Writing local history

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.

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.

This book demonstrates the continuities and the changes in wartime nursing during the one hundred years, from 1854 to 1953. It examines the work that nurses of many differing nations undertook during the Crimean War, the Boer War, the Spanish Civil War, both World Wars and the Korean War. The influence that Florence Nightingale had on Southern women providing nursing care to Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War, and the work of the flight nurses, are detailed. The book also examines the challenges faced by nurses caring for the thousands of soldiers suffering from typhoid epidemics, and those at the Norwegian Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (NORMASH). The decades following the Crimean War witnessed a burgeoning of personal narratives relating accounts of nurses who ministered to combatants in the Franco-Prussian and Anglo-Zulu wars. In considering the work of First World War military nurses, the book explores the dangerous military and political worlds in which nurses negotiated their practice. The book argues that the air evacuation system which had originated during the Second World War was an exciting nursing innovation for the service of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). At the beginning of the Second Anglo-Boer War, there were three distinct groups of female nurses: the Army Nursing Reserve; civilian nurses; and volunteers, many of whom came under the auspices of the Red Cross. The humanitarian work of trained and volunteer nurses after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in 1945, and their clinical wisdom enabled many of the victims to rehabilitate.