Overview

The Crimean War (1854-56) is widely considered the first modern war with its tactical use of railways, telegraphs, and battleships, its long-range rifles, and its notorious trenches - precursors of the Great War. It is also the first media war: the first to know the impact of a correspondent on the field of battle and the first war to be documented in photographs. No one, however, including the French themselves, seems to remember that France was there, fighting in Crimea, losing 95,000 soldiers and leading the Allied campaign to victory. It would seem that the Crimean War has no place in the canon of culturally retained historical events that define modern French identity. Looking at literature, art, theatre, material objects, and medical reports, The Crimean War and Cultural Memory considers how the Crimean War was and was not represented in French cultural history in the second half of the nineteenth century. Ultimately, the book illuminates the forgotten traces that the Crimean War left on the French cultural landscape.

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9781487547776

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Reviews

"""The Crimean War and Cultural Memory offers an outstanding, well-researched account of how national cultures remember and especially forget complex historical events. Godfrey's insightful discussion of a war that strangely disappeared from French national memory combines excellent empirical details with theoretical reflections that explain how national identities evolve through constant forgetting as well as very selective remembering."" - Lloyd Kramer, Professor of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill ""An eminent scholar of French literature and culture, Godfrey examines France's forgotten war in meticulous detail, showing us its half-erased traces in literature, visual culture, and monumental architecture. This haunting study is both timely and timeless."" - Patrick M. Bray, Professor of French Literature, University College London ""Godfrey's thoroughly researched and engagingly written book offers not just an in-depth analysis of representations of the Crimean War in a variety of media but also a profound reflection on the vicissitudes of cultural memory. By asking why the French have forgotten one of their greatest victories, Godfrey leads us to consider how certain historical events retain their hold over the popular imagination while others fade into oblivion."" - Maurice Samuels, Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French, Yale University, and author of The Spectacular Past ""How does a war - a war that was won - disappear from a nation's memory? Despite the strained efforts of Napoleon III to celebrate the victory, despite the wealth of images, plays, eye-witness accounts, and memorabilia, and despite the horrifying number of deaths, the Crimean War and its victims were forgotten. Godfrey's vivid book exposes the powerful dynamics that wiped both the triumphs and the tragedies of the war from French collective memory."" - Judith A. Miller, Associate Professor of History, Emory University"

Author Information

Sima Godfrey is an associate professor emerita of French at the University of British Columbia.

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