Comic empires

French rule in Algeria ended in 1962 following almost eight years of intensely violent conflict, producing one of the largest migratory waves of the post-1945 era. Almost a million French settlers - pieds-noirs - and tens of thousands of harkis - native auxiliaries who had fought with the French army - felt compelled to leave their homeland and cross the Mediterranean to France. Tracing the history of these two communities, From Empire to Exile explores the legacies of the Algerian War of Independence in France. It uses the long-standing grassroots collective mobilisation and memory activism undertaken by both groups to challenge the idea that this was a ‘forgotten’ war that only returned to public attention in the 1990s. Revealing the rich and dynamic interactions produced as pieds-noirs, harkis and other groups engaged with each other and with state-sanctioned narratives, this study demonstrates the fundamental ways in which postcolonial minorities have shaped the landscapes of French politics, society and culture since 1962. It also helps place the current ‘memory wars’ deemed to be sweeping France in their wider historical context, proving that the current competition for control over the representation of the past in the public sphere is not a recent development, but the culmination of long-running processes. By reconceptualising the ways in which the Algerian War has been debated, evaluated and commemorated in the five decades since it ended, this book makes an original contribution to important discussions surrounding the contentious issues of memory, migration and empire in contemporary France.

The Weimar Republic, with it fourteen years of turbulent political, economic, social and cultural change, has attracted significant attention from historians primarily because they are seeking to explain the Nazis' accession to power in 1933. This book explores the opportunities and possibilities that the Weimar Republic offered women and presents a comprehensive survey of women in the economy, politics and society of the Weimar Republic. The Republic was a post-war society, and hence, the book offers an understanding of the significant impact that the First World War had on women and their roles in the Weimar Republic. The book also explores to what extent the Weimar Republic was 'an open space of multiple developmental opportunities' for women and considers the changes in women's roles, status and behavior during the Republic. It discusses women's participation in Weimar politics, as voters, elected representatives, members of political parties and targets of their propaganda, and as political activists outside the parliamentary arena. The book investigates the impact, if any, on women's employment of the two major economic crises of the Republic, the hyperinflation of 1922-23 and the Depression in the early 1930s. It describes the woman's role within the family, primarily as wife and mother, the impact of the changes in family and population policy and attitudes towards female sexuality. The Weimar Republic also witnessed significant changes in women's lives outside the home as they accessed the public realm to pursue a variety of interests.

This book provides the multifaceted analysis of the genesis, functioning and decline of the personality cult surrounding Benito Mussolini, the dictator who ruled Italy. It explores one of the ways in which Mussolini suppressed aspects of his personal life to suit the image that he sought to forge as he made his bid for power and then set about creating the Fascist regime. The book looks at the evolution of the iconography of the Duce in both painting and sculpture and at the links between formal elements and some of the aesthetic and ideological traits of the cult of Mussolini. It then reviews the history of Mussolini's presence on Italian television through the programmes which reshaped perceptions of his character to such an extent that, in the national imaginary, the man became almost completely detached from Fascism. The book examines how Margherita Sarfatti attempted to redefine the notions of the state, the leader and his relationship with the people. Focusing in particular on Mussolini's image and on his corporeality as presented in the biography, the book further demonstrates how in Dux Mussolini was portrayed as embodying the qualities of romanita and modernity. These were seen as essential both to Fascism and its leader. The analysis of the image of Mussolini presented in Dux sheds light on some issues related to the construction of the cult of personality and the manufacturing of charismatic leadership. It does this both within the Fascist project and in the age of mass culture.