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- Title
Street-fighting Men: Political Violence in Inter-war France*.
- Authors
Millington, Chris
- Abstract
This article examines violence between political groups in inter-war France. Previous studies have dismissed violent confrontation during this time as ‘simulated’ and unworthy of serious attention in comparison with political violence in other European countries. This article contends that existing scholarship has underestimated the place of violence in Third Republican political culture. The French culture of violence is reconstructed through a close examination of the narratives that political groups constructed around incidents of street violence. An analysis of these narratives reveals the unspoken rules and assumptions that informed understandings, discussions and representations of one’s own aggressive behaviour and the behaviour of one’s opponents. It will be demonstrated that left- and right-wing activists shared common understandings about their conduct during violence and the circumstances in which force could be deployed legitimately. These understandings were rooted in contemporary notions of manliness. This culture of violence was not free from contradiction and it could be used to restrain as well as enable the perpetration of physical violence. The article assesses the acceptability of violence in French inter-war politics and its place within the broader context of European political violence.
- Subjects
FRANCE; POLITICAL violence -- History; POLITICAL violence; INTERWAR Period (1918-1939); FRENCH politics &; government, 1914-1940; HISTORY of masculinity; TWENTIETH century
- Publication
English Historical Review, 2014, Vol 129, Issue 538, p606
- ISSN
0013-8266
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/ehr/cet327