Memories Not Yet Formed: Commemorating the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune

Abstract

This article seeks to challenge the suggestion that whereas the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 was widely remembered and commemorated in the years that followed, the Paris Commune of 1871 was not. The rapid shift from the Franco-Prussian War ending in January 1871 to the rise of the Paris Commune two months later meant that before memories of the former had been established, they had already been shaped by the influence of the latter. In commemorating the Franco-Prussian War, it was therefore impossible to avoid stirring up memories of the fighting against the Commune. Moreover, far from memories of the army’s violent crushing of the Paris Commune having been repressed, this article suggests that their absence was because they had not yet been formed. The example of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune therefore has wider implications for scholars dealing with lacunae in memory or the appearance of forgetting.

KEYWORDS:

• memory
• commemoration
• forgetting
• Franco-Prussian War
• Paris Commune

Notes

1 General Lecomte and General Thomas, the Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard during the Franco-Prussian War, were captured and executed by anti-government crowds at Montmartre on 18 March 1871.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karine Varley

Karine Varley is Lecturer in French and European History at the University of Strathclyde. She is the author of Under the Shadow of Defeat: The War of 1870–71 in French Memory (2008) and has recently completed her second book, Vichy’s Double Bind: French Axis Entanglements and Relations with Fascist Italy, 1940–1943. She is currently researching a new project on the European peace negotiations at the end of the Franco-Prussian War.