This book vividly evokes radical women's integral roles within France's revolutionary civil war known as the Paris Commune. It demonstrates the breadth, depth, and impact of communard feminist socialisms far beyond the 1871 insurrection. Examining the period from the early 1860s through that century's end, Carolyn J. Eichner investigates how radical women developed critiques of gender, class, and religious hierarchies in the immediate pre-Commune era, how these ideologies emerged as a plurality of feminist socialisms within the revolution, and how these varied politics subsequently affected fin-de-sià ̈cle gender and class relations. She focuses on three distinctly dissimilar revolutionary women leaders who exemplify multiple competing and complementary feminist socialisms: Andre Leo, Elisabeth Dmitrieff, and Paule Mink. Leo theorized and educated through journalism and fiction, Dmitrieff organized institutional power for working-class women, and Mink agitated crowds to create an egalitarian socialist world. Each woman forged her own path to gender equality and social justice.

One of the most dramatic chapters in the history of nineteenth-century Europe, the Commune of 1871 was an eclectic revolutionary government that held power in Paris across eight weeks between 18 March and 28 May. Its brief rule ended in ‘Bloody Week’ – the brutal massacre of as many as 15,000 Parisians, and perhaps even more, who perished at the hands of the provisional government’s forces. By then, the city’s boulevards had been torched and its monuments toppled. More than 40,000 Parisians were investigated, imprisoned or forced into exile – a purging of Parisian society by a conservative national government whose supporters were considerably more horrified by a pile of rubble than the many deaths of the resisters. In this gripping narrative, John Merriman explores the radical and revolutionary roots of the Commune, painting vivid portraits of the Communards – the ordinary workers, famous artists and extraordinary fire-starting women – and their daily lives behind the barricades, and examining the ramifications of the Commune on the role of the state and sovereignty in France and modern Europe. Enthralling, evocative and deeply moving, this narrative account offers a full picture of a defining moment in the evolution of state terror and popular resistance.

Scholars commonly take the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789, written during the French Revolution, as the starting point for the modern conception of human rights. According to the Declaration, the rights of man are held to be universal, at all times and all places. But as recent crises around migrants and refugees have made obvious, this idea, sacred as it might be among human rights advocates, is exhausted. It's long past time to reconsider the principles on which Western economic and political norms rest. This book advocates for a tradition of political universality as an alternative to the juridical universalism of the Declaration. Insurgent universality isn't based on the idea that we all share some common humanity but, rather, on the democratic excess by which people disrupt and reject an existing political and economic order. Going beyond the constitutional armor of the representative state, it brings into play a plurality of powers to which citizens have access, not through the funnel of national citizenship but in daily political practice. We can look to recent history to see various experiments in cooperative and insurgent democracy: the Indignados in Spain, the Arab Spring, Occupy, the Zapatistas in Mexico, and, going further back, the Paris Commune, the 1917 peasant revolts during the Russian Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution. This book argues that these movements belong to the common legacy of insurgent universality, which is characterized by alternative trajectories of modernity that have been repressed, hindered, and forgotten. Massimiliano Tomba examines these events to show what they could have been and what they can still be. As such he explores how their common legacy can be reactivated. Insurgent Universality analyzes the manifestos and declarations that came out of these experiments considering them as collective works of an alternative canon of political theory that challenges the great names of the Western pantheon of political thought and builds bridges between European and non-European political and social experiments.

How do we make social democracy? Should we seize the unknown possibilities offered by the future, or does real change develop when we focus our attention on the immediate present? The modern tradition of social revolution suggested that the present is precisely the time that needs to be surpassed, but can society change without an intimate focus on today's experience of social injustice? In Socialism and the Experience of Time, Julian Wright asks how socialists in France from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century tried to follow a democratic commitment to the present. The debate about time that emerged in French socialism lay beneath the surface of political arguments within the left. But how did this focus on the present relate to the tradition of revolution in France? What did socialism have to say about social experience in the present, and how did this discussion shape socialism as a movement? Wright examines French socialism's fascination with modern history, through a new reading of Jean Jaurès' multi-authored project to write a 'socialist history' of France since 1789. Then, in four interlocking biographical essays, he analyses the reformist and idealist socialism of the Third Republic, long side-lined in the historical literature. With a sometimes emotional focus on the present times of Benoît Malon, Georges Renard, Marcel Sembat, and Léon Blum, a personal history unfolds that allows us to revisit the traditional narrative of French socialism. This is not so much a story of the future hope for revolution, as an intimate account of socialism, intellectual engagement, and the human present.

Reclaiming the legacy of the Paris Commune for the twenty-first century Kristin Ross’s highly acclaimed work on the thought and culture of the Communard uprising of 1871 resonates with the motivations and actions of contemporary protest, which has found its most powerful expression in the reclamation of public space. Today’s concerns—internationalism, education, the future of labor, the status of art, and ecological theory and practice—frame and inform her carefully researched restaging of the words and actions of individual Communards. This original analysis of an event and its centrifugal effects brings to life the workers in Paris who became revolutionaries, the significance they attributed to their struggle, and the elaboration and continuation of their thought in the encounters that transpired between the insurrection’s survivors and supporters like Marx, Kropotkin, and William Morris. The Paris Commune was a laboratory of political invention, important simply and above all for, as Marx reminds us, its own “working existence.” Communal Luxury allows readers to revisit the intricate workings of an extraordinary experiment.

In the late 1890s a journalist wrote, "Spanish women would rather weep at a husband's or a son's gravesite than blush for lack of patriotic fervor." Yet at a time when women were expected to sacrifice their sons and husbands willingly for the sake of the nation, women organized and led three significant demonstrations against conscription in Spain. In Spanish Women and the Colonial Wars of the 1890s,D. J. Walker succeeds not only in contextualizing these demonstrations but also in elucidating what they suggested to contemporaries about the role of women in public life in late nineteenth-century Spain. During Spain's military action against an uprising in its North African enclave of Melilla (1893) and its wars against separatists in Cuba (1868--78, 1895--98) and the Philippines (1896--98), Spaniards could pay a fee to the government to avoid being drafted -- leaving the poor to fill the military's ranks. To protest unequal conscription practices, women organized a demonstration in Zaragoza on August 1, 1896, and two smaller demonstrations followed in Chiva (Valencia) and Viso del Alcor (near Sevilla). While such demonstrations were small in number and had no effect on government policy, they received considerable attention in Spain and across the globe. Drawing on a broad range of primary sources, including literature, memoirs, and visual representations, Walker explores what the eruption of these protests meant to the various groups that made up the political opposition in Spain. She also considers the extent to which the history of women in the 1890s yields insights into the Spanish government's efforts to muffle any calls for change that were connected either to the status of women or that of the working classes. She reviews the representation of women in connection to war and violence in the press and in other contemporary writings, as well as the perceptions of women and violence regarding the Paris Commune (still a vivid memory for a number of Spaniards in 1896) and anarchism. The appendix includes excerpts from primary sources that present often-neglected ideas and programs of dissident women, including Teresa Claramunt, Soledad Gustavo, and Angeles López de Ayala. Affording specific insights into the formidable obstacles -- including the Catholic Church, class, and gender animosities -- that blocked change in the status and role of women in Spanish society, Spanish Women and the Colonial Wars of the 1890s delineates the beginnings of meaningful struggles against those barriers.

The Paris Commune, France's revolutionary civil war, rocked the nineteenth century and shaped the twentieth. A pivotal moment in history, it is the linchpin between revolutionary pasts and futures and as the crucible allowing alternate possibilities. Upending hierarchies, the Commune became a touchstone for subsequent revolutionary and radical social movements.

This thoroughly revised, updated and expanded new edition of an established text surveys the cultural, social and political history of France from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the Paris Commune through to Emmanuel Macron's presidency. Incorporating the newest interpretations of past events, Sowerwine seamlessly integrates culture, gender, and race into political and social history. This edition features extended coverage of the 2007-8 financial crisis, the rise of the political and cultural far right and the issues of colonialism and its contemporary repercussions. This is an essential resource for undergraduate and taught postgraduate students of history, French studies or European studies taking courses on modern French history or European history. This text will also appeal to scholars and readers with an interest in modern French history. 'Richly informative and lucidly presented, Sowerwine's France since 1870 offers essential reading for students and researchers. Particularly powerful is the new final chapter, which draws on historical expertise to explore and explain the literary and political malaise of contemporary France.' – Jessica Wardhaugh, University of Warwick, UK. 'This third edition is unparalleled in its reach and excellence as a history of modern France from 1870 to the present. Sowerwine seamlessly integrates culture, gender, and race into political and social history. His incorporation of the newest interpretations of past events as well as the historical perspective he lends to current events such as terror attacks, new laws regarding labor and marriage, modern globalization, neo-liberalism-as well as to France's darkening mood--make this highly readable book a true masterpiece.' – Elinor Accampo, University of Southern California, USA. 'Her recent social and economic challenges have cast deep shadows into the story of modern France that Charles Sowerwine tells so clearly. Those dark questions about culture, politics and society have their full place in this This scholarly but accessible reassessment of French history since 1870. This edition raises new questions about France's story, directly and compellingly, and remains the key text for readers who are curious about modern France.' – Julian Wright, Northumbria University, UK. 'Following on the fine precedent set by earlier editions, this masterful survey offers students and the public alike a readable and illuminating account of the tortuous and ever intriguing path of French history since 1870.' – George Sheridan, University of Oregon, USA.

To date, war history has focused predominantly on the efforts of and impact of war on male participants. However, this limited focus disregards the complexity of gendered experiences with war and the military. The Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600 investigates how conceptions of gender have contributed to the shaping of military culture, examining the varied ideals and practices that have socially differentiated men and women'swartime experiences. Covering the major periods in warfare since the seventeenth century, The Handbook explores cultural representations of war and the interconnectedness of the military with civil society and its transformations.

Civil society and civic engagement have increasingly become topics of discussion at the national and international level. The editors of this volume ask, does the concept of “civil society” include gender equality and gender justice? Or, to frame the question differently, is civil society a feminist concept? Conversely, does feminism need the concept of civil society? This important volume offers both a revised gendered history of civil society and a program for making it more egalitarian in the future. An interdisciplinary group of internationally known authors investigates the relationship between public and private in the discourses and practices of civil societies; the significance of the family for the project of civil society; the relation between civil society, the state, and different forms of citizenship; and the complex connection between civil society, gendered forms of protest and nongovernmental movements. While often critical of historical instantiations of civil society, all the authors nonetheless take seriously the potential inherent in civil society, particularly as it comes to influence global politics. They demand, however, an expansion of both the concept and project of civil society in order to make its political opportunities available to all.