1930nen dai no tada naka de (The History of Ordinary People during The Interwar Period - Namonaki furansujin tachi no kotoba)

The word “history” may first evoke the great events mentioned in school textbooks. Indeed, traditional historiography focuses on these and constructs a “history of events.” However, this book, Paroles de Français anonymes: au cœur des années trente (2019), deals with a history of a very different nature. To depict the era of world wars, the author Alain Corbin analyzes the lives of ordinary people living in a provincial region, the Limousin, rather than events related to battles.
 
This focus on people, often relegated to the shadows of major events, aligns with the new historiography practiced since the early 20th century by historians of the Annales School. Rather than concentrating on significant events or famous figures, these historians are interested in the deep social structures underlying such events or the mindset of people acting behind the scenes—that is, the collective mentality. In following this tradition, Corbin developed a “history of sensitivity,” which traces what anonymous individuals felt in response to the events of their time.
 
Compared to Corbin’s major work, Le Miasme et la Jonquille (1982), this book is more modest, making it more accessible and clearly illustrating Corbin’s method. The author examines what ordinary Limousin residents experienced and felt during the period of stability following World War I and later during the rise of Nazism and increasing tensions. Many of these feelings escape the documents preserved in libraries and other archives. Corbin directly engaged with people who lived through that time. This book accounts for these interviews and consists almost entirely of countless quotations from railway workers, teachers, postmen, and others. While reading this work, one realizes that history focusing on major events, although clear and understandable, appears abstract and disconnected from reality. Behind these great historical events were the people who lived through them. The book seems to suggest that the essence lies in the feelings of individuals in daily life, which is often overlooked as superfluous details in historiography.
 
This feature brings Corbin’s approach closer to those in the literature. Literary writers often focus intensely on individuals to reveal the mindset of their time or the universal essence of the human condition. Corbin’s history does not explore individuals as deeply as literary writers might but rather sits between macroscopic history and microscopic literature, thus linking these two fields. Corbin placed great importance on literary works as sources, and his writings are often cited by scholars of literature. It is a form of historiography that resonates with French tradition, which values the quest for the human spirit and, therefore, literature and the arts. Many of Corbin’s works have been translated into Japanese and published by Fujiwara Shoten. Exploring these works allows readers to discover a time and space quite different from what is taught in schools.
 

(Written by JITTANI Soichiro, Lecturer, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences / 2024)