ENGLISH

The Legacy of the French Revolutionary Wars: The Nation-in-Arms in French Republican Memory (Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare)

By Alan Forrest

Book information

Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Year
2009
ISBN
0521810620, 9780521810623
LCC
DC151 .F675 2009
Google Books ID
BzH6ZIQiDUwC
Open Library ID
OL23192201M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
2 MB (2232531 bytes)
Series
Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare
Edition
1
Pages
287\287
Orientation
yes
Scanned
no
Time added
2011-08-31 04:54:40

Description

A major contribution to the study of collective identity and memory in France, this book examines a French republican myth: the belief that the nation can be adequately defended only by its own citizens, in the manner of the French revolutionaries of 1793. Alan Forrest examines the image of the citizen army reflected in political speeches, school textbooks, art and literature across the nineteenth century. He reveals that the image appealed to notions of equality and social justice, and with time it expanded to incorporate Napoleon's victorious legions, the partisans who repelled the German invader in 1814 and the people of Paris who rose in arms to defend the Republic in 1870. More recently it has risked being marginalized by military technology and by the realities of colonial warfare, but its influence can still be seen in the propaganda of the Great War and of the French Resistance under Vichy.

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