Seminar: "Bigger wars" 2025. Study day: "Emerging from war, returning to peace

Tuesday 13 May 2025 | European Doctoral College (University of Strasbourg)

Organised by Damien Accoulon (University of Tours, CeTHiS), Camille Mahé (Sciences Po Strasbourg, LinCS), Claire Miot (Sciences Po Aix, MESOPOLHIS), Gwendal Piégais (University College Dublin, CWS), Guillaume Piketty (Sciences Po, CHSP) and Thomas Vaisset (Le Havre Normandie University, IDEES), with the support of the André Maginot National Federation.

Born of the confluence of two seminars dealing respectively with the Great War and the Second World War, this seminar aims to build bridges between historiographies that are dynamic yet too often hermetically sealed off from one another: those of the conflicts that animated the first twentieth century. It proposes to study the societies involved in all forms of conflict from before to after the two world wars, i.e. from the 'Greatest War' (John Horne and Robert Gerwarth), taking into account the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) which prefigured the First World War, and the long period of post-war periods (1919-1923), to the 'world war' (Alya Aglan and Robert Frank) which gradually set the globe ablaze from the Japanese invasions (1937) onwards, until the cultural and military demobilisation of societies in a time of 'violent peace' (Peter Gatrell).

This sequence should make it possible to reconsider the old idea of a "European civil war" or the "Thirty Years' War" and to shed more light on the diversity of situations and relationships to the phenomenon of war. Thanks to this geographical, chronological and thematic broadening of ideas, we will be able to examine the continuities and ruptures in the traces left by wars on the societies that lived through them.

The approach will be resolutely comparative, since the seminar will systematically bring together two researchers specialising in similar subjects but in different contexts of conflict. This cross-disciplinary thematic approach should prove fertile by crossing and questioning historiographical perspectives.

The seminar will be organised into four monthly hybrid sessions of 2.5 hours each in room H 101 on the Saint-Thomas campus of Sciences Po (1, place Saint-Thomas, 75007 Paris) from January to April 2025, and a final study day to be held in Strasbourg on 13 May 2025.

Free admission with registration

If you have any questions: deplusgrandesguerres@gmail.com

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2025 theme: 'Transport and traffic

Session 1 - The flow of information in wartime

Monday 13 January 2025, 2.30-5pm, room H 101 campus Saint-Thomas de Sciences Po (1, place Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, 75007 Paris)

Nina Régis (Casa de Velázquez): "Majesty, Mama is always crying. From letters to Alfonso XIII to the political stakes of a Spanish humanitarian initiative in the German prison camps (1914-1924)".

Sébastien Farré (Maison de l'Histoire, University of Geneva): "Documenting, communicating, passing over in silence... the challenges of information for the ICRC in wartime (1936-1945)".

Session 2 - Population movements, evacuations and rescues

Monday 10 February 2025, 2.30-5pm, room H 101 campus Saint-Thomas de Sciences Po (1, place Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, 75007 Paris)

Hélène Gacic (University of Lorraine, CRULH): "Between evacuations and migrations, the journey and reception of Serbian refugees during the long Great War".

Laura Hobson Faure (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, CHS): "Circulations intra-européennes et transatlantiques face aux persécutions nazies : le Kindertransport to France and the United States during the Holocaust, 1938-1942".

Session 3 - Refugees: norms and institutionalisation of a figure under construction

Monday 10 March 2025, 2.30-5pm, room H 101 campus Saint-Thomas de Sciences Po (1, place Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, 75007 Paris)

Ismee Tames (Utrecht University, NIOD), "Nansen Refugees: Stateless in the Age of the World Wars".

Thomas Chopard (EHESS-CRH), "The Appeals Committee of the International Organization for Jewish Refugees and Displaced Persons". (Provisional title)

Session 4 - The circulation of the dead

Monday 7 April 2025, 2.30-5pm, room H 101 campus Saint-Thomas de Sciences Po (1, place Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, 75007 Paris)

Marine Meucci Duly (Aix-Marseille University, ADES) "The bodies of the Great War or how to manage mass death in an emergency".

Jean-Marc Dreyfus (University of Manchester, research associate at the CHSP): "Des morts qui dérogent. The search for the bodies of deportees from France and the construction of the Struthof national necropolis, 1946-1960".

Study day - "Emerging from war, returning to peace

Tuesday 13 May 2025, 9.45am - 5.15pm, European Doctoral College (University of Strasbourg)

To receive the link to videoconferencingyou can register via this link.

9.45am - Welcome to participants

10.00 - Introduction by Camille Mahé (Sciences Po Strasbourg/LinCs) and presentation of the André Maginot National Federation, by Cyril Carnevilliers

10.15-12.45 - Panel 1: "Organising returns
Discussants: Claire Miot (Sciences Po Aix, Mesopolhis) and Nicolas Beaupré (ENSSIB, Gabriel Naudé Centre, University of Lyon)

Hazuki Tate (Keio University): "Repatriating prisoners of war, 1918-1923: political and humanitarian issues at the end of the war".

Valentin Rhodius (HisTeMé, University of Caen Normandie): "Sending back the undesirables": the return to Europe of displaced persons and refugees from resettlement countries (1947-1952)".

Amine Laggoune (CERCEC, EHESS): "Retour au pays forcée ou rêvé : le rapatriement des Soviétiques depuis la France entre sortie de guerre et balbutiements de la guerre froide (1944-1947)" (Forced or dreamed return home: the repatriation of Soviets from France between the end of the war and the beginnings of the Cold War (1944-1947)).

12.45pm-2.30pm - Lunch

2.30 p.m. - 5 p.m. - Panel 2 "Experiences and intimacies of post-war returnees".
Discussants : Thomas Vaisset (University of Le Havre Normandie, UMR IDEES) and Gwendal Piégais (UCD - Dublin)

Emma Papadacci (CHSP - LIER-FYT): "From the trench to the classroom: the return of veterans to school (Great Britain-France, 1918-1927)".

Raphaël Georges (Arche, University of Strasbourg): "La sortie de guerre des soldats alsaciens-lorrains. A comparative approach to the aftermath of the First and Second World Wars".

Alexandre Sumpf (Arche, University of Strasbourg): "La paix introuvable. Russian invalids in the Great War, 1914-1939".

17h-17h15 - Conclusion and closing session, Guillaume Piketty (CHSP, Paris)