20/02/2015
Nationality in war
1789-1991
International university symposium
organised in partnership with the
établissement public du Palais de la Porte dorée/Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration and the National Archives
Paris/Pierrefitte-sur-Seine
3-4 December 2015
Theme: the multifaceted interactions between war and nationality in the contemporary period
Disciplines: history, sociology, law and political science
Languages: French, English
Deadline for proposals: 7 April 2015 (2,000 keystrokes maximum; attach a short CV and a one-page list of publications)
E-mail address: [email protected]
Call for papers
War, a time of exterior confrontation and interior reordering, is a critical moment when forms of social and national inclusion and exclusion are reconfigured. The nationality of individuals becomes a crucial issue, acquires a new meaning and takes on fresh theoretical, legal and practical dimensions. War also changes borders, resulting in the arrival or departure of populations, making questions of nationality an integral part of peace treaties. Outside periods of conflict, war influences representations and definitions of, as well as reflections on, nationality: whether the issue involves increasing population growth, rooting out “national evils”, tracking down domestic foes or defining loyalty and national dignity, the shadow of war always looms in the background. The symposium will focus on all these dimensions in the relationship between war and nationality during the contemporary age (1789-1991), which for our purposes can be divided into three periods.
1. Revolution, war and nationality (1789-1880s)
Between 1750 and 1890, the variations of connections between war and nationality seemed endless, inviting us to explore anew aspects of the 19th century that have too often been overlooked.
The late 18th century witnessed a cultural and political reformulation of the national idea (E. Hobsbawm, A-M Thiesse). Nationality acquired a new meaning, which 19th-century wars put to the test. The French Revolution can be considered a starting point: the episode of Valmy, and its memory, symbolised how war crystallised a latent national identity, and how national ferment could rally troops.
War, then, can be a vector for spreading national feeling, either by emulation or, in the case of the Napoleonic wars, rejection. The nationalist will, i.e., the desire to found a population as a nation on a given territory, can be a source of conflicts, whether they arise in those areas themselves (Ireland, the Italian wars of national liberation) or are remotely constructed (Greece).
Outside Europe, international volunteers from around the world have fought in many wars to uphold an idea of the nation associated with the theme of Liberty: examples include the US Civil War and, probably, many conflicts in South America. The question also arises with colonial lands, where European war exploits, or at least depicted as such, nurture national imaginations. Nationalism did not just take root in Europe: in India, China or 1860s Japan it was a reaction to the European powers’ incursions, which in turn provoked their indifference or questioning. What consequences did these wars have on the theories, conceptions and practices of nationality?
The exploration of this moment seems decisive: probing the relationship between war and nationality makes it possible to reread a certain number of historiographical discussions about these conflicts: what was the Franco-Prussian War’s role in crystallising a shared or divided national identity in France? How are nationalities in multinational empires defined?
2. Redrawing the borders of nationality (1880s-1945)
National identification emerged as a key political concept in the last third of the 19th century, a crucial time in the “nationalisation of societies” (Noiriel, 1991). The symposium will not return to this process, but it must be recalled how efficient nationality became to characterise peoples and their rights (Rosental, 2011): the question whether to include or exclude individuals from nationality and citizenship is consubstantial with the history of nation-states. Increasingly massive migratory flows and, later, the emergence of State management of migration changed the picture. Nationality, a privilege of the exercise of State sovereignty, played on the political as well as sentimental and family chords of dignity, allegiance and loyalty. For colonised lands and peoples, the law was not only very narrow; the colonising powers also arrogated to themselves the right to pick and choose those whom they deemed worthy of citizenship depending on criteria such as their nationality, loyalty or social milieu. The world wars put all these concepts to the test. They modified the terms of the contract and the definition of allegiance as decreed by the State. There was a tendency to base nationality on whether a person intended to join the national community. The bellicose context legitimized tougher legislation. For example, the French law of 7 April 1915 allowed review of all the naturalisations of citizens born in enemy countries. The goal was not only to suspend the situation, considered intolerable at the time, of individuals with dual French and German citizenship, but also to target naturalised citizens who bore arms against France, performed their military service abroad or tried to give an enemy power aid of any kind. Belgium and Italy followed suit in 1918-1919. The end of the First World War, with the demise of multinational empires and the formation of new States in search of territorial and political consolidation, was a turning point in the definition and redefinition of nationality, when legal criteria, considerations of loyalty and even the division and redistribution of land were intertwined and played a part, such as in Czechoslovakia and Poland (Gosewinkel and Meyer, 2009; Gosewinkel and Spurný, 2014)
Between September 1939 and December 1940, France enacted eight laws stripping naturalised persons of their citizenship, including the law of 22 July 1940, which called all naturalisations since 1927 into question (Weil, 2002). How were these laws justified? How were they implemented? What happened to people who were stripped of their citizenship?
Wars led to changes in the way the “other” was depicted. Depending on the time, the enemy—the foreign adversary, such as citizens of enemy countries, but also domestic foes or individuals considered unworthy of being nationals (Simonin, 2008)—was depicted in different ways that bear exploring. In the case of totalitarian States, denaturalisation appears to have been a way of defining the outlines of the “good citizen” and excluding those who do not make the grade. The defeat of France in June 1940 and its subsequent collaboration with the N***s led to a specific definition of the French State’s new enemies. How can these policies be analysed? On what concepts were they based? Papers comparing and contrasting the similarities and differences of these laws and practices across borders will be welcome.
3. Nationality, the Cold War and decolonisation (1945-1991)
After the Second World War, the plight of refugees, stateless persons and all those displaced during the conflict or directly affected by the ensuing geopolitical shifts threw the relationship between war and nationality into high relief. A transition period began that lasted until the adoption of the Geneva Convention, which could be interpreted as the outcome of experiences accumulated during and after the world wars (Noiriel, 1991). How much influence did the war have in institutions set up to solve the “nationality problem”? Did it play a part in the depictions of those involved?
The immediate postwar period was also a turning point in the redefinition of national identity. In France, the adoption of the ordinance of 19 October 1945, which became part of the Nationality Code, owed much to the Resistance: the country wanted to pursue a policy that was the opposite of Vichy’s (Weil, 2002). Did this break with the recent past bring about a modification of nationality practices? How did the war influence the conditions in which the new law was applied? Did loyalty play a role? More generally, in what ways did the Second World War contribute to reformulating the criteria of nationality?
The colonial wars were times of crisis that reshaped the relationship to nationality. The Algerian case has been extensively documented, but little work has been done on the conflict’s consequences on eligibility for citizenship. It is the organisers’ hope that the symposium will redress this shortcoming. The transitory phase between 1962 and 1967, when Algerians were able to request French citizenship, could be discussed. An exploration of the war’s influence on the former colonial subjects’ relationship to nationality in Algeria or other African colonies (Sayad, 1979; Mann, 2006) could widen the discussion. Other cases, less studied but equally interesting, especially Indochina, where war had a very different effect on the right of citizenship, could be proposed as contributions to the symposium.
The Cold War deserves a place in the symposium on several counts. In the earliest years, the French government took steps against Communists from Eastern Europe, stripping them of their citizenship (Spire, 2005). More generally, contributions involving the Cold War’s consequences, including until the Communist bloc collapsed in 1991, on the relationship to nationality of populations from either side will be welcome.
We expect the papers to go beyond the perspective of inter-State warfare to explore the complex web of relationships between war and nationality in all its forms (war between armies, partisan warfare, colonial wars, civil wars, urban warfare, etc.).
The symposium aims to be multidisciplinary, transversal and international. We welcome the contrasting viewpoints of historians, sociologists, legal experts, legal historians, political scientists, etc., as well as comparisons between different countries, the study of bilateral relations between States and, on another scale, the study of groups, individuals and families. Proposals involving all national spaces or movements on a wider scale are welcome. Likewise, alongside the perspectives of social history, political history or the history of international relations, anthropological approaches (for example on forms of commitment), sociological approaches or approaches to the reshuffling of power relations on a large scale will be appreciated.
