Paris 2013

Call for Papers

Up to the present day, the multinational nature of the First World War has mainly been conceptualised as the interstate confrontation of major allied powers. The Other is first and foremost the enemy; militarily and culturally the opposition. However, the Great War was also a time of unprecedented intermingling and circulation within the coalitions. Metropolitan and colonial soldiers, civilian workers, refugees and displaced persons left their familiar frame of reference by the millions. The conflict thus also constituted a change of scene for good or bad, a confrontation with social and cultural otherness, with different landscapes, at all scales for the belligerent societies (empires, nation states, local communities). How were the necessary movements conceptualised and organized in the logic of the multinational conflict? What forms did contacts between people of different origins take when they were confronted by the war? How were they experienced? How does the idea of belonging to a community, crucial to recent research on combat endurance, fit into the intercultural logic at all scales? To what extent did constructions of identity which feed on the perception of the other, evolve as such contacts occurred? How were they represented? Finally, what was the heritage of these contacts in the medium or long term?

In this perspective, transnational and comparative approaches are encouraged. Papers might consider the following aspects:

Held in Paris at the Cité de l’Immigration and the German Historical Institute on 26 – 27th September 2013.