Paris and the Spirit of 1919 Consumer Struggles, Transnationalism and Revolution

This transnational history of Paris in 1919 explores the global implications of the revolutionary crisis of French society at the end of World War I. As the site of the peace conference Paris was a victorious capital and a city at the center of the world, and Tyler Stovall explores these intersections of globalization and local revolution. The book takes as its central point the eruption of political activism in 1919, using the events of that year to illustrate broader tensions in working class, race, and gender politics in Parisian, French, and ultimately global society which fueled debates about colonial subjects and the empire. Viewing consumerism and consumer politics as key both to the revolutionary crisis and to new ideas about working-class identity, and arguing against the idea that consumerism depoliticized working people, this history of local labor movements is a study in the making of the modern world.

Introduction: a year like no other; 1. The consumers' war; 2. The working class of Paris: definitions and identities; 3. Remaking the French working class: race, gender and exclusion; 4. Spectacular politics; 5. Consumer movements; 6. Time, money, and revolution: the metalworkers' strike of June, 1919; Conclusion: legacies.

Tyler Stovall is Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in modern and contemporary French history, in particular questions of race, colonialism and postcolonialism, labor and transnationalism.