War Commemorations Research Articles

Remembering War in the Midst of Conflict: First World War Commemorations in the Northern Irish Troubles

Remembering War in the Midst of Conflict: First World War Commemorations in the Northern Irish Troubles

Social integration, a sense of belonging and the Cenotaph Service: Old soldiers reminisce about Remembrance1

Objectives: This study explored how war commemorations such as the Cenotaph Service in the UK enable older veterans to benefit from a feeling of integration and belonging gained from both comradeship and acknowledgement from wider society. Method: Focus groups preceded by a video clip of the Cenotaph Service with 45 veterans were used to discuss the significance of collective commemorations for older veterans. Results: Findings indicated that social integration and a sense of belonging are fostered both by comradeship and societal support during collective commemorations allowing veterans to reminisce safely. Spontaneous reminiscences involving troubling memories may be processed more easily with the support, social integration and sense of belonging which occurs at collective commemorations. Many Korean War and female World War II veterans felt forgotten and socially isolated, but described gaining vicarious support via collective commemorations. Cohen and Wills' (1985) main-effects and buffering models of social support are used to discuss the findings further. Conclusion: Collective commemorations can be important sources of support for many older veterans. Both comradeship and societal support promote social integration and a sense of belonging (main-effects), which enabled reminiscing and processing (buffering) to occur. 1In memory of Mark Condron 1960–2007.

Slavery, Emancipation, and Veterans of the Union Cause: Commemorating Freedom in the Era of Reconciliation, 1885-1915

Slavery, Emancipation, and Veterans of the Union Cause: Commemorating Freedom in the Era of Reconciliation, 1885-1915 M. Keith Harris In July 1913, veterans of the United States and Confederate armies gathered in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to commemorate the fifty-year anniversary of the Civil War's bloodiest and most famous battle. The four-day "Blue-Gray Reunion" featured parades, reenactments, and speeches from a host of dignitaries, including President Woodrow Wilson. Striking among the event's activities was the lack of a comprehensive remembrance of the war's causes and consequences. Veterans and other public figures highlighted only the virtuous aspects of soldiery such as courage, valor, and selfless devotion. Thousands of spectators enthusiastically approved of President Wilson's remarks to former Yankee and Rebel alike: "Valor? Yes! Greater no man shall see in war; and self-sacrifice, and loss to the uttermost; the high recklessness of exalted devotion which does not count the cost." Any mention of slavery or emancipation was conspicuously absent.1 For many scholars, this event typifies the robust commemorative impulse undertaken by both Union and Confederate veterans celebrating newfound [End Page 264] nationalism in the wake of civil strife—an impulse that necessarily minimized antebellum sectionalism and war causation. Scholars focusing on collective memory and emphasizing sectional reunification contend that during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, regimental and state monument dedications, patriotic speeches, personal narratives, "Blue-Gray" reunions, and even combined support for the American war effort against Spain in 1898 yielded a triumphal, national, and, most important, a reconciled version of Civil War memory. Veterans selectively drew from the past to validate the present. In so doing, they left sectionalism behind.2 A conventional interpretation illustrating the shortcomings of national reconciliation has emerged from the growing body of memory scholarship. Many have concluded that the dominant themes of war commemoration marginalized issues concerning slavery and emancipation; white Northern and Southern proponents of war commemoration welcomed reconciliation at the expense of racial change. Edward Tabor Linenthal's analysis of American battlefields, for example, examines Civil War commemorations through the lens of "tacit forgetfulness" and characterizes the "elaborate rituals of reconciliation" as a "moral myopia that ignored the real legacy of the [Civil War]." Similarly, Gaines M. Foster, in his study of Confederate memory, laments that the "sense of triumph derived from [the 1913 reunion at Gettysburg] involved little that had been at issue in the war," and Stuart McConnell's work on Union veterans reminds readers that "the question of blacks and slavery received scant mention in celebrations of the war's outcome."3 [End Page 265] The most eloquently expressed account of the implications surrounding the supposed enthusiastic and widespread support for national reconciliation appears in David W. Blight's capstone work, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Blight examines how participants at events geared toward reconciliation, such as the 1913 Gettysburg Reunion, did in fact ignore the principal issues leading to war and the Union war aim of emancipation. White supremacists and reconciliationists, Blight argues, "locked arms" and by the "turn of the century delivered a segregated memory of the Civil War on Southern terms." He concludes, "Forces of reconciliation overwhelmed the emancipationist vision in the national culture [and] the inexorable drive for reunion both used and trumped race."4 While painting a distinctly darker portrait of reconciliation than many of their predecessors, these recent analyses resemble works such as Paul H. Buck's 1937 publication, The Road to Reunion, 1865-1900 . Although a celebratory study venerating the "positive influences" paving the way for the "promise of ultimate peace" and applauding the breakdown of sectional animosity during the postwar years, Buck's work otherwise anticipates future scholarship. He admits that reconciliation ushered in a "period where [black people] would no longer figure as the ward of the nation to be singled out for special guardianship or peculiar treatment." Buck pays tribute to reconciliation but questions...

Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-1914

Exploring the history of Civil War commemorations from both sides of the color line, William Blair places the development of memorial holidays, Emancipation Day celebrations, and other remembrances in the context of Reconstruction politics and race relations in the South. His grassroots examination of these civic rituals demonstrates that the politics of commemoration remained far more contentious than has been previously acknowledged. Commemorations by ex-Confederates were intended at first to maintain a separate identity from the U.S. government, Blair argues, not as a vehicle for promoting sectional healing. The burial grounds of fallen heroes, known as Cities of the Dead, often became contested ground, especially for Confederate women who were opposed to Reconstruction. And until the turn of the century, African Americans used freedom celebrations to lobby for greater political power and tried to create a national holiday to recognize emancipation. Blair's analysis shows that some festive occasions that we celebrate even today have a divisive and sometimes violent past as various groups with conflicting political agendas attempted to define the meaning of the Civil War.

National Identity, Local Memory and the ‘Cult’ of Belfort in Franco-Prussian War Commemorations, 1870–1914

This paper looks at national identity, local memory and the cult of belfort in franco-prussian war commemorations, 1870-1914

Re-membered and Re-mobilized: the ‘Sleeping Dead’ in Interwar Germany and Britain

The rituals and rhetoric of war commemoration in the interwar period have traditionally been interpreted as expressions of personal mourning or as tools of political mobilization. To claim that war commemorations were exclusively about the management of bereavement is incomplete; but to reduce their meaning to political manipulation is cynical. Arising out of the shock of bereavement felt by the individual, war commemoration was a social act of public recollection that could not be politically neutral. This article aims to go beyond conventional historiographical polarizations; it explores a commemorative figure that colonized precisely the grey area between the personal and the political realms: the representation of death as a deep and joyous sleep. Embedded in medieval funerary tradition, national mythologies (Barbarossa and King Arthur) and folk tale (Sleeping Beauty), the idea of enchanted sleep fused notions of individual rebirth and national regeneration. Some day, the ‘sleeping dead’ would rise again. Thus families would be reunited and nations salvaged. Enchanted sleep marked an intermediate stage between the untimely departure and the eventual return of the war dead. The widespread popular appeal of this concept, especially in Germany and to a lesser extent also in Britain, is a remarkable indication of the public denial of death and, sometimes, of the refusal to perceive the Great War as totally over.

Under the Shadow of Defeat: The State and the Commemoration of the Franco-Prussian War, 1871-1914

The French defeat in the Franco‐Prussian War represented a crushing blow for the Second Empire, the fledgling Republic and the French nation. While intellectuals and policymakers embarked on a process of soul‐searching, the French public responded to the defeat with an unprecedented wave of commemorative acts predicated on the belief that the French national defence was more honourable and more glorious than the German victory. In recent years, much attention has been devoted to the Third Republic's celebration of the French revolutionary past, and the role these celebrations played in developing and sustaining republican values. In this article, however, I examine the Republic's comparative neglect of its more recent past. The first section outlines the practical considerations and obligations behind the state's work to bury those who died in the Franco‐Prussian War. The second section explores the government's intervention in and influence over certain commemorative acts. In the third section, the article examines sustained government resistance to the creation of a commemorative medal for veterans of the war. I argue that successive governments adopted a relatively passive role in the war commemorations owing to fears that resurrecting memories of the war might serve to undermine the stability and legitimacy of the Republic.

War and Violence, History and Memory: The Philippine Experience of the Second World War

AbstractThe subject of War and Memory in the Philippines remains a sensitive topic in the Philippines today. Many controversial issues about the Second World War remain subjects of debate, among them collaboration with the Japanese; Japanese war responsibility; American responsibility for the failed defense of the Philippines, and others. In one sense, the war in the Philippines has left an ambiguous legacy which leads to conflicting war memories and commemorations, particularly in the light of present conditions and evolving relationships with the other countries involved.