A really long time since I rapped at you

I have fallen behind in keeping up this site and updating progress I have made on my own research. I was busy over the last year getting a tenure track job and writing my first lectures. I was hired this year as Assistant Professor of History at the University of California Davis, which was honestly my dream job. I love being in public education and I have nothing but respect and appreciation for my students.

But writing hour and a half lectures twice a week on subjects like the Opportunists or The Affair has really wiped me out, and although I have four projects in the works I haven't made as much headway as I would have liked. Hopefully getting back into the habit of updating this site will give me the research bug again. I plan to get two articles out for review this term. I will discuss and outline my ideas as they come to me here, online. 

Its been a really long time since I rapped atcha

Job application season and teaching caught up to me really fast last year and I was not able to spend a lot of time on my own research or update this site. I am, however, nearly complete with building the two courses I will be teaching at Davis next Winter. Both were built totally from scratch, which was much more work than I expected it to be. But the good news is that I will not have to stay up until three the night before lectures getting everything together. I both courses planned from beginning to end already, which will leave me a lot of time to get back to my own research. I hope to be able to update this page more often now.

So many graphs...

I spent the last evening / morning digitizing, analyzing, and graphing the data re: mutinies provided by A. Loez in the downloadable appendix to his breathtakingly comprehensive monograph Les refus de la guerre (Paris: Gallimard, 2010). Loez's book is an excellent example of French historical writing at--what I find to be, at least--its best. The monograph provides sensitive, critical appraisals of primary sources, many of which have either been overlooked by other historians or have recently become accessible because of the "boom" in published Great War témoins over the past decade. But more importantly, Loez's arguments--which I hope to synthesize in a later entry...--are underwritten by painstaking quantitative research. The "annexe" linked above provides detailed information about who the "mutineers" were, in terms of origin, class, occupation, and age.

I have three points to make after looking over and analyzing Loez's data:

  1. Loez is much more fastidious than Rolland in his quantification of the number of men involved in any given mutiny. Rolland provides numbers for about 30% of the mutinies, while Loez provides numbers for about 87% of the mutinies. When I used Loez's data and calculated the 95% confidence interval for the total number of mutineers, I received a range of [21769, 33566] (you can see the spreadsheet here). Loez's data produce a range that is less than half of Rolland's. But Rolland and Loez list different mutinies as "mutinies," and their timelines of indiscipline--especially in the month of May--differ. The discrepancy between the two different ranges could be the result of different inputs during early May, or different size estimates in late May-early June. I plan to do a day-by-day comparison of their figures in order to find the roots of the difference. 
  2. Loez's work benefitted tremendously from Rolland's, to be sure. But more importantly, Loez's work benefitted from the explosion in publication and increased accessibility of first person narratives of the First World War in France between 2001-2009. For example, he relies on the témoins of René Clergeau (published 2001), Maurice Digo (published 2008), and Lucien Laby (published 2001), none of which appear in Rolland's bibliography. This is important because virtually all of the material we historians have relating to the mutinies comes from officer's reports, French military intelligence digests, and the incomparable Colonel Zopff, the French officer who organized, collated, and analyzed all the telegrams relating to indiscipline in 1917. While the archival materials produced by these officers, 2è bureau agents, and Zopff (especially Zopff... without him, there would be no real archival record of the mutinies at all) are invaluable, they nevertheless demonstrate a clear "observer bias" and view mutineers through the overlapping and distorting lenses of military rank and social class. Indeed, Mariot analyzed this problem with the archival materials in his essay "Pour compter les mutins...", and Loez's work made significant progress in correcting this methodological problem through his use of newly available materials. 
  3. Dynamic graphs produced from Rolland's and Loez's data show different geographical and temporal patterns in the spread of indiscipline. Yesterday, I posted a graph of Rolland's data. Compare that with a similar graph of Loez's data, which you can see here.

I hope to do a line-by-line comparison of Rolland and Loez in the next few days. I will post the data as soon as it is compiled. 

dynamic graph of acts of collective indiscipline posted

I have created and uploaded my first dynamic graph of the acts of collective indiscipline during the spring/summer of 1917. You can see it here. You can download it here. 

The graph was generated using an open source network visualization software, gephi .82. the data was compiled from Rolland's La grève des tranchées and SHD 16 N 1525. I have made both my .gephi file and the .csv I used to create it available here and here, respectively. Please feel free to pull them down and play around with them.

The dynamic graph moves from 15 April 1917 to 15 August 1917 in 3 day overlapping intervals. Four major cities are placed as frames of reference. "Proper" mutinies--as in those which took place among groups of soldiers from the same unit along the Aisne front--as coded as light blue.  The "other" mutinies--as in those which took place in train stations and leave trains--are coded in light green. All the acts of indiscipline have been geocoded, so the graph shows the exact location of any given mutiny.

The mutinies themselves are unlabeled, as labeling them led to a lot of clutter in the graph. I am going to see if I can find some way to make a graph that is both clean and clearly labeled.

The graph suggests a couple of different geographically-bounded moments in the events of spring/summer 1917.

  1. A quick burst of indiscipline very close to the front lines in early May 1917.
  2. A wave of indiscipline immediately northwest of Reims in mid-May 1917.
  3. A further wave of indiscipline surrounding Soissons in the first week of June 1917, followed closely by a cluster south-west of Reims.
  4. A short respite in the second week of June, followed by a succession of events at train stations. First, the indiscipline in train stations took place long the Reims-Chateau Theirry-Paris axis. Indiscipline then spread down the Roye-Estress St. Denis-Creil-Paris axis. This is noteworthy because while some of the rail lines that left the Gare du Nord connected with the army groups involved with the Aisne offensive (i.e.. St. Denis-Chantilly-Crépy-en-Valois-Villers-Cotterets-Soissons), many connected instead with Army Group North (St. Denis-Chantilly-Creil-Clermont-Estress St. Denis-Compiegne, or Epinay-Beaumont-Clermont-St. Just). 
  5. Unit-wide acts of collective indiscipline virtually cease in the third week of June 1917, and this coincides with the height of acts in train stations. For a few days in early/mid-June, the graph shows acts of indiscipline in virtually every train station linked to Army Group Center and Army Group Reserve. See the graph below, which plots the acts of collective indiscipline between 7 June and 15 June.
  6. A gentle slow down in acts of indiscipline in train stations at the end of the second week of June. The occurrences of both kinds of indiscipline move perceptibly towards Verdun and the South-East edge of the front.

Two new transcriptions

I have transcribed two documents from SHD 16 N 1522 this morning and posted them. 

The first is a list of "inscriptions"--which I would translate as "graffiti"--written on the sides of leave trains, presumably by soldiers. The document catalogs the inscriptions on five trains--R, R bis, R ter, L, and 2B--leaving Paris's Gare du Nord for the Champagne region on 29-30 June and 2-3 July 1917. 

A quick quantitative review:

  • Number of inscriptions: 60
  • % of inscriptions with a clear anti-war message: 53
  • % of inscriptions with any kind of pro-war message: 2
  • % of inscriptions critical of commanders/officers: 15
  • % of inscriptions critical of politicians/the government: 20
  • % of inscriptions using socialist language: 7
  • % of inscriptions calling explicitly for revolution: 17
  • % of inscriptions critical of the church/clergy: 3
  • % of inscriptions critical of shirkers/non-combattants: 25

I find four things to be surprising:

  1. There was one clear pro-war inscription. It reads: "The Boches are murders of women and children. [They deserve] reprisals!" This inscription could suggest that hatred of the Germans and a desire for revenge could co-exist in the same discursive space as a hatred of Poincaré, Nivelle, the Church, and the war itself. Anti-war and anti-German messages were not mutually exclusive. But it is impossible to know this for sure, as the report does not indicate whether all the inscriptions appeared to be the work of the same person. It may be that one poilu felt compelled to write something "patriotic" after he saw how "unpatriotic" the other inscriptions were. 
  2. Three inscriptions were explicitly royalist. Two others read: "Down with the Republic, long live the King!" Another reads: ""Long live the King, long live the Pope, down with the Republic, long live France!" I am not entirely sure  what to make of this. It may have been sarcastic, or it may suggest a disillusionment with the Third Republic. That these three inscriptions came on different trains--two on Train R and Train R bis--that travelled along the same route and that the two found on Train R are exactly the same could indicate that somebody who either worked or was stationed along this route put up the message.
  3. There is a relatively low number of explicitly socialist (7%) or revolutionary (17%) messages, which stands somewhat in contrast to the language used by mutineers at the front during May and early June.
  4. Although the messages that were anti-civilian/gendarme/non-combattants (i.e. directed at "vaches," "embusqués," as well as "gendarmes") came to only 25%, the language in these messages was terse and violent, nearly always calling for "mort aux -----." 

The second is a somewhat lengthy report as to the causes of collective indiscipline, both at the front and in train stations.

What I find puzzling about the report is the double-think that the author seems to employ. He argues that the mutinies were spontaneous reactions to conditions at the front and disappointment with the Nivelle Offensive but at the same time holds that the mutinies were simply weak echoes ("ricochets") of strikes and labor unrest in the rear among the working class. He notes further that there is no evidence of a functional relationship between pacifists in the rear and mutineers at the front. In other words, he concedes that the evidence demonstrates that the mutinies had nothing to do with pacifism, revolutionary socialism, or working class identity among soldiers. Nor were they the product of the infiltration of the army by pacifist rabble-rousers or mischief-makers. Yet, he still believes that the mutinies were--somehow, some way--caused by people other than the mutineers themselves. I am not sure if this position is a function of the officer's desperation to absolve the army of any fault or his inability to admit that simple soldiers could act as political agents. It is also possible that he intentionally provides commanders with the answer they want to hear, but then consciously undermines his own point in order to suggest that this answer is faulty.  

 

 

Stats from Denis Rolland, La grève.... Part I

I have compiled, graphed, and posted the statistics about the mutinies provided by Denis Rolland in La grève des tranchées (Paris: Imago, 2004). You can see them here. 

First is a simple graph showing Rolland's count of the mutinies, sorted into three day bins. Second is a graph showing both Rolland's count and that from SHD 16 N 1525, which allows for a comparison of their respective counts. Third is a graph showing the difference between the two counts, with positive y-values indicating that Rolland's count was higher and negative y-values indicating that SHD's count was higher.

While some differences exist between the two, the average difference for the three day periods provided comes to 1.66, which is not very large. The difference is larger--3.06--for the three day periods covering the most active period (15 May to 1 July). Nevertheless, these two averages suggest that, while Rolland and SHD differ in their counting, this difference is relatively small. The two sets of figures largely agree on the general trend over time. Their similarities are far larger than their differences, and, within reason, either one probably provides a reliable overview of the timeline.

I have also uploaded a digitization of Rolland's statistics, as well as several of my own analyses thereof, here. I plan to go into more detail about this data set later, but for now I will make two points:

  1. The 95% confidence interval for the total number of active mutineers between 29 April 1917 and 1 January 1918 is [60096, 80141]. I found this by taking the average size of a mutiny as reported by Rolland as my x-bar, the standard deviation of these sizes, and a total sample size of n=159. Additionally, the 85% interval is [63803, 76434]; 90% is [62130, 77928]; 99% is [55944,84294]. I calculated these other intervals in order to see if they would differ substantially from the 95% interval. They do not--the difference between the low-end 85% and 99% interval is 12.3% and the high-end 10.2%. The estimates provided by the 95% interval are surprisingly high, much higher than what Mariot called the "usual" estimate of 30,000 to 40,000 men (Nicolas Mariot, "Pour compter des mutins, faut-il soustraire des moutons," in Obéir/désobeir, 346). 
  2. Indeed, the interval is about double what Rolland himself concluded about the total number of mutineers. Granted, he did not use a confidence interval in his estimation. This discrepancy can be explained in one of four ways:
    1. Rolland's estimate is off by about 100% (this is unlikely, but is what the statistics themselves suggest)
    2. The mutinies whose sizes are known were particularly large mutinies, which may push the confidence interval to the right (this is possible, but size estimates were provided for 30% of the 159 mutinies, which should be enough for a representative sample) 
    3. The size estimates provided by officers' reports are uniformly exaggerated (this is likely, but I am not sure if it can explain such a large discrepancy)
    4. Some combination of the above

What I plan to do now is complete whatever gaps I can in Rolland's numbers and run similar operations on those provided by other scholars. I will also double check all my math to make sure that I myself have not made a silly error or series thereof. The goal is to provide the most accurate estimate possible as to the total number of mutineers in 1917.

Of course, the outcome depends on the source material, which has many of its own problems. GIGO: if the officers' estimates contained in the archives are themselves garbage--and there are many compelling arguments that, at least to some degree, they are--then the result will be garbage as well.  A later post will address some of the shortcomings of the source material.

Maps

Maps are especially important to military historians. It is simply difficult to see what is going on in a campaign history--how armies move, why an attack fails or succeeds, where artillery is placed and why--without developing the ability take the words on the page and place them into the three dimensional space of a campaign map. To complicate things, maps impose a cleanness and rationality to campaigns that is entirely illusory.

This is especially the case in the First World War. If, as the Clausewitzian maxim goes, the best plan doesn't survive the first encounter with the enemy, then what happens when tragically overoptimistic plans encounter the enemy for months at a time? For example, the US Army maps of the Western Front are excellent, but they can't communicate how much was going on in both the trenches and the rear-front every day. The front may have been static in the aggregate, but daily trench raids, shelling, and moving thousands of tons of men and supplies backwards and forwards made parts of it more like two liquid forces pushing into one another than two walls facing one another. In other words, the lack of movement on the macro-level was the product of constant and contrary pressure and movement on the micro-level.

All that being said, I think that it would be really useful to have a set of maps that chart the mutinies--both at the front and in train stations--over time. Unfortunately, these maps just don't exist. So I have decided to make them.

First, there are no good wartime rail maps to scale, and this makes it hard to visualize how indiscipline could have spread over rail lines, as mutinous units passed through the countryside and may have inspired others. I have produced some, and uploaded the first here. Over the summer, I plan to provide a series of more detailed maps featuring rail systems, troop dispositions, and fortifications.

All the maps will be made with gephi 0.82 and various gephi mapping algorithms. As continue to put together my data sets, I will fill in details and update the maps.

Gephi also allows for dynamic network maps, which will allow me to make time-lapse maps of the mutinies. My intuition is that these maps will provide some kind of insight into a pattern in the spread of indiscipline from one unit and region to another. Even if these maps don't show any pattern, this in itself would be important, as it would provide some evidence that the mutinies were spontaneous and random.

Second, I am going to digitize and graph the data sets provided by four quantitative works on the mutinies: Pedroncini's es mutineries de 1917, Rolland's La grève des tranchées, Mariot's "Pour compter les mutins, faut-il soustraire des moutons?", and Loez's 14-18: les refus de la guerre. In the process, I hope to reread these books closely and in chronological order of publication and provide some kind of historiographical overview of each of them and their relationship with one.

First transcription

I sat down with some archival documents today and decided to transcribe one that I found to be particularly informative. It is a report drafted by a certain "Captain HB," dated 19 June 1917, sent to the French army's 3rd Bureau on the subject of "The Moral State of Some Divisions." You can read the transcription here: Captain HB.

I see three things in this report.

First, HB denies that the indiscipline is the result of pacifism or the corruption of soldiers by agents in the rear, as was so common in other reports, stating that, "the call for revolution, if it is stated at all, does not signify a desire for disorder and anarchy, but on the contrary, to replace the existing state, [with] one that knows how to defend the people [who are] miserable and were thrown into a war from which nothing good could possibly come." Indeed, Captain HB's very closely foreshadows those of Pedroncini (1967) and Smith (1994) in its interpretation of the mutinies as republican political protests against the Third Republic and its conduct of the war, and not as protests against Republicanism and the war tout court. 

Second, it shows an understanding that there was a gradation of distal to proximal causes in acts of collective indiscipline. The author goes from the most distal (the lack of rest among soldiers and consequent combat fatigue) to something more immediate (the disillusionment felt after the collapse of the Second Aisne) to the most immediate (excessive drinking among soldiers in train stations at the front). He sees the multiple casual strands that provided the conditions for the possibility of the indiscipline and identifies a series of necessary causes without ascribing any the power of sufficiency. HB implies through omission that sufficient causes for each individual mutiny--which is to day, the things that reacted with the larger-scale, impersonal, and often structural factors that he lists--need to be found in the specific context of the immediate moral state any given unit.

Third, the solutions that HB suggests--which are, for the most part, to wait for the Americans, to rebuild a sense of regimental identity, and to make it hard for soldiers to purchase alcohol--were precisely those followed by Pétain. Or, more precisely, were precisely those that Pétain was implementing in the first weeks of June 1917 and whose effects would be felt towards the end of the month and the beginning of July. These solutions focus consciously on the psychological and emotional states of soldiers, which HB sees as elements of military effectiveness no less, and perhaps more, important than materiel.

I am looking forward to getting more transcriptions up and perhaps getting some comments upon them. 

Getting to work

Right now, I am wading through SHD 16 N 1522, which consists of documents relating to acts of collective indiscipline in the French army between 16 June and 1 July, 1917. Many of these acts of indiscipline took place at train stations between the front and Paris. Soldiers who were either going on or coming back from leave (permissionaires) routinely shouted anti-war slogans, assaulted gendarmes, and vandalized stations. 

What is tricky is that there is no comprehensive review of the train schedules provided in the documents. For instance, documents refer to there being no problems along lines "2" and "PA," but trouble on line "4." Trains "RS4" and "HZ" are repeatedly mentioned. But nowhere is there an explanation how different lines or trains were designated, through which stations they went, and what units were on these trains. I am trying to reconstruct the schedules by noting every mention of a train designation, the station it was in at the time of mention, and the time of mention. In a few days, I hope to have a rail schedule put together, which I can then map on to a 1917 rail map of France. I hope to post a map of some of the lines later this week. I will be using gephi, a free graphing application that has a geolocation plug-in. 

Day 1

Today I am launching Mutinies 1917. I am not sure what the site will end up looking like, but I hope that it will provide a way for me to share my research, thoughts, and data as I work on two projects. 

I expect that, as I work on the projects and upload relevant materials, I will run into persistent problems. Please accept my apologies in advance, and feel free to forward on any suggestions you may have as to how the site might be made more user friendly.