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Forthcoming
The Paris Commune:A Global History
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Forthcoming
The Paris Commune as a world revolutionary event that crossed from Paris to Algeria and then New York and was the laboratory for all the republican and socialist ideas of a century
From 1871, this book shows, the Paris Commune (March-May 1871) was a global event. The Parisian revolution was quickly appropriated in Europe and beyond, from Mexico City to Algiers, bringing together the many voices of ‘global radicalism’ of the time. Combining history, anthropology and the sociology of crises and revolutions, Quentin Deluermoz also follows the revolution in the making, on the Parisian street corner, from the perspective of ordinary men and women. And it takes up the old and terribly delicate question, in the century of ‘modernity’, of its temporalities, both short and long, continuous and discontinuous.
References to the Paris Commune (March-May 1871) have resurfaced over the last twenty years in a number of social and political struggles in France, the United States, Spain, Mexico and in Rojava. This resurgence has its roots in the long imperial and global history of the twentieth century, particularly anarchist and communist history. But it also comes from further back and refers to sometimes forgotten meanings of socialism, federalism and republicanism . Continuing the immense work carried out over more than 150 years, this book restores in a new way the intensity of the ‘Commune moment’, and provides tools for understanding its enduring relevance in today's world.
Reviews
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Deluermoz’s exploration of the Commune – in its Parisian core and in its national, European, and global reverberations – expands our knowledge of a history we thought we knew. Based on meticulous and widespread archival research, above all in French national and provincial archives, but also in Great Britain, Spain, and the United States, the book is both empirically rich and theoretically alert. Original in conception, generous in spirit, written with care and passion, this is an important contribution to French and transnational history.
, Journal of Modern History -
Quentin Deluermoz’s superb new book represents the most original contribution yet to rethink the place of the Commune in the global history of the nineteenth century. His study seeks to explain how this short-lived experiment of just seventy-two days fits into broader trends and processes, both in its origins—with strong roots in the transnational activism of 1848, the remaking of urban space, the socialist dream of workers’ self-government—but also its reception.
, Nineteenth-Century French Studies -
In my view, this is the fullest account of the Paris Commune, and other Communes. This is an extremely impressive study of true significance.
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A remarkable book—one of the most important to be published in many years on the famous Paris Commune and the other, less famous revolutionary Communes that together constituted one of the most important global events of the second half of the nineteenth century.
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A remarkable example of how modern European and global history can come into engagement. His aim is as much to show how using the comparative and connective techniques of global history we can produce a more complex kind of engagement with local historical phenomena, as it is simply to understand the commune. And it is for this reason that it will become a major work of reference for historians working on other questions. There is nothing like this in English.
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In providing this multi-perspective account of the event, this book brings into salience the different dimensions that constitute the time-space of the Paris insurrection.
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In the midst of so many printed pages, one book in particular stands out for the originality of its interpretation and the depth of its proposals: the one Quentin Deluermoz has devoted to the analysis of that revolution of 1870-1871. An impeccably effective example of the potential of "l'histoire événementielle", which is regaining its strength.
, Prismas - Revista De Historia Intelectual -
Quentin Deluermoz has written a book that brings together everything that has been written about the many revolutions of 1870-1871, and anticipates everything that will be written about them in the years to come.
, Revue d’histoire du 19e siècle -
Deluermoz's book offers a new interpretation of the Paris Commune, one that goes beyond traditional Franco-French interpretations of events and chronologies.
, Revue d’histoire moderne & contemporaine -
If the idea of an interpretation of the event and its repercussions “at the ground level,” as Deluermoz describes his approach, accurately describes his remarkable archival work and his emphasis on the lived experience of the Commune, his broad geographic and interpretive scope, as well as his rich historical and theoretical interrogations, are just as striking. Scholarship on the Commune will be enriched by this original and rigorous book. This “crossing of nineteenth-century worlds”, to quote its subtitle, keeps its promise, offering a chronological and spatial exploration of the second half of the nineteenth century and the transnational character of revolutions.
La Vie des Idées -
This is a hugely ambitious, exhaustively researched, and enjoyable book. Its arguments are clear and persuasive and it makes a valuable addition to the historiographies of the Paris Commune, modern France, and global radicalism.
, Francia-Recensio