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FRACTURED FAMILIES: EDUCATED ELITES IN BRITAIN AND FRANCE AND THE CHALLENGE OF THE GREAT WAR*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2014

TOMÁS IRISH
TOMÁS IRISH*
Affiliation:
Trinity College Dublin
*
Centre for War Studies, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland[email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the experiences of university elites in Britain and France during and after the First World War. It compares the elite network of the École Normale Supérieure with that of Trinity and King's Colleges in Cambridge, arguing that these communities functioned and understood themselves as families. The war, which suspended normal intellectual practice and placed mobilized university elites (as junior officers) at an increased risk of wounds or death, was seen as a threat to the very existence of the family. The article traces the responses of these groups to the outbreak of war, to the cessation of normal scholarly life, and to the shocking death rate; in so doing, it demonstrates the resilience of these networks. To date, historians have drawn on the writings of members of these families to make broader arguments about the war experience. This study is the first to examine the self-perception of these groups, and in so doing, provides a new context for scholarly activities during and after the war, bereavement, and remembrance, as well as for academic practices in the post-war period. As a Franco-British comparison, it argues for great similarities of experience between two superficially disparate university cultures

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 509 - 530
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to John Horne, Ciarán O'Neill, Heather Ellis, and to the two anonymous Historical Journal reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article and to Sarah Frank for taking the image of the Monument aux morts at the ENS.

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