Monuments and Cemeteries of the First World War in Europe: Toward a Transnational History (History of Warfare, 159)

What do war cemeteries and monuments tell us about the way societies remember? This book takes you across Europe, from Flanders Fields and Galicia to Greece, Italy, and the Balkans, to uncover how the First World War’s dead were commemorated. It shows how monuments can be read as texts – revealing entanglements of memory, politics, and identity – and how battlefields were transformed into enduring landscapes of remembrance. Drawing on rare archival materials, local case studies, and international perspectives, it offers fresh insights into the shifting meanings of commemoration, and why these memorials still matter in the twenty-first century.
Contributors are Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, Emmanuel Debruyne, Dominiek Dendooven, Ljiljana Dobrovšak, Damjana Fortunat Černilogar, Joanna Jakutowicz, Nenad Lajbenšperger, Laima Laučkaitė, Hannah Malone, Marcus van der Meulen, Petra Svoljšak, Daniele Pisani, Kamil Ruszała, Vasilijus Safronovas, Danilo Šarenac, Petra Svoljšak, Mari-Leen Tammela, Pieter Trogh, Mihael Uršič, Vlasis Vlasidis, Megan Wang, Jay Winter, and Laurence van Ypersele.

Kamil Ruszała, PhD (2018), Jagiellonian University, is Ass. Professor of Modern History at the Jagiellonian University, Kraków. He has published books and articles on East Central Europe in the First World War, focusing on refugees, encampments, post-imperial transitions, sites of memory, and war commemoration.