1. Memory and the presentation of history The First World War Dr Pierre Purseigle

2. Introduction History, remembrance, memorialization
The historian as participant observer
The First World War, one hundred years on
- Analytical, historical approach
- Reflexive 
Definitions:
Commemoration: Public remembrance of past events
Collective memory: process whereby people engage in acts of remembrance, not a common memory. Maurice Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire, 1925
Mourning
Memorialization
—> What should be, as historians, our role and attitude towards commemorations?
Relationship between the past and the present - Projection onto the past and the future of present considerations
Relationship between history and memory, place of historians in contemporary debates about the past. 

3. Who does the remembering?
Families
Objects and memory
Embodied memory
It might be useful to think of memory as a conversation that more often than not takes place within the family, the home.
What did Daddy, Grand-Dad, Uncle Jim do in the war?
Those conversations fed into whay you may call a family “legend”: obviously the wrong term, but a word that stresses the fact that we are not dealing with direct experience but with narratives; that narratives, the story we tell about ourselves, are constructed. They are not always outright lies or fabrication, but they tell as much about ourselves today as they tell about the past experience of the people we are discussing.
Stories supported, illustrated, embodied by objects, memorabili. And letters and diaries of course.

4. Who does the remembering?
Civil society
Voluntary organizations, corporations, etc.
Markets
Veterans, the British Legion
The business of commemoration
Kitsch (link with the Royal Family or Diana)
Posters

5. Who does the remembering?
The State
Public commemorations
Public commemorations organized by the State
Ceremonies, rituals
Music, speeches, performances
 —> memory performed onto the public stage
The State
Chief organizer of public, national rituals
Other channels: Schools (textbooks) and universities  
Towns, cities, local authorities  
Participation
Politicians - representative of the political community
Intellectuals and artists - producers of representation and meaning 
Public at large
Active or Passive crowd
Direct contribution 
Public holidays - Calendar
—> A “moment”, sequence, meant to mark the passage of time and to remember defining “moments”, episodes that defined our collective and political existence. 
This is intensely political - Politics is about much more than the conquest and exercise of power, than about institutions, elections, coup d’état or revolution 
A representation of the past, an understanding of the present, a vision of the future: temporal dimensions, aspects of political life

6. Who does the remembering?
The State
Memory and cultural diplomacy
Helmut Kohl and François Mitterand in Verdun (September 22, 1984)
70th anniversary of the outbreak of the war
Franco-German reconciliation. Affirmation of European unity under the aegis of democracy at a time when the continent remained divided by the Iron Curtain and the Cold War.
(Profoundly intimate dimension: witnessing on TV, rehearsal through conversation, TV documentaries, textbooks)

7. Problems of remembrance
Memory = selective construction
When did the war end?
1918, 1919, 1923, 1989?
When did the war start?
1914, 1912, 1911, 1917?
Interrogation of the chronology, geography and nature of the conflict.
From (military & diplomatic, Western European) to Continuum of colonial conflicts, wars, civil wars, revolutions…

8. Problems of remembrance
Should we commemorate the war?
Should we educate about the war?
Should we celebrate the war?
Commemoration, Education, Celebration
What should we do in 2018 in Britain?

9. Problems of remembrance
Contested memories of WWI
National identity
Value of patriotic sacrifice
Role of the State
War as a tool of international politics

10. Centennial controversies
The meaning of commemoration

11. Centennial controversies
Britain and Europe
“Keep EU flag out of war centenary, France told”, Daily Telegraph, 22 June 2014

12. Centennial controversies
The origins of the war: The Balkans
Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalker

13. Centennial controversies
Remembering an imperial war in the postcolonial age: France
For next session

14. Centennial controversies
From Genocide to Republic: Turkey,
WWI a clash of empires that saw the demise of 4 empires: Hohenzollern, Habsburg, Romanov and the Ottoman Empire
That rupture or rather this violent and bloody transition from one regime to another remains of critical importance in the Republic of Turkey founded in 1923.
The Turkish national project was radicalized during the war, leading the massacres of Armenians and Assyrians; massacres recognized by historians as genocide: a planned, systematic attempt to eliminate a population in whole or in part.
1944: Lemkin

15. How is your centenary going?
Did it change your understanding of the war?
Did it broaden your view?
Did it deepen your knowledge?

16. Wither national history?
History and memory
Chronology 
Geography of the war  Clash of nations and global war
Legacies
From a century to another
Remapping of Britain, of Europe, of the world
Wither national history?
A common question: Commemoration? Celebration? Education?
Historiographical renewal
Cultural, Comparative, Public
Growing public interest:
The First World War in popular culture / The politics of memory
War, societies, cultures
Internationalization & comparative history
History and memory
Understanding the Great War
A gradual shift from traditional objects (military, diplomatic, political) to the experience of society (economic, social and cultural mobilization)
Recognition of the transformation of the nature of warfare as a result of the transformation of European societies in the nineteenth century
Totalization of warfare dependent upon the mobilization of belligerent societies: understanding why societies consented to the war effort, their process of mobilization, their wartime organization and the impact of the conflict
Not a move away from military history but an interdisciplinary approach to the war
Rethinking the Great War
Chronology
Geography of the war Clash of nations and global war
Legacies
– From a century to another
– Remapping of Britain, of the world
Wither national history?