Au Nom de la Patrie: Southern Identities and Patriotic Mobilisation in First World War France

Abstract

Abstract At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, many French commentators doubted that France had the strength to withstand the trials of war. Yet the national mobilisation for war was an indisputable success that surprised military planners and political leaders alike. Despite inauspicious beginnings and the unprecedented material and human costs of war, France held out, and the Republican nation-state emerged victorious and to a large extent reinforced by the war. However, the subsequent failure to mobilise successfully in 1939–40 begs the question of the nature and transformation of French patriotism in the First World War. Interestingly, in a field characterised by its vibrant, sophisticated and highly contentious debates, French historians appear to have skirted around the problem of patriotic mobilisation. This article reconsiders this question by investigating social mobilisation in the country’s southern periphery, focusing on the town of Béziers. It underlines the need to locate patriotism by considering its valence in the particular social and geographic contexts that determined the war experience at the front or at home. It also suggests the necessity to re-politicise the idea of national sentiment while maintaining the necessary distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Finally, it argues that the analysis of wartime mobilisation in France must be part of a larger reflection on the mobilisation of space and place in the era of the Great War.