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UNFINISHED BUSINESS: REMEMBERING THE GREAT WAR BETWEEN TRUTH AND REENACTMENT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2020

Jay Winter
Jay Winter*
Affiliation:
READ 17 MAY 2019 AT THE OPEN UNIVERSITY
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Abstract

This paper analyses the phenomenon of historical reenactment of Great War battles as an effort to create what is termed ‘living history’. Thousands of people all over the world have participated in such reenactments, and their number increased significantly during the period surrounding the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War. Through a comparison with representations of war in historical writing, in museums and in the performing arts, I examine the claim of reenactors that they can enter into historical experience. I criticise this claim, and show how distant it is from those who do not claim to relive history but (more modestly) to represent it. In their search for ‘living history’, reenactors make two major errors. They strip war of its political content, and they sanitise and trivialise combat.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 30 , December 2020 , pp. 119 - 140
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal Historical Society

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