The Paris Commune (a Global History)

By (author) Deluermoz, Quentin
Short description/annotation:
The Paris Commune as world revolutionary event and laboratory for republican and socialist ideas
Description:
In 1871 and over the years to follow, the impact of the Paris Commune was felt the world over. Concepts and practices developed there were taken up in all corners of Europe and travelled as far afield as Mexico City and Algiers. Drawing on history, anthropology, and the sociology of crises and revolutions, Quentin Deluermoz follows the revolution from its origins on the Parisian street, capturing the perspective of ordinary men and women, to examine the delicate question of its legacy.

In recent decades, the Commune has been a touchstone for social and political struggles in France, the United States, Spain, Mexico, and the Syrian Kurdish region of Rojava. This resurgence is rooted in twentieth-century anarchist and communist history. It hearkens back to often forgotten meanings of socialism, federalism, and republicanism. Deluermoz recaptures the intensity of the ''Commune moment'', helping readers grasp its enduring relevance for today.
Review quote:
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.
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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.
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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.
Review quote:
Quentin Deluermoz has written a book that brings together everything that has been written about the many revolutions of 1870-1871, and anticipates everything