After the Ruins: Restoring the Countryside of Northern France After the Great War (History) - Hardcover

Hugh Clout

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0859894916 ISBN 13: 9780859894913

Publisher: University of Exeter Press, 1996

Synopsis

After the Ruins uses both official and unofficial records to explore a relatively ignored aspect of recent rural history: how the fields, farms, villages and market towns of Northern France were restored during the 1920s in the aftermath of the Great War. The book contains illustrations and many detailed maps and makes use of both official reports and unofficial critical commentaries.

About this title

Review:

... this is an excellent study; it is both exhaustive and compassionate. Behind the years of research and solid phalanx of tables, charts and statistics Clout never loses sight of the human tragedy, nor of the extraordinary tenacity of a rural population who as recently as 1976 were busy on the northern Meuse reclaiming land from the wastes of that distant war. --Landscape Research, Vol. 22, No. 2, 1997

... a path breaking contribution to the literature... The effects of the war on land use, mechanization, dispersion of the population and their resettlement have never been as carefully treated. There are powerful and telling surveys of the negotiation between local residents and official organizations over the extent of damage, and the appropriate levels of compensation for the devastation brought about by the war. There are original interpretations of the use of Chinese labour on reclamation projects, on the presence of workers from Italy, Belgium, Poland, Spain and Portugal, as well as resistance to the notion that German workers might rebuild where previously their brethren had destroyed. There is interesting detail on these fields as the repository of huge necropoli, and the commemorative efforts which organized the cemeteries which are still sprinkled liberally across this diagonal linking Belgium and Switzerland. --Journal of Historical Geography, 1997

... this is an excellent study; it is both exhaustive and compassionate. Behind the years of research and solid phalanx of tables, charts and statistics Clout never loses sight of the human tragedy, nor of the extraordinary tenacity of a rural population who as recently as 1976 were busy on the northern Meuse reclaiming land from the wastes of that distant war.' (After the Ruins Landscape Research, Vol. 22, No. 2, 1997) ' ... a path breaking contribution to the literature... The effects of the war on land use, mechanization, dispersion of the population and their resettlement have never been as carefully treated. There are powerful and telling surveys of the negotiation between local residents and official organizations over the extent of damage, and the appropriate levels of compensation for the devastation brought about by the war. There are original interpretations of the use of Chinese labour on reclamation projects, on the presence of workers from Italy, Belgium, Poland, Spain and Portugal, as well as resistance to the notion that German workers might rebuild where previously their brethren had destroyed. There is interesting detail on these fields as the repository of huge necropoli, and the commemorative efforts which organized the cemeteries which are still sprinkled liberally across this diagonal linking Belgium and Switzerland. --Journal of Historical Geography, 1997

From the Back Cover:

This is not another book about World War I. Instead, it explores a relatively ignored aspect of recent rural history: how the ordinary environments of fields, farms, villages and market towns of northern France were reconstituted once peace was restored. Using both official reports compiled by prefets and much more critical commentaries by those whose homes and land had been devastated, Hugh Clout charts the geography of destruction and then analyses the work of the state-directed services, the creation of reconstruction cooperatives, the controversial reclamation of the profoundly devastated 'red zone', and ultimately the reconstruction of the countryside across the ten northernmost departements of northern France.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Exeter Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0859894916
• ISBN 13: 9780859894913
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 350