The Mobilization of Intellect: French Scholars and Writers during the Great War

by Martha Hanna

Overview

Behind the façade of unity, the French intelligentsia was riven by the same fundamental divisions that had characterized it before the war. For example, the Republican Left argued that German nationalism and militarism began after Kant, with Fichte or Hegel, while the Catholic and nationalistic reactionary Right denounced Kant as the evil inspiration of France's liberal democracy and public school system. The heated rhetoric of the war and the unbearable loss of young lives, says Hanna, lent weight to a redefinition of French culture in national terms—and this, ironically, ended in the cultural conservatism of Vichy France.

This is the first study of the power of French pens and words during and after the Great War. It is a contribution to French and European history as well as to intellectual history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674577558
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	05/01/1996
Pages:	286
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Martha Hanna is Professor of History, University of Colorado at Boulder.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. The Dischord of the Elders
2. The Impiety of War
3. The Kultur War
4. The Controversy over Kant
5. The Classicist Revival
6. "Toujours la Science"

Epilogue

• Note on Primary Sources
• Notes
• Index

What People are Saying About This

Hanna's work takes up one of the major issues of the historiography of twentieth-century France at the present time--the relationship between the apparent traumas of the world wars and the underlying character of French culture, politics, and society. It will interest French historians, intellectual historians, historians of education, and historians of the World Wars. I believe its position in the existing historiographical literature to be unique. The book is a worthy addition to Harvard University Press's fine list in intellectual history in the ever-broadening sense of the term.

Stanley Hoffmann

Extremely well written. Hanna has done extensive research in a neglected area. A very stimulating and original contribution.
— Stanley Hoffmann, Harvard University, author of Duties Beyond Borders

Leonard V. Smith

Hanna's work takes up one of the major issues of the historiography of twentieth-century France at the present time--the relationship between the apparent traumas of the world wars and the underlying character of French culture, politics, and society. It will interest French historians, intellectual historians, historians of education, and historians of the World Wars. I believe its position in the existing historiographical literature to be unique. The book is a worthy addition to Harvard University Press's fine list in intellectual history in the ever-broadening sense of the term.
— Leonard V. Smith, Oberlin College

Editorial Reviews

Extremely well written. Hanna has done extensive research in a neglected area. A very stimulating and original contribution.

Stanley Hoffmann

[An] important and absorbing book...Readers, including those familiar with [the] themes [discussed here], will value the clarity, perception and sympathy which characterize Martha Hanna's treatment of them. But the main appeal of The Mobilization of Intellect lies in its human detail of how individuals and institutions, with all their strengths and eccentricities, responded to the conflict of loyalties that the war provoked.

Times Literary Supplement - Maurice Larkin

Hanna presents a wealth of little-studied material, and demonstrates convincingly that the French intelligensia was determined to help sustain national morale, and that it thereby made a significant contribution to the war effort. She also shows how the nationalist imperative strengthened the hand of the conservatives, with their strong links to influential Action Française circles, and points to the post-war consequences first in the 1920s, and later in the policies of the Vichy régime. This is an attractively produced volume, which will be a useful source of reference, scrupulously documented from individual and institutional archives as well as from published material.

FS [UK] - Michael Kelly

Hanna's work takes up one of the major issues of the historiography of twentieth-century France at the present time—the relationship between the apparent traumas of the world wars and the underlying character of French culture, politics, and society. It will interest French historians, intellectual historians, historians of education, and historians of the World Wars. I believe its position in the existing historiographical literature to be unique. The book is a worthy addition to Harvard University Press's fine list in intellectual history in the ever-broadening sense of the term.

Leonard V. Smith

Hanna presents a wealth of little-studied material, and demonstrates convincingly that the French intelligensia was determined to help sustain national morale, and that it thereby made a significant contribution to the war effort. She also shows how the nationalist imperative strengthened the hand of the conservatives, with their strong links to influential Action Française circles, and points to the post-war consequences first in the 1920s, and later in the policies of the Vichy régime. This is an attractively produced volume, which will be a useful source of reference, scrupulously documented from individual and institutional archives as well as from published material.
— Michael Kelly

FS [UK]

[An] important and absorbing book...Readers, including those familiar with [the] themes [discussed here], will value the clarity, perception and sympathy which characterize Martha Hanna's treatment of them. But the main appeal of The Mobilization of Intellect lies in its human detail of how individuals and institutions, with all their strengths and eccentricities, responded to the conflict of loyalties that the war provoked.
— Maurice Larkin

Times Literary Supplement