sustain prolonged war violence common to that period. It moves beyond traditional explanations of Dutch success in warfare focusing on geography, religion, diplomacy while presenting an up‐to‐date overview and interpretation of the Dutch Revolt, the Anglo‐Dutch Wars and the Guerre de Hollande.

Canada's First World War, 1914–2014

This fall marks 100 years since the First Canadian Contingent sailed for Europe. In anticipation of the anniversary of the First World War, the Canadian Historical Review prepared two special features to highlight past and current thinking about the war and its place in the journal and in Canadian history generally. The first, published in March, is a bibliography of the more than three-dozen articles directly related to the war that have appeared in the chr since it began publication in 1920, less than two years after the armistice. Each article in the bibliography will remain Open Access. You will find the bibliography complete with hyperlinks on our website at http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/chr.95.1.97 . To continue this impressive tradition of scholarship and prompt new and equally diverse work on the war and related themes in its pages, the chr is pleased to publish the second special feature in this issue. Three scholars actively engaged in the study of the war were asked to contribute interpretative and broad, but unavoidably selective, reflections on how historians have written about Canada and the war. We invited a fourth to comment on these historiographic pieces and a fifth to help frame our readers' reflections on the commemorative and other public initiatives that have already begun and will intensify in the coming months. We are delighted that our authors accepted the challenge and trust our readers will find their work as useful and stimulating as we and our peer-reviewers have. This special feature also marks the inauguration of a new section of the chr, Historical Perspectives. This occasional section will showcase discussion among multiple scholars of important topics and historiographies. Mark Osborne Humphries opens with “Between Commemoration and History: The Historiography of the Canadian Corps and Military Overseas,” focusing on the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) and the relationship between historians writing on the military overseas and those analyzing the home front ( http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/chr.95.3.384 . Amy Shaw then examines how historians have understood the contribution of nurses and other women, motherhood and family, and aspects of mourning in her “Expanding the Narrative: A First World War with Women, Children, and Grief” ( http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/chr.95.3.398 ). Mourad Djebabla's “Historiographie francophone de la Première Guerre mondiale: écrire la Grande Guerre de 1914–1918 en français au Canada et au Québec” discusses French-language scholarship as related to the war, especially concerning Quebec ( http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/chr.95.3.407 ). Tim Cook's wide-ranging “Battles of the Imagined Past: Canada's Great War and Memory” reflects on the topics of the initial three contributors and considers four possible narratives: the war as a terrific and useless slaughter, nation-building tool, divisive event, and absent event http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/chr.95.3.417 . Like Cook, Christopher Moore's thought-provoking “1914 in 2014” considers the collective memory of the war and historians' contribution to it, asking “What we commemorate when we commemorate the First World War?” What might a counter-narrative to the dominant view of Canada's decision to enter the war in 1914 as natural and nationalizing contribute? ( http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/chr.95.3.427 )

Victoriano Lorenzo, the cholo guerrillero

Victoriano Lorenzo was the only Panamanian general executed for his role in Colombia’s Thousand Days War (1899–1902). Sometimes termed a “cholo guerrillero”, Lorenzo led Indigenous peoples into battle in alliance with the liberals against the conservatives who had taken power in Colombia. Lorenzo’s actions provide an example of the complicated relationships that Indigenous leaders sought to negotiate with liberals in Latin America at the turn of the twentieth century. Observers have long debated whether a political ideology motivated Lorenzo’s involvement with the liberals, and whether he can best be understood as a caudillo, nationalist, or socialist. An examination of his attitudes toward ethnic identities and women’s involvement in his struggle reveals that the actions of marginalized peoples were a primary factor that informed his political engagement.Victoriano Lorenzo est le seul général panamien à avoir été exécuté en raison de son rôle dans la Guerre de Mille Jours (1889–1902) en Grande Colombie. Lorenzo, qui fait partie de ceux que l’on appelle parfois les ‘guerrillero cholo’, a entraîné les peuples indigènes dans la lutte, menée aux côtés des libéraux, contre les conservateurs qui avaient pris le pouvoir en Colombie. Les actes de Lorenzo nous offrent un exemple des relations complexes que les chefs indigènes cherchaient à négocier avec les libéraux en Amérique Latine au début du vingtième siècle. Les observateurs ont longtemps débattu pour déterminer si l’engagement de Lorenzo aux côtés des libéraux était l’effet d’une idéologie politique, ou bien s’il faut voir en lui un caudillo, un nationaliste, ou un socialiste. L’examen de son attitude envers les minorités ethniques et l’implication des femmes dans son combat révèlent que les actions des communautés marginalisées ont joué un rôle crucial dans le développement de son engagement politique.

Stève Sainlaude. La France et la Confédération sudiste (1861–1865): La question de la reconnaissance diplomatique pendant la guerre de Sécession. Stève Sainlaude. Le gouvernement impérial et la guerre de Sécession (1861–1865): L'action diplomatique

Steve Sainlaude, La France et la Confederation sudiste (1861-1865): La question de la reconnaissance diplomatique pendant la guerre de Secession. (Histoire, Textes, Societes.) Paris: L'Harmattan. 2011. Pp. 244. €24.50. ; Steve Sainlaude, Le gouvernement imperial et la guerre de Secession (1861-1865): L'action diplomatique. (Histoire, Textes, Societes.) Paris: L'Harmattan. 2011. Pp. 145. €15.50. These two books are, to come to the point right away, blockbusters--path-breaking, fascinating analyses of French policy during the time of the American Civil War (1861 to 1865). Each runs over with important revisionist theses. The mastery of many of the materials treated, the boldness of statement, the relative fresh and directness of style, and the subtle undertone of much of the argument—all these are the hallmark’s of Sainlaude’s scholarship. The first volume is addressed to an examination of the outstanding policies pursued by Imperial France: how its neutrality should be maintained (and indeed whether it was wise to do so); the manifold attempts made by the government to mediate an end to the conflict; and finally (and by far the most important) the personal initiatives pursued by Napoleon III. Sainlaude examines each of these initiatives in turn and attempts to identify the reasons for their failure. At bottom, all were misconceived, shortsighted, and deleterious in the highest degree to the development of coherent diplomacy. But beyond that, and perhaps more important still, they floundered because of the profound and appalling personal deficiencies of the figure involved. Thus: “It was impossible to understand the intentions of the sovereign

The Count of Chanteleine: A Tale of the French Revolution by Jules Verne (review)

Reviewed by: The Count of Chanteleine: A Tale of the French Revolution by Jules Verne Marie-Hélène Huet Jules Verne , The Count of Chanteleine: A Tale of the French Revolution. Trans. Edward Baxter. Ed. Brian Taves. The Palik Series. Atlanta (GA): Bear Manor Fiction, 2011. 185 pp. Popularity and literary recognition do not often go hand in hand. The works of Jules Verne, one of the most widely read French authors in the world, paid the price for their success: free adaptations and poor translations all but obliterated the original quality of Verne's complex œuvre. For an entire generation, [End Page 288] Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea erased the prodigious novel that had inspired Rimbaud, Raymond Roussel, and Georges Perec. But if fanciful movies and shortened versions of Verne's novels continue to flood the market, a number of scholarly editions have recently been published by Oxford University Press, Wesleyan University Press, and the University of Nebraska Press. The Palik Series, sponsored by the North American Jules Verne Society, joins these presses with a specific goal: to publish first-time English translations of Verne's most overlooked works, plays, or short stories that throw a new light on the writer's inexhaustible imagination. One of their recent publications, The Count of Chanteleine: A Tale of the French Revolution, deserves special attention. Verne's tale of war, treason, and patriotic fervor is one of his early works (it was published in 1864 in the Musée des familles). The novella takes place in Brittany during the 1793 Vendée war against the Republic, and exploits themes familiar to those who have read Balzac's Les Chouans, or Hugo's later Quatrevingt-treize. Two ideals pitted against each other: on one side the Republican Army receiving orders from Paris; on the other, disorganized groups of poorly armed local nobles, peasants, and priests fighting for their traditions. Like Balzac, Verne explores the betrayals that divided camps, families, villages, but on a more intimate scale. Verne's account of the solidarity between the nobility and the peasants is also distinct from Hugo's description of an arrogant Lantenac leading a fanatical crowd of illiterate peasants. Still, similar themes appear in their works: the need for confession; the value of sacrifice and redemption. As Hugo later will, Verne seizes on the symbolic importance of landscapes dominated by church steeples (anyone familiar with Batz-sur-Mer will recognize Verne's precise description of the church seen from afar as the most recognizable landmark of the region). Verne, however, opts for a happy ending, and his hero is saved from the guillotine by the events of 9 Thermidor. There is also a distinct quality to Verne's story: he grew up in Nantes, where the memory of Carrier's noyades endures, and where many family traditions still evoke ancestors divided between Bleus and Blancs. The guerre de Vendée fully belongs to local history, with its heroes glorified in image books and popular songs. The plot moves at a fast pace on a topic the author clearly knew well, not just from historical books but from oral transmission and personal knowledge of the land. Among the works inspired by the guerre de Vendée, Barbey d'Aurevilly's Le Chevalier des Touches (published the same year as The Count of Chanteleine), is perhaps the closest to Verne's intimate rendering of the war [End Page 289] against the Republic. Both authors side with the Chouans, those who have remained loyal to their priests and lost everything in return. But Barbey is an ultra-royalist, Verne is not. In the opening scene of the Count of Chanteleine, Chanteleine fights for the people. He does not lead a grandiose scheme with a tactical battle plan, but a desperate effort to save the innocents from the devastation of the Republican army. At some point in the novel, as Brian Taves notes in his remarkable introduction, Verne gives some credit to the Committee of Public Safety, the only effective government in a country attacked from all sides. One of the last chapters gives a brief overview of the Vendée war, quoting De Maistre and...

Corps sanglants, souffrants et macabres, XVIe–XVIIe siècle éd. par Christine Bouteille-Meister, Kjerstin Aukrust

but sought to build something new and positive; Garnier’s Spatialism distinguished itself with supranational intentions. The six essays in the opening chapter, “Langue poétique, langue maternelle ,” comment on Garnier’s poetic apprenticeship and his efforts to revive literature in Picard, helping to save the language from oblivion. In 1966, Garnier served as literary editor for Eklitra, a new journal devoted to Picard; thence and into the twenty-first century, he discusses Picard and composes even Spatialist poetry in it. The next section, “Pierre et Ilse Garnier: œuvres croisées,” presents four articles about their collaborations and, among other interesting aspects, examines the international blend of Ilse’s Germany and Pierre’s France. Stressing Pierre Garnier’s rejection of language as a national political construct, the discussants examine how the marriage of the two writers and their bilingual texts become statements of supranational reconciliation. Most important and useful in this section is the analysis of several of their Spatialist works. Avant-garde works of this nature are difficult to explicate, and rarely attract the attention that this volume devotes to them. Gaby Gappmayr’s essay deals with the question of space around the physical word on the page, while Alfons Knauth discusses Spatialism as supranationalism and explores the poetic space created by the Garniers’ French-German interlecte. Today’s graphic design studios make page layout seem easy, but not long ago it was difficult to get words and letters arranged in anything but straight lines. Thus the Garniers’ poem “Adam et Eve im Paradies,” published in Poèmes mécaniques, is drawn and lettered in a somewhat clumsy hand and the typewriter becomes the instrument of composition. In this instance the machine’s role is integral to the poetry, while in others it seems simply the means of text creation. The section “Langue des mots, langue des signes” focuses on Pierre’s promotion of Picard, his love of birds, and his connections with writers of the École de Rochefort in East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Contributors Francis Édeline, Claude Debon, and Philippe Buschinger discuss central aspects of visual poetry, such as the text-image relationship, the use of color as an additional visual element , and the Spatialist use of the white space on the page. Each of these authors engages in a convincing close analysis of one work, and they underscore Garnier’s statement, “poetry is typography / typography is poetry.” It is gratifying to see reference to the “reader-viewer,” acknowledging the particular nature of visual poetry. This volume presents a well-rounded portrait of the long careers of the Garniers, illuminating some lesser-known aspects of their work and experience . Most of all, it focuses valuable attention on their Spatialist poetry and gives it in-depth critical consideration. This is an important reference work in avant-garde studies. Georgia Southern University David W. Seaman BOUTEILLE-MEISTER, CHRISTINE, et KJERSTIN AUKRUST, éd. Corps sanglants, souffrants et macabres, XVIe –XVIIe siècle. Paris: PU Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2010. ISBN 978-287854 -489-3. Pp. 376. 29 a. La violence de la représentation de la souffrance, ainsi que la fascination pour la “beauté de l’horrible” (11) marquent le point de départ des actes du colloque 746 FRENCH REVIEW 85.4 international “Corps sanglants”, organisé par l’Université d’Oslo (12–14 octobre 2008). Les études qui sont réunies dans cet ouvrage se déclinent à travers les genres et les représentations des corps martyrisés, marqués par la violence de cette période historique, entre Guerre de Religions, grandes découvertes scientifiques et géographiques et remises en question de l’ordre commun. Toutes ces communications entrent dans la problématique formulée en introduction par Bouteille-Meister, à savoir “cerner le sens de ces représentations dans une société donnée, travaillée par des représentations d’ordre religieux, médical et politique” (9). Ce qui est particulièrement intéressant dans ces différentes contributions est l’utilisation qui est faite du corps et de son image. Elle permet de sublimer la souffrance et l’horreur, en faisant du lecteur un acteur et un voyeur, à la manière de ce que Christina Bien fait remarquer...

Lexique et point de vue : l’angle syntagmatique

This article tackles the question of point of view carried by lexicon. Whereas this subject is often considered from a paradigmatic perspective, this article proposes to describe it from a syntagmatic perspective. The word guerre (war) and the three syntagms la guerre (de X) avec Y, la guerre (de X) contre Y or la guerre entre X et Y are described in a press corpus. It appears that these syntagms configure a way of seeing the conflict relation (as reciprocal or not). Whereas at a paradigmatic level, the locutor is often considered as an explanatory factor for point of view, this study of point of view at a syntagmatic level points out different factors regulating occurrences: at a linguistic level, the characteristics of the prepositions, from which depend how far away X is from Y, and at a mixed textual and referential level, the salience of the event.

Mon Journal de la Guerre de Sept Ans – By Charles‐Joseph de Ligne

Journal for Eighteenth-Century StudiesVolume 34, Issue 1 p. 122-123 Mon Journal de la Guerre de Sept Ans – By Charles-Joseph de Ligne Alan Forrest, Alan Forrest University of YorkSearch for more papers by this author Alan Forrest, Alan Forrest University of YorkSearch for more papers by this author First published: 10 February 2011 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-0208.2011.00190.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume34, Issue1March 2011Pages 122-123 RelatedInformation

Piracy as Statecraft: The Mediterranean Policies of the Fifth/Eleventh-Century Taifa of Denia

The taifa of Denia on the Iberian eastern seaboard was one of the most dynamic of the regional polities that emerged from the disintegrated Cordovan caliphate. Mujāhid al-‘Āmirī based his state not only on its continental territories, but especially on the maritime networks that linked it with the Mediterranean. Commerce with Muslim and Christian ports played a role in Denia's success, but both Latin and Arabic sources emphasise its practice of piracy on a grand scale. In fact, Mujāhid al-‘Āmirī built his state as a continuation of the maritime policies of the Cordovan caliphate under which the piracy of independent coastal communities was adopted and expanded into a state-sponsored guerre de course. Mujāhid's pursuance of this policy stemmed from his role in the erstwhile caliphate, but was also motivated by a combination of religious, political and economic factors. The legitimacy provided by his “jihād on the sea” helped to shore up his power at a time of political instability. This policy also provided the taifa's economic foundation for much of its history. In fact, the Mediterranean maritime lanes became as much an extension of Denia as its continental territories. Denia's piracy thus reflects a coherent form of statecraft, informing definitions of the medieval state and territoriality.