International Conferece “Theatres of War: war and postwar experiences in the European societies (1895-1953)”

– Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, November 18-20th, 2015 –

Scientific Coordinator: Javier Rodrigo
Organising Committee: David Alegre, Miguel Alonso and Fran de Paula Fernández

Presentation by way of justification

John Keegan considered in 1993 if maybe those scholars studying war wouldn't be «better historians whether they took the trouble to think about what makes people to kill each other». At the end, by talking about these questions we are opening an essential research way in order to delve into human nature and the functioning of societies, matter of interest of every self-respecting historical research. Due to that, war and military are interesting dimensions from every possible perspective, as they offer us an exceptional watchtower for the study and the analysis. In this sense, it is not a coincidence that in the last decades we had witness a significant development of what, by and large, we could label as military history, something to which the Spanish historiographical community has not been immune. Not for nothing, is a paradigm whose review and update has turned essential in order to understand not only some of the basic transformations that define contemporaneity from its very origins, but also the basis on which the European societies in the first half of the Twentieth century founded themselves. War studies or the new military history are the ways through which this renovation of our perspectives of the military in their whole extension have been developed, integrating in their bosom essential theoretical and methodological influences coming from areas such as the most advanced cultural studies and the best social history, as well as from other extremely important paradigms like gender history, daily life history or oral history.

To some extent, new military history is not very important while little established in the Spanish historiographical community despite, as we have set out, it plays a significant and growing role among the predominant concerns and debates worldwide. Because of that, one of our main aims with this conference is to serve as a connecting bridge between the debates developed beyond our borders and the inner dynamics of our own historiographical community. At the same time, we want to gauge the new approaches and topics around which the most innovative and renewing analysis in the field of military studies are revolving, as well as delimit their possible objects of interest, make a bigger effort in conceptualizing and theoretical reflection, strengthen comparative and transnational visions and, finally, integrate a wider and more diverse number of sources, without refusing their critique. Fitting in all this purposes we aim to place Theatres of War as a referent able to concentrate all the renewing potential developed in the last years within the various historiographical communities and European schools, highlighting the exponential interest it has for the academia.

Dates and methodology

The conference will take part during the 18th, 19th and 20th of November, 2015. It will be developed through four main working lines, implementing each one by the means of a debating workshop coordinated by one or two discussants which will dissect the contributions in order to highlight their points in common, prioritizing that way the pure debate over the mere exposition of the papers. To that effect, the conference will be conducted in English, Catalan and Spanish. Thereby, each session will be preceded by a lecture given by an expert of international significance, precisely for suggesting the first reflections and setting out the theoretical and conceptual frame in which the panel will be inserted. One of our main objectives is to make Theatres of War a constructive and fruitful historiographical experience for all the participants, opening new perspectives, laying out new questions and reaching the conclusions collectively.

Chronology

We take as reference points two key facts: on one hand the beginning of the Cuban War of Independence (1895-1898), and as such, we can encompass a range of colonial conflicts and confrontations before the outbreak of the Great War, including the Rif War (1909-1927) and the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), which were come with multiple crisis and crucial changes in the rear of culture and politics, and last but not least, with new military practices and methods of the utmost importance. On the other hand we have chosen the year of Stalin’s death that marked a full stop in the way of understanding politics and war, but also in a range of changes and transformations from the end of the Second World War, and as such supposed a symbolic conclusion of the second post-war in Europe.

Panels’ working lines

Below we show you the central themes for each panel at the conference by posing a variety of possibilities. Undoubtedly these are only suggestions and we are open to receive proposals dealing with other aspects related to these central axis:

1-Combatant’s identity in Modernity, taking into account key problems as voluntariness and conscription; the role of ideology in combatants’ world view and actions; the structural importance of the cultural-political scenery where individual warlike facts make sense; the socialization and the material conditions in the trenches and marches or the psychological impact of total war.

2-The post-wars, which offer us a wide range of possibilities: the questioning of war chronologies due to the persistence of different armed conflicts and the importance of violence in the construction of the new societies emerged from war; the role of new origin myths originated in the context of conflicts assisting the construction of new socio-political communities; the physical reconstruction of the territory, taking into account the economical reorganization, the social relationships, the distribution of power, and the redistribution/expulsion of entire populations; the role of ex-combatants in policy and society; and also the deep change in the equilibrium between mother countries and colonies due to the dynamics put in motion by the war itself.

3-The Alltagsgeschichte during the war where the key point is the relationship between the front and the home front in every field, from the public sphere to the strictly private one. In that way we can talk about different subjects such as war impact over the civilians, the interaction between civilians and combatants and also the situations of POWs.

4-The military in times of peace or to put it another way in contexts where we cannot talk about conventional warfare or hot wars. We welcome proposals delving into aspects as asymmetric warfare; the colonial sphere; the role played by the army preserving law and order; the influence of military in the conception of politics, education, nationalization processes or social relationships; on the other hand, the complex transitions in the heterogeneous group of ex-combatants, sometimes channelized into paramilitary groups or military units as the Spanish and French Foreign Legions.

Instructions to send proposals

The proposals should consist of a title, a brief abstract of 300 words, five keywords and a short CV where it should be specified the main points of your research project, your most important historiographical contributions and your research interests too. It would be given preference to those proposals connecting with wider contexts and methodological and conceptual problems of general interest, avoiding to be focused exclusively aspects very specific. In that sense it is welcomed every paper dealing with refreshing and original dimensions in the field of military history while we will take a special interest in those proposals having relevant empirical data, so we beg you to specify about your sources.

The deadline to send the proposals is March, 15th 2015, and these should be sent to david.alegre@uab.cat and miguel.alonso.ibarra@gmail.com We will give acknowledgment of receipt and we commit ourselves to give you a definitive response two weeks after the deadline. The final participants will receive new instructions in order to prepare and send their papers before the conference. Last, our intention is to publish the best papers in the form of articles after the conference, to do so we foresee the publication of one or two special issues through the Universitary Journal of Military History [Revista Universitaria de Historia Militar]. The final pieces will count on double-blinded reviews and its own ISSN.