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HIS 241
Questions
for Tutorial 07: "Paris Commune"
The Paris uprising of
1871 failed to spread beyond the city walls, and was in this respect among
the least successful of the many Parisian revolts which followed the foundational
revolution of 1789. But its symbolic impact, in an age characterized by
"the social problem," was tremendous.
The three questions for
this week work at four levels of remove from the events. Work your way
through the questions from one level to the next; think of this exercise
in thinking historically as preparation
for writing your papers.
Level I: Direct Reports
from the Commune.
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(a)Question: "The
Last Stage" is a political caricature
from the Commune era. What do you make of it? To what purpose are
gendered images deployed here?
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(b)Links:
The
Last Stage? (from Paris Commune Archive).
Text reads "Commune: May I come in? France: Just a moment --
I have to finish up with this gentleman."
John Leighton. One
Day Under the Paris Commune (from
Modern History Sourcebook). Primary source.
The
Spectres (from Paris Commune Archive).
Text Reads "To his Excellency M. Thiers, Chief Executive Power
of the Rural Republic"
Level II: Distant
Newspapers
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(a)Question: Read
the newspaper article linked to below, and assess the credibility
of its report. If you have time, compare it to the article by John
Leighton linked to above, and to other
articles from the same collection
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(b)Link:Australian
Report on the Commune (from Ingeborg
Tyssen’s Paris Commune Site). One of a large number of Australian
newspaper reports on the Commune collected at this site.
Level III: Turn of
the Century Analyses
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Question:
Anarchists and Communists both claimed the Commune as their own (unfortunately,
conservative responses tend not to have been enshrined on the web,
so we don’t have those available in accessible form). Read two
or more of the essays linked to below. What strategies do the authors
employ to appropriate the history of the Commune for their own ends?
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Links: Peter
Kropotkin. The
Commune of Paris (from Anarchist Archive).
One anarchist take on the Commune
V. I. Lenin. The
Paris Commune (from Anarchist Archive).
Lenin’s analysis (this version has a confusing little note at
the end which is not from Lenin).
M. A. Bakunin. The
Paris Commune and the Idea of the State
(from Anarchist Archive). An anarchist interpretation.
Level IV: Contemporary
Memorials
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(a)Question:
Like early socialists, contemporary leftists try to appropriate the
Commune for their own ends. Here are some semi-scholarly sites devoted
to the Commune. What do you make of them?
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(b)Links: Amis
de la Commune. In French -- the link
"Femmes de la Commune" on this site is quite interesting.
The headline quote from a British newspapermen reads, "If the
French nation were composed only of women, what a terrible nation
it would be!"
Paris
Commune: A lesson for democracy. A
well-put together amateur historian's resource on the Commune -- apparently
offline in 2002! a shame. Try this manifesto
of the Mexican Communist Party instead.
Paris
Commune Archives (from Anarchist Archives).
A collection of sources and readings.
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