This book explores the eight-month wave of mutinies that struck the French infantry and navy in 1919. Based on official records and the testimony of dozens of participants, it is the first study to try to understand the world of the mutineers. Examining their words for the traces of sensory perceptions, emotions and thought processes, it reveals that the conventional understanding of the mutinies as the result of simple war-weariness and low morale is inadequate. In fact, an emotional gulf separated officers and the ranks, who simply did not speak the same language. The revolt entailed emotional sequences ending in a deep ambivalence and sense of despair or regret. Taking this into account, the book considers how mutineer memories persisted after the events in the face of official censorship, repression and the French Communist Party's co-option of the mutiny. -- .

Prisoners of Want examines the experience of the unemployed and their protests in France in the interwar years. Little has been written on the experience of unemployment in France despite the wealth of material - social and medical investigations, government reports, novels, memoirs and newspapers - that can be used to reconstruct the representation and reality of the experience. Assessing the impact of unemployed protest upon the authorities (in terms of policy and the longer term development of the welfare state) this book places the role of the unemployed in the wider context of European social movements in the 1930s, as well as considering the significance of unemployed protests upon the French collective memory. The part played by the French Communist Party in the creation and leadership of the movements of the unemployed, and the range of activities these movements undertook, is also explored. From self-help to protests, hunger marches, demonstrations, relief work, school strikes, town hall occupations and riots; all were strategies that the unemployed utilised to draw attention to their plight. Crucial to explaining the characteristics of these movements is an understanding of the dynamics of protest and how different tactics were selected during their development, particularly the extent to which tactical shifts were related to the nature of the response of the authorities. By exploring these under-researched facets of political life, a much fuller understanding of French society during the turbulent interwar years is offered.

Prisoners of Want examines the experience of the unemployed and their protests in France in the interwar years. Little has been written on the experience of unemployment in France despite the wealth of material - social and medical investigations, government reports, novels, memoirs and newspapers - that can be used to reconstruct the representation and reality of the experience. Assessing the impact of unemployed protest upon the authorities (in terms of policy and the longer term development of the welfare state) this book places the role of the unemployed in the wider context of European social movements in the 1930s, as well as considering the significance of unemployed protests upon the French collective memory. The part played by the French Communist Party in the creation and leadership of the movements of the unemployed, and the range of activities these movements undertook, is also explored. From self-help to protests, hunger marches, demonstrations, relief work, school strikes, town hall occupations and riots; all were strategies that the unemployed utilised to draw attention to their plight. Crucial to explaining the characteristics of these movements is an understanding of the dynamics of protest and how different tactics were selected during their development, particularly the extent to which tactical shifts were related to the nature of the response of the authorities. By exploring these under-researched facets of political life, a much fuller understanding of French society during the turbulent interwar years is offered.

Unearthing new evidence to provide a richer understanding of her life, this study, now available in paperback, delves beyond the familiar image of Ellen Wilkinson on the Jarrow Crusade. From a humble background, she ascended to the rank of minister in the 1945 Labour government. Yet she was much more than a conventional Labour politician. She wrote journalism, political theory and novels. She was both a socialist and a feminist; at times, she described herself as a revolutionary. She experienced Soviet Russia, the Indian civil disobedience campaign, the Spanish Civil War and the Third Reich. This study deploys transnational and social movement theory perspectives to grapple with the complex itinerary of her ideas. Interest in Wilkinson remains strong among academic and non-academic audiences alike. This is in part because her principal concerns - working-class representation, the status of women, capitalist crisis, war, anti-fascism - remain central to contentious politics today. -- .

This textbook examines Marxism's enormous impact on the way historians approach their subject. Tackling current historiographical questions in an accessible way, the author offers a clear introduction to Marxist views of history, key Marxist historians and thinkers, and the relevance of Marxist theory and history to students' own work. This is a concise, thorough overview of an important area of historiography. The second edition incorporates significant new developments in research, including Marxist contributions to the emergence of global, maritime and transnational history; the discovery of Marx's ecologism and the historical critique of fossil capitalism as a source of environmental disaster; a reassessment of gender oppression through social reproduction theory; and the contribution of Marxism to debates on race, Eurocentrism and whiteness.

This book explores the eight-month wave of mutinies that struck the French infantry and navy in 1919. Based on official records and the testimony of dozens of participants, it is the first study to try to understand the world of the mutineers. Examining their words for the traces of sensory perceptions, emotions and thought processes, it reveals that the conventional understanding of the mutinies as the result of simple war-weariness and low morale is inadequate. In fact, an emotional gulf separated officers and the ranks, who simply did not speak the same language. The revolt entailed emotional sequences ending in a deep ambivalence and sense of despair or regret. Taking this into account, the book considers how mutineer memories persisted after the events in the face of official censorship, repression and the French Communist Party's co-option of the mutiny. -- .