Contenu du sommaire : L'histoire des conflits par les objets - XXe siècle

The thematic dossier of this issue brings together interdisciplinary contributions: anthropologists, archivists and librarians, archaeologists and historians present the different aspects of their work that contribute to understanding objects as sources for the history of conflicts.

Since 2013, an increasing number of archaeological excavations have occurred on the sites of the Second World War, especially in Normandy. For the first time this article looks at the military dumps around Caen, through a garbological and functional analysis of the uncovered materials and objects.

While many documents were lost or destroyed during the fighting, while many archive collections have been forgotten or not been located, the archaeology of the Second World War battlefields provides insights that are both complementary and essential to other sources.

Since 2020, archaeological operations have been carried out in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp (67), enabling the discovery of numerous objects. But do these objects contribute to a better understanding of the daily life of the deportees? The example of six kettles will illustrate the contributions of these studies, thus highlighting the daily life of the deportees, via the theme of food.

This article looks at the procedures for identifying the remains of the victims of Francoism during the Spanish Civil War through objects and the process of returning them to their families. Archaeology and documentary work complete oral memory to reconnect with a taboo history.

The Musée de l'Armée is refocusing and redefining its acquisitions policy, endorsed by its first scientific and cultural project in 2020, after the ATHENA modernization project and before opening the spaces linked to the MINERVE extension project (2024-2030). A pivotal moment when the institution consolidates its primary collections, pursues its ambition to deal with new historiographical subjects and completes its collections so as to be able to tackle military history from the second half of the twentieth century to the present day in its permanent exhibition spaces.

As part of La contemporaine's training programs for students, the toys and games in the collections are used to explore the contributions and limitations of a history of objects. It's also an opportunity to retrace the history of the creation of this collection of objects and its development through exhibitions and educational activities.

The author shares her research-creation teaching to students of the Master 1 “Memory and Politics” at the Nouveau collège d'études politiques. Using an object on display in the permanent exhibition at La contemporaine, the students have to create a comic strip. Two of them are published in these pages.

In 1941, the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle offered a crystal “francisque” to Marshal Pétain, Chief of the French State. The life of the object leads, from one source to another, to uncover a set of gifts given by the populations of the Eastern region as a sign of allegiance. The Vichy regime collected and used these prestigious objects to contribute to the cult of the leader.

The archive of the Association des déportées et internées de la Résistance (ADIR) (Association of Deportees and Internees of the Resistance) held at La contemporaine includes several objects. Some are remnants of their daily lives in the camps (clothes, bowls and cups), while others, made by the interned women, symbolised what Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz called “the resistance of the spirit”.

The drugs shown in the exhibition “VIH/Sida, l'épidémie n'est pas finie !” – exhibition at the Musée des civilisations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée (Mucem) in 2022 become the archives of the co-construction of a care protocol with patients, and open up a new territory for social history research.

Artefacts related to pace seem of little interest to historians. However, these trinkets, advertising objects, sheet music and postage stamps, which had little commercial value and were often produced in large quantities, allow us to examine the place of the imaginary of peace in popular material culture and to sketch out a history of peace “from below”, as close as possible to ordinary citizens.

The text is taken from a lecture given by the historian at La contemporaine (April 2023). The presentation of a number of trench artefacts held by the institution provides an opportunity to reflect on the object as a source for contemporary history.

This article looks at the trench art produced by the Poilus of the Great War, which was very popular until the post-war years. Produced in part in workshops in the rear of the front line, the crafted shell casings, rings, letter openers and lighters made from the residue of used weapons helped to cultivate the memory of the conflict.

What can a few packets of cigarettes tell us about the captivity of German service men during the First World War? A simple everyday object offering the prisoner a moment of escape and freedom, the cigarette raises questions about the links between home fronts and captives, both as long as it is sent from the Heimat and because of the iconography on its pack, reminding the civilian life.

Through few scenes, a scarf from 1940 presents the daily life of French soldiers. Sold at Printemps for 49 francs, the scarf was a patriotic symbol and an embroidered witness to its era. Today, it allows us to delve into French propaganda during the Drôle de Guerre, examining the representations on home fronts of a war without combat.

Through a study of the materiality of the archives, and in particular of the fabric samples that sometimes accompanied the restitution claims, this article aims to shed light on the Nazi spoliation processes, the Möbel-Aktion in particular, and the organisation of restitutions by the Service de restitution des biens des victimes des lois et mesures de spoliation.

The transistor radio is an iconic object of the Algerian War. If Frantz Fanon immediately understood its “exceptional importance” in the fight for independence, the new technology entered French political history with the military putsch of April 1961. The article focuses on the function of an “object” that deeply marks the “war culture” specific to this conflict, particularly the experience of French draftees.

This article present the different types of objects that have been preserved in France since the conquest of Algeria –by the families of the pieds-noirs and Algerian Jews, by Algerian immigrants and the harkis, and then by soldiers and conscripts during the war of independence– and looks at the heritage issues of these objects relating to colonial Algeria.

Created in 1969, the crèche and nursery school on the Vincennes campus are a legacy of May 1968. Fighting tools against student insecurity and for women's emancipation, they are also a testing ground for alternative educational methods and operate on a self-management basis.

This article looks at the origins of commitment to the Palestinian cause in the 1960s. It shows how activism for Palestine was an extension of the campaign for Algerian independence. The biographies of the people involved were shaped by decolonisation, in particular the non-aligned conference in Bandoeng in April 1955.

The historical links between Poland and Ireland since the nineteenth century, and their mutual sense of a common destiny, are increasingly well documented. But the similarities between the fates of the Irish and Ukrainians between the 1840s and 1940s, overshadowed in Ireland by the Polish destiny, seem to be attracting even more attention since the return of war to Ukraine in 2014.

The Early Conflict Photography 1890-1918 and Visual AI (Ey
Con) project aims to exploit computer vision tools based on artificial intelligence to analyse a large corpus of conflict photographs, in particular colonial conflicts. The article explains the aims of the project, focusing on the Valois Albums, which bring together the photographs of the Army Photographic Section during the Great War.