 Great, so good morning and welcome today to re-assessing the Franco-Prussian war 150 years on, we have a round table lined up for this morning, which will run until about one o'clock, there will be the opening remarks but what I'll do is introduce our five panellists in the order in which they appear on the program and then each of the panellists will speak for five minutes, maybe a wee bit over and we will then have a more general discussion. As yesterday, this is being recorded and as yesterday please, you know, make use of the question and answer function on Zoom, which I will be monitoring. So, our first, I was going to say contested, our first panellist is Professor Sir Hugh Straughan, who is currently the Wodlau Professor of International Relations at the University of St Andrews of position here since 2015. Professor Straughan's long and distinguished academic career has included positions at Sandhurst, Cambridge, Glasgow, and Oxford where he was just a professor of the history of war, a position incidentally held earlier by Sir Michael Howard. Professor Straughan is also much engaged in the world of contemporary policy and indeed his knighthood awarded in 2013 is in recognition of his services to the Ministry of Defense. He's also much involved with public engagement. I would highlight his roles would be National Army Museum and Imperial War Museum. Professor Straughan's most important scholarly works focus on the British Army, the First World War, and notably the First World War to arms published by Oxford University Press in 2001 a very weighty tone indeed 1200 pages of scholarship. Our, our second panellist is Dr. Karine Vali, who, many of you of course would have listened to her yesterday, when she spoke so compellingly on the press and public opinion and broader European attitudes to France in 1870-71. Dr. Vali is a lecturer in French at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. She's a graduate of Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge, a place very close to my heart, where I met my wife many years ago. So that's a nice connection. Dr. Vali's professional career has taken her to Durham and to Edinburgh. She has published extensively but for the purposes of this conference, I highlight in particular her 2008 book entitled Under the Shadow of Defeat the War of 1870-71 in French memory. Our third panellist is Dr. Julia Nichols, lecturer in French and European studies at King's College London. She spoke to us yesterday, of course, on the Paris Commune and it's, I guess, frankly ambiguous position in the thinking of the left, certainly of the Marxist left. Dr. Nichols joined King's in 2017. Actually, perhaps I should say rejoined King's in 2017 as she completed her undergraduate and NA programmes at King's earlier. Dr. Nichols first academic post was in Oxford and her first book, which very much ties to what she spoke about her first book is entitled Revolutionary Thought after the Paris Commune 1871 to 1885 and that was published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. Dr. Nichols has also published on the role of empire and of nationalism in French revolutionary socialist thought. Our fourth panellist is Dr. Jasper Heinsen, and he is senior lecturer in modern history at the University of York, so my apologies Jasper, we degraded you in our programme. The apologies are embarrassingly we misspelled your first name so Jasper, then E. Dr. Heinsen has an extensive list of publications with credit, but the purposes of this conference I appoint, I point especially to his first works earlier works which look at the gulf Hanoverian, opposition to Bismarck's unification of Germany which I think shows the sort of complexities on the German side when it comes to national nation building, which possibly didn't come out as so much yesterday. And he's also published more recently a very important book, this was in 2017 entitled Making Prussians Raising Germans a cultural history of Prussian state building after Civil War 1866 to 1935 and that very much challenges existing narratives about German nation building and you know brings in the sort of regional dimension as well. And also for purposes of this conference I should point to his work on French officer POWs in the Franco Prussian war. So, you know, an interesting range there. And that's actually most recently born H.J. article on Royal sovereignty in Prussia, so that just came out that's hot off the press and I had a chance to read that but I'm looking forward to that one came out in February I think with H.J. And then finally, our final speaker is Dr. Marika Koenig who's deputy director of the German Historical Institute Paris. He was found in 1958. So of course it's a product of a determination to end this fatal destructive pointless kind of series of conflicts between France and Germany. So Koenig is here chiefly not because of that, but because she's published or co published various books which have looked at the Franco German relationship. In particular, a boxy coat, offered with Elise Julien, Julien, for Feindhorn, from Fleschtung, Deutschland, 1870 to 1918, which I think also appeared in a French translation, I think by German is perhaps a little bit better site went for that one translated as rivalry and France Germany and France 1870 to 1918 I think would be a fair English translation of that. She's also done research on German immigrants in Paris in this period, and also on some recent historiography how historians recently have dealt with and perhaps should deal with the Franco-Prussian war. So I'm particularly grateful to you Dr Koenig for coming in at fairly short notice. So without further ado, it's over to Professor Straughn. Sorry, I couldn't get it on mute. Michael, thank you. As I was collecting my thoughts, I was thinking of the centenary of the Franco-Prussian war as opposed to the 150th anniversary, which was my last year at Cambridge when I took a paper called continuity and conflict in modern with my director of studies Chris Andrew, and my supervised by Patrick Bury, who wrote a three volume life of Gambetta and also with Robert Toomes and we heard from yesterday, a life of tear. The focus when we got to 1870 was less on the Franco-Prussian war and more on the commune. And so with a pair of what Julia Nichols was saying yesterday, at Cambridge in 1971 the commune had an afterlife. There were enough aspirants for some to meet us as undergraduates we'd all come up in September, October other 68. And I thought they'd been on the barricades in Paris at any rate for that to be an important continuity. And I remember Chris Andrew specifically saying you know there was a continuity here from 1789 through 1830 1848 up to the commune and so that it then continued and trying to engage my attention, no doubt, as he put it into the French mutinies of 1917, and then 1968. The reality was that the impact of the war on military history at least in Britain was reflected in a very limited ways. I mean one obviously we heard about yesterday was Michael Hards history of the Franco-Prussian war which Patrick Bury urged me to read, and which I think having been published in 1961 was about the only academic military history which most academic historians seem to have heard of them. The second book was Gerhard Ritter's mighty four-volume Staatsgunstern Kriegshandwerk which was published in English between 1968 and 1973 as the sword and the scepter. And that book on the problem of militarization in German history, focused predominantly on the First World War but of course had as part of its precursor the Bismarck-Molka relationship during the Franco-Prussian war and really used it to put forward that model of civil military relations which Christoph Neuville so ably and convincingly debunked yesterday. Not until Dennis Showalter published railroads and rifles soldiers technology in the unification of Germany, which came out in 1975. And there appear a proper study of what you might call the impact of industry and technology on the strategy and tactics of the war. In fact I remember in 1968 just before I went up to Cambridge, speaking to John Keegan and saying to him I thought the Franco-Prussian war made a nice compact special subject for a history undergraduate course to which he snorted with derision. This was not a war he thought worthy of serious attention. Now the point is that there is not how it seems between 1871 and 1914. For any military historian. Those four decades are marked by an unprecedented flow of publications in military history and in military theory in France, Germany, and in Britain, even if the English trans attacks were largely translations from French and German. I will make just two points about that outpouring. First of all, I think some military matters was written by general staff historians themselves representatives of institutions that have been founded or refunded in response to the wars of German unification. And secondly, in the minds of many of those who wrote it military history was itself the lifeblood of military theory. There was a relationship between history and current practice. And so it was the principle vehicle for understanding strategy and tactics. When we look at the Franco-Prussian war today from a military purely military perspective we tend to see it have been a much yesterday discussion was an indication of what was to come. It's about the impact of industrialization of technology and mass production on war with rifle breach loading applied to small arms and to artillery. It's about the event of the machine gun and the impact of the railway. And secondly of course it's seen as the first of three major German wars, creating a continuum in European history in the sort of way that Fritz Fischer argued between the Kaiser Reich and the Third Reich. However, what we had yesterday actually makes a very different and in some ways I think much more sensible set of points. And as does indeed any reading of the literature of 1871 to 1914, whether it's Laval or Fosch in France, or Schlichting or Schlieffen, or indeed in relation to Britain Morris or GFR Henderson. And that is to see the Franco-Prussian war as continuity, more than has changed in the history of war. Robert Toombs got his yesterday, and I was delighted he did because I was thinking of referring them to today anyway so it saves me having any images myself. But he got just to look at the paintings of the Neuveland Detail in France. And we were also reminded by Christoph Neubull of Menzel in Germany. And what they show is an updated version of Napoleonic warfare, brightly colored uniforms, many of them, in the case of the Second Empire, emulating those of Napoleon's army, worn by soldiers fighting in close order, and at close range. However, those who studied the Strassian tactics, the Franco-Prussian war in its immediate aftermath, sought to incorporate that war within the context of the Napoleonic Wars, just as the military theorists of Napoleonic warfare, Germany and Klauswitz had sought to incorporate that experience in the wars of Frederick the Great. To see the wider awakening to the importance of Klauswitz's on war, a book after all descriptive of Napoleonic warfare was itself in large part a product of the Franco-Prussian war. In fact, in France, of the impact of Klauswitz has had been translated into French before 1877, kill off the study of Napoleonic warfare, among general health staff historians, but actually to reinvigorate it through a whole cohort of late 19th century officers, and now Camon, Colin, and Grasse among them. Rob Foley's characterization of the German myth about the war, one of the three that he highlighted yesterday, that the battle was the aim of strategy, that in other words strategy served tactics, rather than being somehow connected to policy, it was true, not just a pressure, you can find it expressed by Foch, in his lectures at the Ecole de Guerre, the turn of the century, and in Britain it was a view expressed by GFR Henderson, who taught a whole generation of first world war commanders, including Douglas Hague, at the staff college in the 1890s. The Franco-Prussian war confirmed the characterization of war proposed by Klauswitz, the strategy, let's say in their interpretation, the strategy was the purpose of the use of the engagement for the purpose of the war, which was actually to be understood as a military campaign, aiming with a battle like Sedan. The short war revolution of 1914 could be sustained by such a reading of military history, particularly at the popular level. But of course it wasn't true. Today we were reminded of how both Bismarck and Malka, both Gandatta and Thier, sought to end the Franco-Prussian war, but did not know how. By constructing a narrative, which concluded at Sedan, not at Frankfurt, military history sustained the rare, that picture of by Dutay, which now hangs in the Musee de l'armée, and which I first encountered as the frontispiece to the chapter called The Sedan à l'Aman, in Maxime Végant's Histoire de l'armée français, published in 1961. This was a view of major continental war that omitted the people's war, and of course the commune, and which suggested the capacity of industrialized war, which by suppressed the capacity of industrialized war fought by mass armies, conscripted from literary and politically aware societies to sustain a long war. It was a view also, which saw European war as contained and manageable by contrast with the colonial wars with which the British and French were by 1970 familiar, but which Germany had yet to encounter. When it did encounter East Africa and then in South West Africa, it didn't really integrate in its view of war as a whole. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thanks, Hugh. Let's move straight on to Dr Karen Barley. Over to you. Okay, thanks very much. Excuse me. So, yeah, thanks, Fessie, for organizing this roundtable. In preparing for this roundtable session, I was starting to think about, you know, the broader issues about, you know, the conference theme reassessing the Franco-Operation War 150 years on, and the anniversary of the 150th anniversary. So what I just want to talk about very briefly is just a few thoughts that I've been having over the past year or so, in terms of where we can take research on this subject. And also a few thoughts about how the 150th anniversary has played out, obviously been quite limited because of the pandemic. So one of the things I've been thinking about, and I think was one of my starting points when I originally started to research the Franco-Operation War. So think about how the Franco-Operation War was different to the previous wars in the 19th century, particularly to the Crimean War, but also to the Napoleonic Wars. And the other wars, the smaller scale conflicts of the 1850s, 1860s. And one of the things that I kept coming back to, and one of the reasons that I've come back to the Franco-Operation War, having spent a bit of time researching the Second World War, was the development that happened as part of the peace terms, the Treaty of Frankfurt, which was Article 16, which was the term that included the provision that all French and German soldiers must be provided with a permanent resting place. So permanent war grave, either individually or collectively. And this was the first time this had happened in any European war. And then some developments, particularly with the Crimean War, where you started to see the burial of soldiers, you started to get the commemoration and war memorials to ordinary soldiers as opposed to the previous wars where you'd seen the focus on the officers. And again, you know, if we go back to the Napoleonic Wars, you know, the battlefields, many soldiers have been left basically to kind of rot on the battlefields or had just been placed in unmarked mass graves. And I was struck by why it was that the Franco-Operation War was the first war in which this was guaranteed. And so this got me thinking about what it was about the Franco-Operation War that seemed to bring about new ways of thinking about death and sacrifice in war. And what it was that soldiers were fighting for. And this idea of sacrifice is something that I keep coming back to. It keeps re-emerging in different ways when I've been returning to the Franco-Operation War in my research in the past year or so. And so it really connects in with these broader questions about how, on the one hand, you know, we've got this new modern warfare that we've been hearing about over the past couple of days, which becomes more deadly. On the one hand, death becomes more commonplace, but on the other hand, it also seems almost more shocking to observers, the press, the humanitarian relief efforts, the volunteers who are reporting this back. And this gives rise to these new debates about sacrifice, about the expectations of soldiers as well. So it's also connected up with the treatment of soldiers, new medical developments in terms of the new treatment that is available to soldiers as well. And I think that feeds into the way that soldiers are treated. They can no longer just be sort of written off. And this also plays into the significance of soldiers as citizens as well, which we see in particular in France, when France becomes a republic, but also in Germany as well as part of this process of German unification and of course the significance of German nationalism as well. So it's tied up with these bigger questions. It's also tied up with questions about religion as well. And we see this particularly in France, you know, with these discourses of death and sacrifice, and we see these rival discourses between republican visions of death and Catholic visions as well. And we get, of course, on, you know, we get these very different visions of what soldiers are fighting for. You know, you've got on the one hand these republican soldiers, you've got also Garibaldian volunteers, but you've also got the soldiers who are fighting behind the banner of the sacred heart of Jesus, the papals were who are fighting for a vision of a Catholic France as well. And so I've been thinking about how all this plays into what makes the Franco-Poetian war something different. So I think we, you know, what I've been trying to do is to place a Franco-Poetian war into a wider European context during comparisons with the earlier conflicts but also later conflicts as well. And what I've also been struck with by is how sacrifice also played a part in shaping the peace. And again, you know, I was struck by some of the comments that Robert Tunes was making in his presentation yesterday about, you know, as we've just been talking about the difficulties in ending the war, because the more the sacrifices mounted up, the more each side was determined that the peace terms should honour and be proportionate to the sacrifices made. And this on the German side, they were absolutely determined that they should get these territorial annexations as a Moselle. And this was very much, this is very important to the Germans that, you know, they, they couldn't agree to peace terms that didn't, you know, secure these terms because they, you know, particularly Maltica was saying, well, you know, we can't turn around to soldiers and say, well, you know, we've kind of agreed these terms. And in a sense, it would almost have felt as if they'd been fighting and sacrificing their lives for very little in return. But equally, the French Republican government also had very interesting ideas about sacrifice as well. And this plays into the broader European situation because you've got all the European governments who are neutral and who are not participants in the war, but who are also very much pressuring the French Republican government from September 1870 to end the war. And so you've got the British, but also the Russians, the Austrians and the Italians in particular saying to the French, you know, repeatedly when there are proposals for peace negotiations that are put forward by the Germans. And repeatedly they say to them, you know, you must make the sacrifice of Alsace-Moselle in order to end the war and to stop the suffering of both the French and the German soldiers as well as civilians. And what was striking is that the French and the Republican government doesn't really see sacrifice in quite the same way. They were absolutely determined not to sacrifice the territories of Alsace-Moselle. But at the same time, they were willing to continue to sacrifice the lives of their soldiers, despite the fact that the more the war went on, the more unlikely it was that they would never have any chance of victory. So what I've been trying to do is also think about the Franco-Prussian War as a European war, as I talked about yesterday, with global implications. And I think this is something that a number of speakers have also talked about in their papers. And I think there's very much a tendency in some of the more recent scholarship to move away from this concept of the war as simply this limited conflict between France and Germany towards seeing it in a broader European and transnational and even global context. And I think I was also struck as well by how this seems to be quite different to the way that the 150th anniversary has been conceived officially by the French and German governments and the Souvenir Français who have been leading the commemoration and who have painted this in terms of the 150th anniversary as being 150 years of war and peace, 75 years of war between France and Germany between 1870 and 1945, which have then been followed by 75 years of peace. And so all of that has been an attempt to frame the Franco-Prussian War in the context of the First and Second World Wars, but also to see the First and Second World Wars in terms of a Franco-German conflict as well. And then to frame the post-1945 period of course in the context of European integration. And I think that's been quite an interesting way of looking at it and quite contentious way of looking at it as well. And then finally, I just wanted to mention, I think also there has been, despite the pandemic and everything else, I think there has been an interest in the 150th anniversary that we've seen in conferences such as these, but also I think through the work of the museums which, you know, Kavalot and Luani, which, you know, when I was doing my original research really weren't, you know, playing a significant role in this, there were museums that had been created in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, but you know, they really sort of, you know, either disappeared or didn't really exist anymore. So it's been interesting to see how they've been part of this as well. So that was really all I wanted to say for the moment. Karin, thanks very much. So Dr. Julia Nicole's over to you. Thanks, Michael. I'm afraid I can't claim to be a graduate of our esteemed institution, actually my degrees are from the other kings in Cambridge. But yes, thank you. So thank you very much for inviting me to speak on this. I've really enjoyed being a part of the conference and listening to everybody's perspectives. So, for my kind of five minutes, I want to take the Franco-Prussian War and the commune together, and to think about the significance of 1870 to 71 as a whole, I suppose. I think that, you know, they go together almost as a pair. And for me in my research, I suppose, it's been very difficult to separate them, especially when we're thinking about their enduring significance. And I want to concentrate on the French context. This is obviously the context that I know best. And the importance of the Franco-Prussian War in French history, I suppose, its place in French history and in French politics. I think in this context we're very used to seeing 1870 to 1871, you know, this terrible year as a kind of an inflection point in constitutional terms for very obvious reasons. You know, it's the Franco-Prussian War that brought about the end of the Second Empire. It's obviously very difficult to say whether this would have happened without the war. And I think Quentin yesterday talked, you know, in his paper about the kind of causality between all of these events that went together. The fall of the Second Empire, the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris Commune had some really interesting things to say about that. There had been a kind of increase in changes and reforms during the last few years of the Empire as well as opposition or an increasingly vocal opposition to Napoleon III. But I think it's very doubtful that that would have happened so swiftly and so comprehensively without the war. It not only removed the Bonaparte from government, but it discredited the Bonapartists as kind of political opponents. Or as potential rulers really, and this was kind of brought to a close, I suppose, in the 1880s. And obviously as well, it ushered in the Third Republic. So, you know, this would go on, as I'm sure we all know, to be the longest lasting constitution in France and French history since the Ancien Hégé. It was really, the Third Republic I think is kind of much more aligned now. And people even at the time are, you know, not very kind about the Third Republic, especially in the 20th century. It's seen as a constitution of compromises where nothing really gets done and nobody is really, nobody really likes it that much. But it's hugely significant in French history. This is the first time that France had known a stable Republican government, even though it was almost 100 years after the French Revolution. It was this regime that truly implanted the idea of the Republic, not only in French politics, but also in French national consciousness as well. And along with that, so you know, we have the end of the Second Empire, the beginning of the Third Republic, it also brought to a close the era of revolution that France had been experiencing since 1789. The Paris commune is very famously France's last 19th century revolution. And I think, you know, with its defeat, with the defeat of the commune by the French army, and by the kind of nascent Third Republic, the state really reclaimed a monopoly on legitimate violence. And so both thinking in kind of barbarian terms reclaimed a monopoly on legitimate violence that it had not held since 1789 was no longer considered acceptable to rebel against the government. So, for all of these reasons, 1870, the period 1870 and 1871 is a major turning point in French history. And it's a very complex in many ways, the end of the political and social uncertainty and turmoil of the 19th century. And the beginning of what some people might call although, you know, it's not really that consensual, a kind of a new more consensual period, or at least one in which major the major ideological disputes that did not go away. And they were found out in a different way, and were more effectively contained to nonviolent means, I suppose. Perhaps we can think of, you know, the drivers of barriers. An example of this, it's an event that rocks France that went on for a very long time but didn't precipitate kind of armed revolt. So it was kind of ascended to that kind of level. But like Hugh, I think, I think is also interesting, or most interesting to me to think about 1870 and 1871, or to think about the continuities of this period. And I think that's the history, or the ways in which it connected to both the period that was before it and that that went afterwards. And I think the continuities across the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s are almost as important as the breaks, the changes, or the ruptures. And these are in different kind of spheres of French politics or French life. So, both in terms of politics, you know, there's certainly these big constitutional changes that I have mentioned took place. There was of course, you know, very significant that France moved from the Second Empire to the Third Republic and all the policy changes that went along with that. But these constitutional changes weren't completely new, and they weren't solely the result of the war or the result of the events of 1870 and 1871. Here I would point everybody to one of my, I would say, my favorite books, Sadeh Hazari's Things from Subject to Citizen, where he shows how the operational shifts towards a democracy, I suppose, were ceded not in the 1870s. It didn't advance this shift that the Third Republic had occurred, but during the Second Empire, that the mechanisms for facilitating that dated back to an earlier period. So the changes that occurred after 1870 were to a large extent built upon and dependent upon those foundations, the foundations that had been laid in the 1850s and the 1860s. I also see this, if we think about this period in terms of kind of personnel, personal relationships and politics as well. And this is especially clear if we look at the commune, or if we look at kind of revolutionary members of French politics. And I don't want to talk about this too much because I think I talked about it yesterday and I think he's really interested in listening to me talk about it again. But the defeated revolutionaries after 1871 after the end of the commune, although they went into exile they didn't simply go away you know they weren't severed off from other Republicans, in the sense that we might think that they were. They continued to play an important part in French public life and they maintained many of the relationships that they had had before 1870 with other members of the kind of Republican spectrum I suppose with people like them also and with many of these dated from you know from actually from 1848 or from the 1850s from from the aftermath of that that failed revolution and republics so I think the Republican coalition of the post 1848 period actually held up a lot better in the post 1870 period than we might think. So that's. Yeah, I mean I suppose to conclude very quickly. Where does this leave 1870 to 1871. I think you know this this period or this year was undoubtedly a turning point in French history is silly to claim that it wasn't, but perhaps not in the ways that we might have assumed. It's important when we think about it to hold these kind of these changes and these continuities intention with each other. And by doing that, that's how by understanding how they fit together this is how we can appreciate the kind of the true significance of 1870 and 1871 in French history. So I will stop there thank you very much. Julia thanks very much indeed and now over to Dr Jasper Heinz. Sorry I couldn't quite find the unmute unmute button. Anyway, thanks very much for your kind kind introduction Michael and, and also for organizing this high caliber and really wide ranging conference. It's a privilege to be on this panel and, as it happens, Karen Mareik and I will actually be hosting another round table on Franco-Prussian war. So I guess today's in many ways the sort of, you know, general sort of address rehearsal for this event in a few weeks. I think Franco-Prussian war justified his decision to write a history of the Franco-Prussian war by by pointing out that it had become a con I forgotten conflict. 30 years later, of course, the statement no longer no longer quite rings true. The sesquicentennial has generated more than respect to a more than respectable echo, both in the popular history community, and among academic historians. The diversity of events ranging from conferences, public talks, exhibitions, guided tours, and digital media projects, we as witness to that. Thanks to new research in the last one and a half decades or so, we're also better informed than ever about the war's impact on international law, humanitarianism, the role of neutral powers and the Parisian commune. We have more learned a great deal about the transnational social reverberations of the Franco-German conflict and contemporaries encounter with mass violence. Indeed, many of these aspects were touched on in yesterday's presentation. What for me, though, are the de-centered bottom-up perspectives that are now being explored, which present a welcome contrast to the national master narratives of German nationalification and the French trauma of defeat that overshadowed previous interpretations until quite recently. The national frameworks of reference and linguistic barriers are slow to disappear, but the extent to which historians on all sides have gone out of their way to acknowledge and engage with each other's viewpoints is a sign of remarkable progress. Given the many voices with which the legacy of the Franco-Prussian war speaks to us already, one may well wonder which unexplored frontiers historical scholarship will hone in on next as the limelight of the anniversary fades. In the few minutes that remain, I would like to engage further with a question that we heard about in Mark Hudson's presentation, namely the effective responses of the protagonists of mass violence. The answers were some reflections on how the theme of emotions relates to my own research, past and present. From a 21st century vantage point, surviving ego documents often reveal a striking, if not schizophrenic, contemporaneity of humanitarian empathy and indifference to suffering. The difficulty of sentiments tends to be treated as evidence of the Franco-Prussian war's intermediary stage on a path to total war that was bookended by the Napoleonic Wars and the cataclysm of the two world wars. However, and this brings me to my question. The counter that this theological approach detracts from peculiar traits of the Franco-Prussian war, which merit further investigation on their own terms as the evolution of warfare in the 19th century was not linear, but full of roads not taken and quirks. In contrast to the major conflicts that came before and after, the Franco-Prussian war did not activate international alliances, and just as unusually, the two armies were quite evenly matched. The same goes for Prussia's and, sorry, for France's, and Prussia's shared responsibility for the outbreak of hostilities. Although Borussia's historiography, and for opposite reasons, valorized social historians of the 1970s, painted Napoleon as, Napoleon III, as the hapless victim of Napoleon, of the Bismarck's machinations, few would contest today that the French emperor actively saw a war in 1870 for his own ends. Finally, both sides showed scant regard for the emerging conventions of humanitarian international law. The Prussian bombardment of civilians in Strasbourg and the Bavarian atrocities in Basel are particularly infamant. But it is worth recalling that France commenced the war by Shelling-Zarbrücken, and that the arming of the male population for a Guerre-Autroes road roughshod over the goal of the 1864 Geneva Convention to neutralize civilian non-combatants, not to mention the fact that returning French prisoners of war participated in the slaughter of thousands of fellow citizens during the crackdown on the commune. In short, the Franco-Prussian war was an all-round grey war if ever there was one. Unsurprisingly, Bismarck's proposal for the establishment of a criminal court to try French politicians for crimes of aggression fell flat, despite the precedent of Captain Henry versus a war crimes trial after the American Civil. I think there is therefore more to be learned about the strategies humanitarians and combatants adopted beneath the bluster of official patriotism to cope with their complexity and a conflict characterized by so much moral and in fact other kinds of ambiguity. And this brings me quite neatly to my research and the intersections between two seemingly very different topics. As as Michael mentioned, my first book was about Prussian state building in Hanover and Hanover is an interesting case because it was conquered by Prussia in 1866. The population still felt a lot of resentment towards Prussia when the war of 1860 sorry of 1870 came. And so this is sort of the point sorry I should have mentioned that to start the central theme between this what I'm saying here about Hanover and my second project is conflicting loyalties. So this is the case to return to the case of Hanover. In Hanover, many, the population, many members, many soldiers members of the public weren't actually very enthusiastic about the war because of the attachment to the previous regime, but there were also notable regional differences within the province, as well as social ones. So it was kind of very, very, very interesting that even at a local level, even in rural villages, the response was very divided. It was in fact, dictated by by social allegiances. So, depending on the village dynamics, often, you know, rural laborers for example, either supported or opposed the war depending on how they got along with our masters. And likewise, we find the newspapers, when they reported on the war, often made it seem like Hanoverans were refighting the wars of liberation against Napoleon in 1815 without really mentioning Prussia at all. Likewise in many, many, you know, regimental histories and ego documents. They often mentioned that someone shouted Waterloo and then soldiers, you know, ran to the front famously at Spichern. And again, Waterloo, it's, you know, important to bear in mind was the British term for Waterloo. And so they weren't shouting Bellallions, which would have been of course the Prussian name for the battle. So there was, you know, those regional identities were very strong. And often the participation in the war against France was often a way for Hanoverans to reassert the local identity in a position to Prussia. This is the first part where we can see locally lead into this and local patriotism coming from conflict with Prussian attempts to mobilize the population for national war, a nation that actually didn't really exist yet. So again, how did the questionnaires, how did Germans reconcile their different loyalties. This conflict, again, is also evident in my new topic and my new project, which is about the word of honor and how it evolved in the 19th century. As many of you may know, it was very common since the 17th century, not earlier for particularly officers to give the word of honor in captivity so that they could pledge their word as officers as gentlemen, you know, and this is a subject of a sovereign, not to escape in return for liberties and captivity. And this became part of the humanitarian tradition that emerged in the 19th century. So all the important international conventions in the 19th century and beyond actually enshrined parole as a right. But in which in turn one raised other questions about whether only officers should be allowed to give parole. And so we see a sort of emerging conflict between sort of a social identity as opposed to sort of an again understanding of democratic citizenship. So in 1870 we see, as I mentioned this humanitarian tradition comes to the forewear strongly it's the first time that the Geneva Convention, sort of is observed. Well, aside from the general of 1866 but sort of the first major international conflict, where the Geneva Convention really matters and likewise the Red Cross plays a very active role in this war for the first time. And so humanitarian sensibilities are very important in the war of 1870 but at the same time this kind of national hatred that certainly plays a role in France. And also this attachment to the nation and the idea that a citizen, a male citizen has to serve his nation at any cost was also very strong and so we see the two things, humanitarian sensibilities that implied sort of a neutral sort of the honoring of obligations towards the enemy, and then at the same time, this attachment to the nation, which in turn precluded any kind of deals any negotiations any any promises to the enemy. And, and parole becomes a very important issue because it does divide, particularly French, the French officer core, because the majority chooses to honor the agreements, but there's a small minority that in fact escapes and uses kind of the rules and the parole agreements to escape. And so what we see is that those allegiances there's different interpretations of what it means to be a citizen as opposed to what it means to be proper humanitarian come in conflict, and they have to be resolved. And these battles, you could say ideological battles continue well after 1870 and do in fact you know carry on well into the first world war. I'm happy to talk more about this in the in the discussion but I'll leave it at that for the moment. Jasper. Thanks very much. So we come to our final panelist that's Dr. Maika Koenig. Over to you. Thank you so much, Michael. Thanks to everyone. Thanks Mark for organizing this event and for inviting me. I'm very happy to be here, although of course going last on a panel like this is quite a difficult job so I was asked like all the others that think so how I view the continuing significance of the Franco German war and I found that rather tricky questions in several ways. And if you take it literally be as historians we know the importance of the war for France for Germany for Europe and the European history while it took place but also in the aftermath of the war. We know about its importance for the people living through that conflict and there's absolutely no doubt about that. Unfortunately, I would say there's also no doubt about the fact that politics in the public nowadays do not seem to find that there is a continuing significance of this war in our days. At least as I observed in the last 10 months of the 150th year remembering of the war has made that clear to me there was no political agenda when it comes to remembering the war, neither in Germany nor in France, but there were, however, a lot of activities and remembering of battle of occupation fallen soldiers on a local and regional level by civil associations and funds especially in the East where the war took place. So we, if you look at a blog that we started a year ago at the German spark Institute in Paris, the idea was to reassemble to document into a archive, all the conferences events exhibitions publications radio shows that were expected to happen but also reenactment balloon trips shooting lessons with old rifles, all that's that's things that you can do. There is a major difference between France and Germany, it's striking there's more than 90% of the entries in the box are French or concerned France. Of course, this is where the battle took place and so they might be stronger need for remembering, but they're also their five museums in France on the war the latest. I just mentioned it was founded in 2014 only the music department I did I get the distance on this. So in gravel lot, which is a very modern museum with a, I would say transnational European approach to the history. In Germany, there's no special museum on the war, even though there's these two military museums who can play the role by changing exhibitions. So a quick look at the publications of the last one or two years in Germany there were seven a books, but they were all written for the lay public, not for research. The German commune always falls short in German books. It's, it is as if it doesn't belong to the world, at least from, from a German point of view. In France now they were countless books on on regions on cities and towns during the wars. Some interesting new publications also mentioned by by Karen on the global impacts and the global connections of the war. So in Germany, and we might want to discuss that later on there was a days of vivid controversial debates going on right now on the Kaiser Reich also fun 150 years ago on its content, continuity is in dark sides and what how modern it actually was, but the war ever is really more or less left to the side. Whereas France, at least on a regional level, remember the forgotten war to many just simply forgot to remember the war at all so of course it's symbolic and political significance is just not the same as World War one and World War two that's also very clear. But there are two things that I would say both countries and also research that seem to have in common in my eyes and current also mentioned that and I think Jesper also said it. So first, there is a growing interest in experience of war by individuals by soldiers and civilians alike, which is good because we haven't talked a lot about civilians in the war. And second, that there's also an interest in the international and global links of this war which goes far beyond than just to be a war between two nations. And in my view, this is, it's not a coincidence that these two changes or interest go along with the digitization of sources and the digitization of research. So thanks to the numerous big digitization projects, national libraries of archives and others, we do now have an abundance of ego documents at our hand, letters, journals, drawings, poems, novels, all kinds of stories narratives as well as media journals, the press, the cultural press are available with just some clicks. Now, for historians that opens up opportunity to paint expanded pictures of the past with the greater granularity with more depth and density and contrast, and especially the autobiographical writings are a first grade source for history who is interested in mentality and feeling or emotion that places the individual in the center of the history, especially individuals that are most often overlooked so far. So it would be a waste to use these digitized sources only to to support already established thesis and discourses with individual quotations. You can literally find anything you want to prove now with all these sources so that would be a waste just to pick out little things with computer based methods, researchers can now not only compile these large source corpora but they can also analyze and visualize them digitally so for me that would be really big opportunities for the research on the on the war to go in the next few years. I mean, applications there is for for historical social to be facial text and network analysis of these three parts and then is recently also sound and image analysis I will just briefly give the three examples on that some of interest. For example, linguistic and content related studies of how individuals or certain groups social groups experience perceived a represented the direct contact with the enemy in written form and how the expressions of soldiers and civilians changed verbally and emotionally over the course of the war. And that examined on a broad basis of sources. For example, one could falsify or prove the linguistic hardening assumed in research for the second part of the war after the defeat of Sedan in France, and to have a look if that can be confirmed and how it is described by details in the sources we have now. Another example would be circulation of text for instance in the press how who reprinted reprinted and translated which articles how did information use how did terms and expressions circulate throughout the war and the years. There's an actual project at the North Eastern University in the US, a project called viral text project that analyzes the role of media communication in the preparation of the war but the American Civil War so if you want to get more ideas have a look what is happening in digital history on the American Civil War so the preparation of the war in the press for example just to examine that on a broad basis would be I think very interesting. So the colleagues of the University Library of Cambridge British Library Heidelberg, University of St. Louis and others currently work on a digital tool that automatically compares caricatures of the wars and the commune so they have large collections that used to be one and so they can also digitally reunite these collection but also check how the images trans have been transferred throughout the publications and then lastly, there is of course geographic information systems GIS so the analysis of spatial data via visualization and enrichment for instance in form of two dimensional animated maps. I also have an example here from the battle of Gettysburg Pennsylvania in 1863 and the American Civil War. That's an interactive map that they produce that not only shows the various troops involved in the battles and then the movement but they have panoramic shots from strategic viewpoints that visualize the battlefield and show us today the modern viewer, the side that the general had back at the time, and therefore the basis of which they made their decisions to attack or to move parts of the troops. So this is the decisive point with these things is that the maps are not just to illustrate something but they are the historical argument itself. And then of course there's all sorts of digital modes of publication of communication collaborative biographies. For instance, we have one that is on the wall in 1870 so please email me if you want to participate in that adventure. And this is just some examples. There's a lot more and I think that is also reassuring since we still can do research on the wall with new methods and asking you questions, and therefore that shows its continuing significance. Thanks very much. Thanks very much and thanks to the other four panelists as well. I'll be monitoring now some of the questions and answers so please do start feeding in your question. I think we're writing in questions maybe I can put one in myself to kick things off. You know we're planning an edited volume out of this one has to approach publishers, and for those who are interested of course some months panelists and contributors, you know, please consider the publishing these pieces with us but one of the things which is increasingly important is the globalization, globalizing kind of history. And we can see kind of obvious connections between 1870 71 and wider world, you know beyond Europe. We talked I think yesterday about military missions which the Germans send out particularly to the Ottoman Empire Japan. And of course, you know great interest in the politics of the Paris commune. But beyond that, is there anything more one can say I mean it does strike me at the 1850s and 1860s are particularly violent decades in North and South America, but the typing rebellion in China, the Indian mutiny for many countries is about the worst, you know period you can be sort of around as a, as a civilian or combatant now, is there something going on there. I mean I think in Europe you can explain things about the unraveling of the Congress of Vienna system with the Crimean war which kicks off and a whole series of other conflicts but that doesn't of course explain anything really about a global dimension is a, it is very global 1870 71 war which we need to think about. And any, any panelists willing to run with that one. Is it part of a kind of two decade period of kind of was global conflict all these. Is it just coincidence. No, no, no, go on you go. Now just very briefly, I mean I made the suggestion that it did this idea of having a global color that it was a global context comes along with the multiplication of sources but it's also what I also found interesting is that it is something that I only see in France, the interest of a global globalization doesn't, it's been booked published on that account, and less in Germany and I wonder whether this has to do with an old tradition that France always looks or try to actually involve European powers into war and so they have an idea or maybe an idea of, of Europeanization of the war whereas in German try to keep it a local conflict and is the interest now comes from from looking into the archives in France, and to see how it was a global conflict but that's just huge. My response was simply to say, the way the argument was, you know if you think about at the time, it seems the argument seems to be flipped at one level that actually given what you've just said Michael, there is a broader pattern of conflict going on, you know, after the war, after the 1848 revolutions and so on, but actually much of its manifestation is outside Europe not within to that extent the concert system is sort of holding. And the striking thing therefore about the war's unification collectively is that war is brought back into the heart of Europe, I mean so it's a reverse from globalization I mean there's still a discussion here about that but you know the argument that many of the historians of 1815 will make is that war carries on between 1815 and 1914. But it parries on predominantly on the peripheries or beyond the peripheries of Europe. And what's happening here is two major European powers are fighting each other right in the heart of Europe. And so there's often even from the Crimean war in that respect or, you know which after all is, and alongside that is an argument which I think came up very strongly yesterday, which although the these globalized elements within it, partly because of the impact the Geneva Convention, partly because of the desire to contain war which and the fear that war and revolution might be linked. In some paradoxical way these wars within Europe are designed to be more limited than wars without Europe. You know so I think I think I would look at it from the outside in in some ways more than from the inside out. Thanks, thanks you I've got a question from Dale Anderson, which is how strong is evidence that the French were thirsting for revenge following their defeat in 1870 that's often taken as a kind of as a given so this might be for Karin Bali or Julian Nichols is that, is that actually something which can't be overturned simply as a myth. Yeah, I can try to answer that I mean it depends on how we define revenge and there was a one article by a visually of already back in 1999 who makes it very clear it's I think it's just called the fuck. The France in revenge is that there never was even in the immediate afterwards of the war there wasn't an urge in France to reconquer also the moselle by war. So if you if you think revenge in the form of revenge in form of going to war waiting more to get back. And there is it's definitely a no that didn't exist and now you have to define revenge and revenge and go through it there's something that's still open. Yeah, I would completely agree with that I think that this idea of, you know, the French determination to get revenge has been exaggerated and, especially when you look at the situation in 1914 and you often see, you know, books that are talking about the the outbreak of the First World War on the, and you know French intentions in 1914. I think that that is really exaggerated and I think, you know, that certainly by 1914 that really wasn't a major consideration and if you look at the war commemorations as well over the period between 1871 and 1914. It's only really a quite small albeit vocal elements who are talking about this but I think it's more about the domestic political situation than any thoughts of revenge. Julia do you want to come in. Yeah, I could very briefly sorry my internet's not behaving very well so I hope that everything's appearing okay to you. Um, yeah, I mean I think I would, I would agree with Kareem that discussions of these things are really. I mean, they're, they're overall linked to the kind of the domestic political context and the domestic arguments that going on in French politics at that point. I mean I think, perhaps more than a kind of a desire for revenge. I mean, I think that there is a kind of an acceptance that that's not really possible, or really viable among a lot of people. I mean, you could say that it prompts a period of kind of self examination or national self examination, you know, like how, how did this happen to us, or how did we find ourselves in this position and I think that's, that's the most interesting. I mean, one of the most interesting things that came out of it. Very much. Another question and this is from G. So just the letter G, and it's it's basically the gist is, is, is 1870 71 I guess by implication the commune as well as the Franco-Prussian war simply as sort of like an aftershock of 1848, which is kind of touches a little bit on what I think you mentioned a bit earlier about this is this a discrete period 1848 to 71 which, you know, kind of comes to an end with 1871 and we're into a new world. So, yeah, a footnote to the 1848 revolutions. Discuss. I'd be happy to make a start. Okay. Well, actually, first of all, sort of as a response to what she said earlier, I think what is interesting, yes, it is true that war moved from, you know, from the colonies from the periphery to to Europe in 1870 but but the same token it is also interesting we see in terms of migration, migration is of course very important in this period. And so, we find that many Europeans take part in external wars, and sometimes they also come back. So I think that's a that's an important connecting element. There's the fact, especially Germans, it's interesting in how many foreign wars, Germans were involved. And so I think there's a definite link there between, you know, was elsewhere, and, and in Europe and sort of to come back to the question of I think that plays an important role there, because many, many Germans do in fact, we see an explosion of immigration, particularly, particularly, especially political immigration in 1848, where, you know, Germans go to, you know, for example, America but not exclusively. And then they take part in the American Civil War. And so I think, so my answer would be, I mean, that that's one part is more to say but I'll just kind of leave it at that. We see the 48ers in America fighting for a distinct political vision that is quite different from say the Prussian vision in 1870. So we see kind of different political ideas playing out in different conflicts. And so you want to come in on this. I was just going to make a very old fashioned point. But the point that after 1848 is nationalists and liberals can align in a way that they don't in 1848 in other words that there is that national, sorry, disaligned I mean the conservatives can appropriate nationalism in a way that they're in in 1848. And that does change the change the discussion quite a bit. I mean, so, so, so yes, there is a fundamental change. But of course it comes back and this is this is Julia's topic on mine but I mean, how far there is an element of reenactment when you get to 1871 in the commune. And the fact that it's taking place in the same city, the city that has seen as the heart of revolution and all the rest of it and I wouldn't presume in her company to comment on that. Thanks very much. We've got a question here from Kurt. And of course we talked. Yes, they're actually about kind of regional differences within Germany, the South German states, and of course Hanover, you know, be maybe less than keen. Certainly about this kind of Borussia and sort of narrative which comes into being Kurt's question is do you have anything like that in France, you know, distinct regional responses or variations of response. Not necessarily in Paris versus provincial France but maybe more outlying parts of France which are hundreds of miles from the front, you know the Pyrenees somewhere like that. Do any of the French specialists in particular have an answer to that one has that been actually worked up or researched in depth. Yeah, I mean, I think there is very much a sense in which the Franco-Portian war does play out very differently in different regions of France and I think what you see is the different episodes playing out have different political implications as well so first you've got the experience in Alsace which is very different from the experience in Paris of course but also, you know, you've got the experience in somewhere like Dichon for instance which is bound up with the fact that you have like Garibaldi who turns up and so the Franco-Portian war becomes part of this debate about ideas of the nation in arms, the republic and so on and then you've got other areas like the areas around Orléans where you've got the participation of the volunteers of the West made up of which includes, you know, elements of the People's Wavre and so this is understood in terms of a conflict for a conservative and Catholic vision of France and so and then you've got Belafold as well which is under siege and kind of sees itself, develops this kind of narrative of this resistance and then you've got on the other hand also the Siege of Metz which is bound up with the story of the betrayal as it's seen of Bazen so each different episode in the war plays out quite differently and so helps to develop a very regionally differentiated experience of the war which also plays out in how the war is remembered. Thanks very much, Karin. We've got a question here from Philip Mead, a question for the panel, was there any writer, historian or military theorist etc between 1871 and 1913 who analysed the lessons of the Franco-Prussian war and was able to predict the type of military scenarios that were eventually created in 1914 to 1918. So that's a pretty hefty one. Want me to start? Yes if you could. The short answer is yes, there's an enormous amount of analysis going on and the answer is there's no consensus. I think there was a point I thought yesterday what was interesting and what Rob Foddy was saying was that essentially the general staff tries to impose a false consensus on a very, very gated debate as to what the innovative lessons of this war are. And recent historians, the French debate, I'm thinking of Dimitri Kellogg's on tactics or of writing about cloud suits in France, recent historians have emphasised really the diversity of the debate. Indeed a long time ago Doug Porte reached the conclusion that the real problem for the French army was that there were so many lessons they couldn't quite decide which were the right ones. So they were still debating doctrine up until the very, until the outbreak of 1914 itself and I think there's a lot of truth in that for all armies. Of course they don't get everything right. But you know because I referred to the short war illusion, one of the points that I think has to be reiterated is that there are plenty of commentators who see the potential for industrialised war between coalitions, as opposed to industrialised war between two single powers to become protracted and Malka the Elder is one of them. The, and, you know, point that Stig first there is made and which certainly seem to be fundamental to understanding the outbreak of the war was that short war illusion was essentially a popular notion, not one that was fully accepted by all military men who wish to be who were conscious that war was changing and and of course, crucially between 1871 and 1914. There are dramatic changes if the big factors of technological change mass production precision engineering all the rest of it, and then the expanding size of armies and the ability to put mass armies into the field. There's a quantum leap between 1871 and 1914. This is not as any more a straight line than any of the other things we've been looking at. One little word, because I think it's interesting to see that from a pacifist point of view, like the Russian Ivan block or Norbert Angel who published on the future war, and like like enormously big pages of books of statistics and how they would view a future war which would happen and just with the outcome to say that actually we can't afford war, just economically it's just not possible to go to war again so that's it's interesting to see that is from that side as well as exists like Norbert Angel and even block. Thanks. Armel de Rouves was one of the organizers and spoke yesterday and shared to that earlier question about some French regionalism reminds us that the government of national defense, you know made a lot of efforts to mobilize and to get prefixed to motivate, but the southern provinces in particular not particularly interested. So maybe there's a historic north south divide in France, we need to factor in. This is from Jim Dingerman. And this is, well it's really to all the panelists. And it's about just was 1840 to 1870 is a period of increasing sort of trade over great distances. 1870 war, and that's the one slightly earlier 66 Crimea. Is there a massive kind of story to be told about the arms trade and the sort of global arms trade, I think it's a group etc but is a. That's something we haven't actually talked very much about I think in these couple of days of economics, if you like, of arms trade in this mid 19th century period, any takers for this one. There is a massive trade, absolutely. And there is great deal of competition, and there's a great deal of each army, going to look, you know, the, for example, the move to rifles and the breach loading, each army is looking at other armies. Each army is also thinking about how do you get mass production that moves from what essentially has been a craft based industry to what has been a becomes a precision and machine tool industry, and of course they look in the Crimea war they're already looking at the United States, and the Colt revolver for example, as the case why do this. And then what you then get in terms of arms trade initially is a sale abroad of the arms that are now obsolete. So you sell on your use guns to sub Saharan Africa or to Latin America. But then, of course, the market becomes more sophisticated. So suppose that is of course one of the significance is a victory that if in the end you do well, that actually help sells your weapons mean crook becomes a household name, principally because of 1870 71. But if you're looking at it in the aftermath of the Crimean War, then it will be the particularly the manufacturers of heavy artillery. After the siege of Sevastopol, and also the ability to mount big guns on warships, which comes before of course big guns on land, at least in mobile warfare that that too creates a market an international market for these things. So, so, so yes. And it seems to be conducted irrespective of the consequence is in terms of what that will do to warfare itself in other parts of the world. So thanks very much. And I think the sort of questions have, have in a way stabilized as well, revolving around similar topics. So I think I'm aware of time it's it's a couple of minutes to so I just like to spend the last minute or two again thanking our five panelists of this morning for very stimulating presentations and reflections upon yesterday's excellent panels and I'd like to again thank the participants of yesterday. And indeed, wider participants I've also haven't presented papers that have been, you know, wonderful audience and have posed really illuminating questions. I'm aware that my office with co organizers are here and Joe or Mark, do you want to add any final words at this point. Quick thank you again to all our panelists that participated, the audience and especially to all the support staff we had to make the success of Danny McDivitt, Lizzie Ellen, I should calm. And again to our male for originating the idea for the conference and to you as well Michael. Thanks, Mark, very much. Well, I think we will leave it at this point so I hope you'll grab yourself a good lunch, and I'll be in correspondence with Mark and our male and Joe with with the contributors about our publication plans, following on, but thank you very much.