Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A ‘Civilizing Work’?: The French Army in Macedonia, 1915–1918

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Militarized Cultural Encounters in the Long Nineteenth Century

Part of the book series: War, Culture and Society, 1750-1850 ((WCS))

Abstract

Horne explores the impact of Allied military rule on the Macedonian front during the First World War and examines the preconceptions that informed the various kinds of ‘civilizing work’ that Allied, and especially French, forces undertook there. This work assumed many forms and much of it was conducted for pragmatic, military reasons, but it also reflected a long-standing cultural and ethnographic interest in the Aegean as one of the fountain heads of European civilization. Horne assesses how far the language of this ‘civilizing’ work reflected the legacy of earlier military and imperial encounters and how far it was shaped by new kind of work required by modern, industrialized warfare conducted by mass citizen-soldier armies.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge, 2000).

  2. 2.

    For the recent historiography of the Macedonian front, see the proceedings of two conferences held in Thessaloniki in 1989 and 2002: La France et la Grèce dans la Grande Guerre. Actes du colloque tenu en novembre 1989 à Thessalonique (Thessaloniki, 1992) and The Salonica Theatre of Operations and the Outcome of the Great War (Thessaloniki, Institute for Balkan Studies, 277, 2005).

  3. 3.

    Thomas Gallant, Modern Greece: From the War of Independence to the Present (London, 2016, 2nd edition), pp. 180–87; Nikolaos Papadakis, ‘Eleftherios Venizelos’ Strategic Goals and the Salonica Theatre of Operations’, in Salonica Theatre of Operations, pp. 97–108; Elli Lemonidou, ‘L’Armée d’Orient en Grèce’, in Jean-Yves Le Naour, ed., Front d’Orient: 1914–1919, les soldats oubliés (Marseilles, 2016), pp. 49–62.

  4. 4.

    Etienne Burnet, La Tour blanche. Armée d’Orient 1916–1917 (Paris, 1921), pp. 6–7.

  5. 5.

    Patrick Facon, ‘Soldats Français de l’Armée d’Orient, 1915–1919’, doctoral thesis (Université de Paris Nanterre, 1977–78), esp. pp. 234–56.

  6. 6.

    E. Thomas, L’Oeuvre civilisatrice de l’armée française en Macédoine (Salonika, 1918), and first published as articles in the Salonika newspaper, L’Indépendant, on 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 19, 22, 24, 26, 30 September, and 20 October, 1918. The French subsidised this French-language publication even before the war (Service Historique de la Défense [SHD], 20 N 77, Armée Française d’Orient [AFO], 2e Bureau (intelligence), report of Sarrail on ‘Propagande à faire dans la zone de l’Armée d’Orient’, 27 April 1916.

  7. 7.

    SHD, 20 N 155, Ministère de la Guerre, 20 September 1917, authorizing the AFO to use military manpower for mining.

  8. 8.

    Thomas, L’Oeuvre civilisatrice, 19 September 1918.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., 30 September 1918.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., 6 September 1918.

  11. 11.

    Guy Pedroncini, Les Alliés et le problème du commandement naval en Méditérranée de 1914–1918’, in La France et la Grèce dans la Grande Guerre, pp. 13–24.

  12. 12.

    SHD, 20 N 154, AFO, 2e Bureau, ‘Instruction sur l’organisation des groupes de travailleurs bulgares’, May–July 1917.

  13. 13.

    Burnet, La Tour blanche, p. 62 (1 May 1917); SHD, 20N 79, AFO, 2e Bureau, rep. 10 January 1916.

  14. 14.

    Burnet, La Tour blanche, p. 123 (July 1917).

  15. 15.

    Craig Gibson, ‘The British Army, French Farmers and the War on the Western Front’, Past & Present, 180/1 (2003), pp.175–239.

  16. 16.

    Yannis Skourtis, ‘L’Armée Française d’Orient et ses travaux d’intérêt public en Grèce du Nord’, in La France et la Grèce dans la Grande Guerre, pp. 201–205 for a brief sketch, based mainly on Thomas, L’Oeuvre civilisatrice.

  17. 17.

    SHD 20N 807, ‘Rapport sur l’oeuvre du 227e RI en Orient, 25 December 1918’. The regimental commander, Colonel Saint-Hillier, signed the report.

  18. 18.

    Historique du 227e Régiment d’Infanterie, 1914–1918 (Dijon, 1920), p. 10.

  19. 19.

    Mark Harrison, The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War (Oxford, 2010).

  20. 20.

    Edmond and Etienne Sergent, L’Armée d’Orient délivrée du paludisme (Paris, 1932); Patrick Facon, ‘Le Soldat français face à la maladie’, in The Salonika Theatre of Operations, pp. 223–34.

  21. 21.

    Burnet, La Tour blanche, p. 57.

  22. 22.

    Sergent, L’Armée d’Orient délivrée du paludisme, p. 35.

  23. 23.

    SHD 20N 155, report of Captain Gibert, 2e Bureau, 24 October 1917.

  24. 24.

    Rémy Porte, ‘Militaires français et renseignement en Grèce sur le Front d’Orient, 1915–1924: Approche historiographique des sources françaises’, in The Salonica Theatre of Operations, pp. 399–407. The British had their own service and there was a joint intelligence function operated by the overall command of the Allied armies under Sarrail. As with so much else in Macedonia, there is no overall study of this aspect.

  25. 25.

    SHD 20N 154, report of Captain Gibert, 7 June 1917 on the linguistic requirements for postal censorship.

  26. 26.

    Six of the EFA served with the Second Bureau (René-Hubert Matthieu, ‘Des Hellénistes en guerre: le parcours atypique des members de ‘Ecole Française d’Athènes durant la Première Guerre Mondiale’, Revue Historique des Armées, 261 (2010), pp. 88–105).

  27. 27.

    Ecole Française d’Athenes, Hommage aux morts pour la patrie (Athens, 1921), p. 10. The monument, in the form of a classical Greek stele, stands in the School grounds.

  28. 28.

    The Institut d’Art et d’Archéologie, Paris, contains a Fonds Picard (H150). A number of Picard’s papers have now been returned to the EFA, where they await cataloguing. They include the Korytsa report, for permission to consult which I am grateful to the Director, M. Alexandre Farnoux.

  29. 29.

    Jacques Ancel, Les Travaux et les jours de l’Armée de l’Orient, 1915–1918 (Paris, 1921); Peuples et nations des Balkans (Paris, 1926); and Géopolitique (Paris, 1936).

  30. 30.

    SHD, 20N 795, Dossier renseignements d’ordre géographique concernant la région de Monastir, June–July 1918.

  31. 31.

    Jean-Marc Hofman, ed., 1914–1918. Le Patrimoine s’en va-t-en guerre (Paris, 2016); Thérèse Krempp, ‘L’Armée française d’Orient: nouvelle expedition militaro-scientifique?’, in Le Naour, Front d’Orient, pp. 63–82.

  32. 32.

    SHD 20N 79, telegramme from French embassy, Athens, to Sarrail, 31 January 1916.

  33. 33.

    SHD 20N 79, GHQ, ‘Note de service: découvertes archéologiques ou artistiques’, 21 February 1916.

  34. 34.

    Ibid.

  35. 35.

    Andrew Shapland, ‘The British Salonika Force at the British Museum’, in Archaeology behind the Battle Lines in Thessaloniki of the Turbulent Years, 1912–1922 (Thessaloniki, 2012), pp. 79–81; Alexandre Farnoux, ‘Archaeology and the Armée d’Orient’, ibid., pp. 87–89; Andrew Shapland and Evangelia Stefani (eds.), Archaeology behind the Battle Lines: the Macedonian Campaign (1915–1919) and its Legacy (London, 2017).

  36. 36.

    Gustave Mendel, ‘Les travaux du Service Archéologique de l’Armée Française d’Orient’, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres: comptes rendus des séances de l’année 1918 (Paris, 1918).

  37. 37.

    Farnoux, ‘Archaeology and the Armée de l’Orient’.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., p. 89.

  39. 39.

    SHD 20N 151, note of Captain Gibert, 25 October 1916.

  40. 40.

    Musée de Histoire Contemporaine, Paris: album photographique, 12 (army photographs of Mount Athos); Gabriel Millet, Monuments de l’Athos, vol. 1, Les Peintures (Paris, 1927).

  41. 41.

    On the religious complexity of Macedonia, including Mount Athos, see Anastassios Anastassiadis, ‘Sisyphean Task or Procrustean Bed? Matching State and Church Borders and Promised Lands in Greece’, in P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, Thalia Dragonas and Çaglar Keyder (eds.), Spatial Conceptions of the Nation: Modernizing Geographies in Greece and Turkey (London, 2010), pp. 65–91.

  42. 42.

    Alexandra Yerolympos, ‘La Part du feu’, in Gilles Veinstein, ed., Salonique 1850–1918: la “ville des Juifs” et le réveil des Balkans (Paris, 1993), pp. 261–69 (here 262, for the 1913 census).

  43. 43.

    Benoît Majerus, Occupations et logiques policières. La police bruxelloise en 1914–1918 et 1940–1945 (Brussels, 2007).

  44. 44.

    SHD 5N 109, report from the French ship, Amiral Patrie, to the military government, 2 February 1916. The zeppelin attack resulted in 28 deaths, 18 of them civilians, but the airship was brought down.

  45. 45.

    Alexandra Yerolympos, ‘L’Incendie de Salonique en août 1917: fait divers ou “dégât collateral”?’, in The Salonica Theatre of Operations, pp. 251–60 (here 252).

  46. 46.

    SHD 20N 155, Captain Gibert, ‘Examen du courier grec au depart de Salonique après l’incendie du 18 août 1917’.

  47. 47.

    Charalambos Papastathis, ‘The Fire of Salonica and the Allies’, in The Salonica Theatre of Operations, pp. 261–71 (here 268–69).

  48. 48.

    Alfred Agache et al., Comment reconstruire nos cités détruites (Paris, 1915); Yerolympos, ‘L’Incendie de Salonique’, p. 258.

  49. 49.

    SHD, 20N 155, Captain Gibert, note on ‘Attaques des journaux grecs contre les journaux français au sujet de l’expropriation des sinistrés de la ville de Salonique’, 8 September 1917. For the concerns of Salonika’s Jews and their support in France, see Minstère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris (MAE), 1 CPCOM Guerre 1914–1918/Balkans/Grèce, Graillet (French consul in Salonika) to Minster for Foreign Affairs, 8 and 16 September 1917. For the Greek government, see Johannes Saïas, Salonique en reconstruction (Athens, 1920), a justification by a self-described lawyer and publicist of the expropriation measures; also Papastathis, ‘Fire of Salonica’, pp. 258–59.

  50. 50.

    Alexandra Yerolympos, ‘Thessaloniki before and after Ernest Hébrard’ (Department of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessalonika, 2007, www.academia.edu/5943884/ Thessaloniki before and after Ernest Hébrard, consulted 25/05/2016).

  51. 51.

    As confirmed to me by Professor Yerolympos and by my own search of the Franco-Greek diplomatic correspondence for 1917–1918 in the MAE archives in Paris. For the current state of knowledge, see Yerolympos, ‘La Part du feu’, in Veinstein, ed., Salonique, ville des Juifs, p. 263.

  52. 52.

    Georgios Agelopoulos, ‘Contested Territories and the Quest for Ethnology: People and Places in Izmir 1919–1922’ in Diamandouros et al. (eds.), Spatial Conceptions of the Nation, pp. 181–91. The Greeks used their own ethnography in the Izmir region.

  53. 53.

    SHD 20N 154, report from General Grossetti, commander of the French Army, to Sarrail as Allied Commander-in-Chief, 12 July 1917; 20N 155, collection of Bulgarian propaganda captured by the 157th IR, 24–25 October 1917.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    John Horne

Authors
  1. John Horne
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to John Horne .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Joseph Clarke

  2. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    John Horne

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Horne, J. (2018). A ‘Civilizing Work’?: The French Army in Macedonia, 1915–1918. In: Clarke, J., Horne, J. (eds) Militarized Cultural Encounters in the Long Nineteenth Century. War, Culture and Society, 1750-1850. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78229-4_14

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78229-4_14

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-78228-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-78229-4

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation