This book explores the eight-month wave of mutinies in the French infantry and navy in 1919. This revolt stretched from France's intervention against the Soviet Union through the Black Sea, into the Mediterranean and finally resulting in unrest in France's naval ports. As a consequence, mutineers faced courts martial, the threat of the death penalty and years of hard labour. This research is the result of careful scrutiny of official records and, more importantly, the testimony of dozens of mutineers. It is the first study to try to understand the world of the mutineers, assessing their own wo ... More

This book explores the eight-month wave of mutinies in the French infantry and navy in 1919. This revolt stretched from France's intervention against the Soviet Union through the Black Sea, into the Mediterranean and finally resulting in unrest in France's naval ports. As a consequence, mutineers faced courts martial, the threat of the death penalty and years of hard labour. This research is the result of careful scrutiny of official records and, more importantly, the testimony of dozens of mutineers. It is the first study to try to understand the world of the mutineers, assessing their own words for the traces of their sensory perceptions, their emotions and their thought processes. It shows that the conventional understanding of the mutinies as simple war-weariness and low morale as inadequate. It demonstrates that an emotional gulf separated officers and the ranks, who simply did not speak the same language. It reveals the soundscape (its silences, shouts and songs) and visual aspect of the mutiny. The revolt entailed emotional sequences ending in a deep ambivalence and sense of despair or regret. It also considers how mutineer memories persisted after the events in the face of official censorship, repression and the French Communist Party's co-option of the mutiny. This text will interest students, general readers and scholars of the both Great War and its contentious aftermath. Setting the mutiny in the transnational context, it will contribute to the growing interest in 1919 as the Twentieth Century's most unruly year.