Several texts recently published in The life of ideas show that the historiography of the Great War is crossed by great intellectual and institutional tensions. We publish, in response to the controversy opened on our site, a development of Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, one of the great international specialists in the First World War.
As a rule, I never enter historiographical controversies. I do this this time-very briefly, that we reassure ourselves-to recall certain evidences decidedly too obscured by the article by François Buton, André Loez, Nicolas Mariot and Philippe Olivera, published in The life of ideas On December 10, 2008.
Let us therefore recall, in a few words, the assessment of the work carried out by researchers – more and more numerous today, and with increasingly diverse national origins – which have gradually aggregated around the historial of Péronne and its research center. First of all, there is a museum, opened in 1992, to the development of which historians stigmatized by the authors of the article published on December 10 took an active part, a museum whose quality is universally recognized. Then, in two decades, in two decades, a deep renewal of the historiography of the Great War: enlargement of the overall perspective by the overcoming of national divisions and the comparative dimension, multiplication of research fields thanks to the affirmation of a cultural history of war which brought into the historiography of 1914-1918 of absolutely new objects. There is no need to insist here on the mass of published and unpublished works (we are thinking in particular of the very many doctorates), of all collective or individual works, French and foreign, which aroused this renewed approach to the conflict for twenty years. It is all the more tasty to see these latter criticized with height by researchers who, because of their discipline or their specialty period, have for some signatories of the article to which it is replied here, never seen a single archive from the period 1914-1918: is we not here at the limits of ? And what to think of the attempt to present the work carried out around the Péronne research center in the guise of a monolithic block ? On the contrary, this is characterized by the diversity of approaches and the richness of the debates within it.
And therefore, if we believe the researchers I answer here, you have to think that the world academic community – I obviously stick to specialists in the Great War and “ first XXe century – It would have been completely infected, that it would have been massively abused by a historiographical company at best intellectually insufficient, at the worst frankly dishonest. Thus better foreign historians, belonging to the most prestigious universities in the globe, which belong to the Movanci de Péronne, and for some to its ruling nucleus. Is it not curious that, all over the world, the work done by them and around them was recognized ? It is only to note the very large number of books translated into all languages by the most demanding publishers, and which must therefore be thought of that they too were wrong. As the authors and publishers of textbooks were deceived, the authors of scientific reports (French and foreign), not to mention the readers themselves. All blinded, or all fools, no doubt ?
It would be cruel to go further. Let’s say it with a word: the drama of researchers from the group who puts himself so long in the article of December 10, it is their Franco-French loneliness, their obsession with soldiers French – mutineers Frenchshould I say-their ignorance of the international dimension of war (which is very annoying for the study of a world war), their confinement in an essentially historian French centered on France and it alone. Unlike his acronym, nothing is less international than this “ collective (Just take a look at the list of its members, and even more on that of its scientific council and your office). This “ nationalization A narrow of historical research, we will agree, cannot hope to feed, today, major works. It is sad to have to note: the closed science practiced by this group since its creation only manages to exist insofar as the historiography it has taken so conveniently for plastron. She is actually backed by her and, which is worse, she does not notice it. With this unfortunate consequence of leading the individualities grouped together within this “ collective “Unless you think a historiography of the Great War for itself than to develop it exclusively against Another, which cannot give very good results. Because it must be recognized: so far, its researchers, beyond some respectable but isolated work, have not been able to impose a really significant historiographical presence.
We will therefore be allowed to give them advice: that of really self -employing on bases a little less agonistic than those which are today theirs ; to internately ; To choose between two models: that of a federation of passionate researchers and amateurs, or that of a group of experienced and high level researchers. Because for lack of doing so, they lose on the two tables and fail to give a truly collective dimension to their approach. This achieved – which will probably not be easy – we can hope that the historiography of the Great War will no doubt win.