Enacting Brittany
Enacting Brittany

Author: Patrick Young

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1317144066

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Brittany offers an excellent example of a French region that once attracted a certain cultivated elite of travel connoisseurs but in which more popular tourism developed relatively early in the twentieth century. It is therefore a strategic choice as a case study of some of the processes associated with the emergence of mass tourism, and the effects of this kind of tourism development on local populations. Efforts to package Breton cultural difference in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked a significant advance in heritage tourism, and a departure from what is commonly perceived to be a French intolerance of cultural diversity within its borders. This study explores the means by which key actors - middle class associations, businesses, governmental bodies, cultural intermediaries - pursued tourist development in the region and the effect this had on Breton cultural identification. Chapters are arranged thematically and consider the rise of rural tourism in France and the preservation, display, and enactment of Breton culture in its most visible locations: the natural landscape of Brittany, Breton dress, early heritage festivals and religious Pardons. The final chapter explores the staging of Breton culture at the Paris World's Fair of 1937 and the roots of state-sponsored mass tourism. Beyond those interested in the history of French tourism, this study will also be invaluable to historians and social scientists concerned with understanding the dynamics involved in the emergence of mass tourism, its causes and consequences in particular locales in the present as well as in the past.

Inventing the modern region
Inventing the modern region

Author: Talitha Ilacqua

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2024-03-12

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 152616924X

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This book explores the process by which the French Basque country acquired a folkloric regional identity in the long nineteenth century. It argues that, despite its origins in pre-modern customs, this stereotypical identity was invented as part of France’s process of nation-building. The abolition of privileges in 1789 prompted a new interest in local culture as the defining feature of provincial France, shaping the transition from the pre-‘modern’ province to the ‘modern’ region. The relationship between the region and the nation, however, was difficult. Regional culture favoured the integration of the French Basque provinces into the French nation-state but also challenged the authority of the central state. As a result, Basque region-building reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the unitary model of French nationhood, in the nineteenth century as well as today.

Regionalism and Modern Europe
Regionalism and Modern Europe

Author: Xosé M. Núñez Seixas

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-12-13

Total Pages: 603

ISBN-13: 1474275222

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Providing a valuable overview of regionalism throughout the entire continent, Regionalism in Modern Europe combines both geographical and thematic approaches to examine the origins and development of regional movements and identities in Europe from 1890 to the present. A wide range of internationally renowned scholars from the USA, the UK and mainland Europe are brought together here in one volume to examine the historical roots of the current regional movements, and to explain why some of them - Scotland, Catalonia and Flanders, among others – evolve into nationalist movements and even strive for independence, while others – Brittany, Bavaria – do not. They look at how regional identities - through regional folklore, language, crafts, dishes, beverages and tourist attractions - were constructed during the 20th century and explore the relationship between national and subnational identities, as well as regional and local identities. The book also includes 7 images, 7 maps and useful end-of-chapter further reading lists. This is a crucial text for anyone keen to know more about the history of the topical – and at times controversial – subject of regionalism in modern Europe.

Regional Dress
Regional Dress

Author: Sara Hume

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-06-16

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1350148008

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Traditional dress is a common phenomenon across much of Western Europe, often originating in elaborate practices for rural religious events. Yet despite its fundamentally local nature, traditional dress in various European regions developed along a similar trajectory, sometimes being transformed into political symbols and regional promotion for tourism, and always revealing the complexity of rural society in terms of religious divisions, class inequality and tension between the desires to protect tradition and embrace modernity. To better understand how traditional dress evolved in France and Germany from the 19th to 21st centuries, this book takes Alsace as its case study and in doing so illuminates broad experiences of modernity across rural Europe and answers overarching questions about regionalism and nationalism. Specifically, Sara Hume unpacks why Alsatian dress was adopted as a symbol of loyalty to France despite being closer in style to German dress practices. She explores the impact of political and geographical tensions on the appearance and function of traditional clothing, for example in Alsace's situation at the border between France and Germany and in its transformation from disputed territory into capital of a united Europe. Logically progressing chapters reveal how modernity did not drive out tradition in rural communities but rather led to processes of adaption, preservation and re-evaluation. Through a rich variety of primary sources including costumes, illustrations, political cartoons, legal documents and oral histories, Regional Dress sheds light on the little known and rarely documented experiences of rural Europeans. Its material culture approach to the study of regionalism is essential to students of traditional and folk dress history, European history and design history.

The Sober Revolution
The Sober Revolution

Author: Joseph Bohling

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-12-15

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 1501716050

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Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne. The names of these and other French regions bring to mind time-honored winemaking practices. Yet the link between wine and place, in French known as terroir, was not a given. In The Sober Revolution, Joseph Bohling inverts our understanding of French wine history by revealing a modern connection between wine and place, one with profound ties to such diverse and sometimes unlikely issues as alcoholism, drunk driving, regional tourism, Algeria’s independence from French rule, and integration into the European Economic Community. In the 1930s, cheap, mass-produced wines from the Languedoc region of southern France and French Algeria dominated French markets. Artisanal wine producers, worried about the impact of these "inferior" products on the reputation of their wines, created a system of regional appellation labeling to reform the industry in their favor by linking quality to the place of origin. At the same time, the loss of Algeria, once the world’s largest wine exporter, forced the industry to rethink wine production. Over several decades, appellation producers were joined by technocrats, public health activists, tourism boosters, and other dynamic economic actors who blamed cheap industrial wine for hindering efforts to modernize France. Today, scholars, food activists, and wine enthusiasts see the appellation system as a counterweight to globalization and industrial food. But, as The Sober Revolution reveals, French efforts to localize wine and integrate into global markets were not antagonistic but instead mutually dependent. The time-honored winemaking practices that we associate with a pastoral vision of traditional France were in fact a strategy deployed by the wine industry to meet the challenges and opportunities of the post-1945 international economy. France’s luxury wine producers were more market savvy than we realize.

Selling the Yellow Jersey
Selling the Yellow Jersey

Author: Eric Reed

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2015-01-07

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 022620667X

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Yellow Livestrong wristbands were taken off across America in early 2013 when Lance Armstrong confessed to Oprah Winfrey that he had doped during the seven Tour de France races he won. But the foreign cycling world, which always viewed Armstrong with suspicion, had already moved on. The bellwether events of the year were Chris Froome’s victory in the Tour and the ousting of Pat McQuaid as director of the Union Cycliste Internationale. Even without Armstrong, the Tour will roll on— its gigantic entourage includes more than 200 racers, 450 journalists, 260 cameramen, 2,400 support vehicles carrying 4,500 people, and a seven-mile-long publicity caravan. It remains one of the most-watched annual sporting events on television and a global commercial juggernaut. In Selling the Yellow Jersey, Eric Reed examines the Tour’s development in France as well as the event’s global athletic, cultural, and commercial influences. The race is the crown jewel of French cycling, and at first the newspapers that owned the Tour were loath to open up their monopoly on coverage to state-owned television. However, the opportunity for huge payoffs prevailed, and France tapped into global networks of spectatorship, media, business, athletes, and exchanges of expertise and personnel. In the process, the Tour helped endow world cycling with a particularly French character, culture, and structure, while providing proof that globalization was not merely a form of Americanization, imposed on a victimized world. Selling the Yellow Jersey explores the behind-the-scenes growth of the Tour, while simultaneously chronicling France’s role as a dynamic force in the global arena.

Ecocriticism and the Anthropocene in Nineteenth-Century Art and Visual Culture
Ecocriticism and the Anthropocene in Nineteenth-Century Art and Visual Culture

Author: Maura Coughlin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-09-06

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 0429602391

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In this volume, emerging and established scholars bring ethical and political concerns for the environment, nonhuman animals and social justice to the study of nineteenth-century visual culture. They draw their theoretical inspiration from the vitality of emerging critical discourses, such as new materialism, ecofeminism, critical animal studies, food studies, object-oriented ontology and affect theory. This timely volume looks back at the early decades of the Anthropocene to query the agency of visual culture to critique, create and maintain more resilient and biologically diverse local and global ecologies.

The stadium century
The stadium century

Author: Robert W. Lewis

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2016-12-08

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1526106264

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The stadium century traces the history of stadia and mass spectatorship in modern France from the vélodromes of the late nineteenth century to the construction of the Stade de France before the 1998 soccer World Cup. As the book demonstrates, the stadium was at the centre of debates over public health and urban development and proved to be a key space for mobilising the urban crowd for political rallies and spectator sporting events alike. After 1945, the transformed French stadium constituted part of the process of postwar modernisation but also was increasingly connected to global transformations to the spaces and practices of sport. Drawing from a wide range of sources,the stadium century links the histories of French urbanism, mass politics and sport through the stadium in an innovative work that will appeal to historians, students of French history and the history of sport, and general readers alike.

The Fin-de-Siècle World
The Fin-de-Siècle World

Author: Michael Saler

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-11-20

Total Pages: 894

ISBN-13: 1317604806

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This comprehensive and beautifully illustrated collection of essays conveys a vivid picture of a fascinating and hugely significant period in history, the Fin de Siècle. Featuring contributions from over forty international scholars, this book takes a thematic approach to a period of huge upheaval across all walks of life, and is truly innovative in examining the Fin de Siècle from a global perspective. The volume includes pathbreaking essays on how the period was experienced not only in Europe and North America, but also in China, Japan, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, India, and elsewhere across the globe. Thematic topics covered include new concepts of time and space, globalization, the city, and new political movements including nationalism, the "New Liberalism", and socialism and communism. The volume also looks at the development of mass media over this period and emerging trends in culture, such as advertising and consumption, film and publishing, as well as the technological and scientific changes that shaped the world at the turn of the nineteenth century, such as the invention of the telephone, new transport systems, eugenics and physics. The Fin-de-Siècle World also considers issues such as selfhood through chapters looking at gender, sexuality, adolescence, race and class, and considers the importance of different religions, both old and new, at the turn of the century. Finally the volume examines significant and emerging trends in art, music and literature alongside movements such as realism and aestheticism. This volume conveys a vivid picture of how politics, religion, popular and artistic culture, social practices and scientific endeavours fitted together in an exciting world of change. It will be invaluable reading for all students and scholars of the Fin-de-Siècle period.