Paris and the Spirit of 1919

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 centre of the world, and Tyler Stovall explores these intersections of globalisation 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 fuelled 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 depoliticised working people, this history of local labor movements is a study in the making of the modern world.