Set in Stone?: War Memorialisation as a Long-Term and Continuing Process in the UK, France and the USA

This book provides a holistic and longitudinal study of war memorialisation in the UK, France and the USA from 1860 to 2014. Moving beyond the social-political circumstances of a memorial’s construction, this study examines memorialisation as a continuing and transformative process. It explores the many ways in which war memorials are repeatedly appropriated, and re-appropriated, undergoing both physical and symbolic transformations. In order to study this full range of transformations, this book presents a unique analytical model that conceptualises objects of memory within three intersecting timescales: the chronological timescale, the conflict timescale and the object timescale. This new methodology facilitates an innovative, holistic approach of understanding engagement with a monument at any given moment in time, allowing meaningful comparisons to be made across both spatial and cultural boundaries. In doing so, it enables an approach to the cultural heritage conflict that moves beyond the socio-political to conceptualise war memorials within a shared cultural experience.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Background and Literature

Methodology

Early War Memorialisation Processes: O-P =1870-1914

Post-First World War Memorialisation Processes: O-P = 1914-1939

Post-Second World War Memorialisation: O-P = 1939- 2014

Discussion

Conclusion

Appendix 1: Questionnaires

Appendix 2: Historical Background to the Initial Development of the War Memorial Tradition

Appendix 3: 17th Maine Memorial, Gettysburg

Bibliography