Chris Millington
Biographic Data
| ID | 1480529 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Chris Millington |
| GIVEN NAMES | Chris |
| FAMILY NAME | Millington |
| SIGNATURE | MILLINGTON C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Swansea University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2030-7953 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Exhibition review
Bad history
The late David C
Politicizing Disaster
The deadliest peacetime railway accident in French history occurred at 7:52 p.m. on December 23, 1933, at Pomponne on the outskirts of Paris. Over two hundred people died as a result of the tragedy. This article explores the responses to the disaster. These drew on long-standing fears over the power of modern technology, not to mention its potential destructiveness as witnessed over a decade previously during the Great War. Yet understandings of …
Looking beyond waves and datasets
Frequent observations about the lack of historical work in terrorism studies pose questions about history's place -and its relevance even -in the field. Why have historians largely failed to engage with terrorism studies? And why have terrorism studies scholars generally failed to engage with history? This article suggests that the dominance of social scientific research methods, the quest for "rules" and models, and the prizing of quantitative d…
He didn’t really talk about it’
This article examines the wartime experience of Hilaire Marteau, a teenage member of Charles de Gaulle’s Free French who settled in Liverpool after the war. Marteau’s tale has all the ingredients of a Hollywood adventure: courageous resistance, a daring escape from Nazi Germany, and a perilous crossing of the Pyrenees to join the fight against Hitler and Vichy France. That, at least, is the story according to Marteau’s rough notebooks and convers…
A History of Fascism in France
A History of Fascism in France explores the origins, development and actions of extreme right and fascist organisations in France since the First World War. Synthesizing decades of scholarship, it is the first book in any language to trace the full story of French fascism from the First World War to the modern National Front, via the interwar years, the Vichy regime and the collapse of the French Empire. The book chronologically surveys fascism i…
Léon Werth, Deposition 1940–1944
Teenage Resistance Fighter
This short book is divided into three parts. The first part is the diary of teenager Hubert Verneret, written between 1938 and 1944. The entries for the years 1938–43 are brief, yet they contain some vivid recollections, notably of the exodus of refugees in 1940. In 1944, the nineteen-year-old Verneret joined the Louis Maquis group in the south of the Morvan region. In fifty-five pages, Verneret recounts his experiences after D-Day, from the Alli…
Immigrants and undesirables
This article investigates French understandings of the terms “terrorism” and “terrorist” in the period of the late Third Republic when a series of assassinations, murders and bombings suggested that France was dangerously exposed to the threat of terror. The article deconstructs contemporary understandings of the phenomenon, showing that, if a variety of actions were labelled “terrorist”, the term was deployed in particular in relation to matters…
Were we terrorists? History, terrorism, and the French Resistance
This article argues that scholars of historical terrorism should abandon the practice of defining the phenomenon in favour of prioritising past understandings of terrorist violence. Research into the history of terrorism often uses a definition informed by contemporary concerns to reveal previous incidents and outbreaks of terrorism. This approach speaks more to the concerns of the present than those of the past. We must refocus our attention on …
Ángel Alcalde, War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Europe
Getting Away with Murder
This article examines the trial and punishment of men and women involved in violence in a political context in interwar France. The law courts offered parties and leagues a staging ground to further expose the brutality of their enemy and skewer the alleged partiality of the democratic Third Republic. The investigation and punishment of such crimes encountered important obstacles, from the reluctance of witnesses to speak to the police to the pra…
Valerie Deacon, The Extreme Right in the French Resistance
Heroes and Antiheroes of the French Resistance
Philip Nord, France 1940
Political belief in France, 1927–1945
Political belief in France, 1927–1945: gender, empire, and fascism in the Croix de Feu and Parti Social Français." Modern & Contemporary France, 24(4), pp. 446–447
France and Fascism
Political Violence and Democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940
The essays in this book concern manifestations of political violence in the democracies of interwar Europe. While research in this area usually focuses on the countries that fell to fascism, the autho
The Republic of Men
Communist Veterans and Paramilitarism in 1920s France
This article investigates the French communist veterans’ association the Association républicaine des anciens combattants (ARAC) during the 1920s. Historians have paid little attention to the ARAC, preferring instead to investigate both larger Republican associations and the extreme right-wing leagues of the period who appealed to veterans for support. The ARAC differed from other veterans’ associations: from its founding in 1917, it denounced th…
The Memory of the Cambodian Genocide
This article examines the representation of the memory of the Cambodian genocide in the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. The museum is housed in the former Tuol Sleng prison, a detention and torture centre through which thousands of people passed before execution at the Choeung Ek killing field. From its opening in 1980, the museum was a stake in the ongoing conflict between the new Vietnamese‐backed government and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge …
French Colonial Fascism
Samuel Kalman’s French Colonial Fascism is an important book that will be required reading not only for scholars and students of interwar fascism but also for researchers of the later war in Algeria. It investigates the political culture of the European settler population, which believed itself to be caught between the perceived threat of an independent Algeria under the leadership of Arab Muslim hordes, Jews, communists and socialists and a metr…
Street-fighting Men
Journal Article Street-fighting Men: Political Violence in Inter-war France Get access Chris Millington Chris Millington Swansea University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume 129, Issue 538, June 2014, Pages 606–638, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cet327 Published: 19 December 2013
From Victory to Vichy
"The most up-to-date and comprehensive English-language study of its kind, From victory to Vichy explores the political mobilisation of the two largest French veterans' associations during the interwar years, the Union fédérale (UF) and the Union nationale des combattants (UNC). Drawing on extensive research into the associations' organisation, policies and tactics, this study argues that French veterans were more of a threat to democracy than pr…
Memory of War in France, 1914-1945
In this book, Matt Perry uses the works of novelist and journalist César Fauxbras (real name Kléber Gaston Gabriel Alcide Sterckeman, 1899–1968) to give a new perspective on the years between 1914 and 1945. Fauxbras wrote several novels—Jean Le Gouin (1932), Mer Noire (1935), Viande à Bruler (1935) and Antide (1938)—all told from the point of view of the ‘lowly’, whether a sailor, a jobless worker or a grass-roots left-wing activist. In March 194…
The Memory of the Cambodian Genocide
This article examines the representation of the memory of the Cambodian genocide in the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. The museum is housed in the former Tuol Sleng prison, a detention and torture centre through which thousands of people passed before execution at the Choeung Ek killing field. From its opening in 1980, the museum was a stake in the ongoing conflict between the new Vietnamese‐backed government and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge …
Street-fighting Men
Journal Article Street-fighting Men: Political Violence in Inter-war France Get access Chris Millington Chris Millington Swansea University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume 129, Issue 538, June 2014, Pages 606–638, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cet327 Published: 19 December 2013
February 6, 1934
On February 6, 1934, nationalist leagues and Great War veterans rioted in Paris. The next day the elected radical government resigned, despite having won three votes of confidence. A conservative government took its place. Street violence had restored the right to power. Histories of the riot have generally contrasted the violence of the paramilitary leagues with the peaceful march of the Union Nationale des Combattants (UNC). Veterans' associati…
Bad history
The late David C
Looking beyond waves and datasets
Frequent observations about the lack of historical work in terrorism studies pose questions about history's place -and its relevance even -in the field. Why have historians largely failed to engage with terrorism studies? And why have terrorism studies scholars generally failed to engage with history? This article suggests that the dominance of social scientific research methods, the quest for "rules" and models, and the prizing of quantitative d…
Immigrants and undesirables
This article investigates French understandings of the terms “terrorism” and “terrorist” in the period of the late Third Republic when a series of assassinations, murders and bombings suggested that France was dangerously exposed to the threat of terror. The article deconstructs contemporary understandings of the phenomenon, showing that, if a variety of actions were labelled “terrorist”, the term was deployed in particular in relation to matters…
Were we terrorists? History, terrorism, and the French Resistance
This article argues that scholars of historical terrorism should abandon the practice of defining the phenomenon in favour of prioritising past understandings of terrorist violence. Research into the history of terrorism often uses a definition informed by contemporary concerns to reveal previous incidents and outbreaks of terrorism. This approach speaks more to the concerns of the present than those of the past. We must refocus our attention on …
Getting Away with Murder
This article examines the trial and punishment of men and women involved in violence in a political context in interwar France. The law courts offered parties and leagues a staging ground to further expose the brutality of their enemy and skewer the alleged partiality of the democratic Third Republic. The investigation and punishment of such crimes encountered important obstacles, from the reluctance of witnesses to speak to the police to the pra…
Reconciling France Against Democracy
Journal Article Reconciling France Against Democracy: The Croix de Feu and the Parti Social Français, 1927–1945 Get access Reconciling France Against Democracy: The Croix de Feu and the Parti Social Français, 1927–1945. By Sean Kennedy. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007. 364 pp. £41. ISBN 9780773532052. Chris Millington Chris Millington Cardiff University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Sc…
Reconciling France Against Democracy
Sean Kennedy's study of Colonel François de La Rocque's Croix de Feu (CF) and its successor the Parti Social Français (PSF) begins with Edouard Daladier's dismissive and rather unflattering first impression of the Colonel and the threat he posed to the Republic. Writing in 1944, the former French premier's judgement appeared vindicated: La Rocque had indeed failed to take power. However, in the summer of 1936, when La Rocque counted half a millio…
February 6, 1934
On February 6, 1934, nationalist leagues and Great War veterans rioted in Paris. The next day the elected radical government resigned, despite having won three votes of confidence. A conservative government took its place. Street violence had restored the right to power. Histories of the riot have generally contrasted the violence of the paramilitary leagues with the peaceful march of the Union Nationale des Combattants (UNC). Veterans' associati…
From Victory to Vichy
"The most up-to-date and comprehensive English-language study of its kind, From victory to Vichy explores the political mobilisation of the two largest French veterans' associations during the interwar years, the Union fédérale (UF) and the Union nationale des combattants (UNC). Drawing on extensive research into the associations' organisation, policies and tactics, this study argues that French veterans were more of a threat to democracy than pr…
Memory of War in France, 1914-1945
In this book, Matt Perry uses the works of novelist and journalist César Fauxbras (real name Kléber Gaston Gabriel Alcide Sterckeman, 1899–1968) to give a new perspective on the years between 1914 and 1945. Fauxbras wrote several novels—Jean Le Gouin (1932), Mer Noire (1935), Viande à Bruler (1935) and Antide (1938)—all told from the point of view of the ‘lowly’, whether a sailor, a jobless worker or a grass-roots left-wing activist. In March 194…
Political Violence in Interwar France
Political violence in interwar France is largely considered a marginal phenomenon, the practice of fascist and communist groups alien to the democratic and Republican consensus. Save for the occasional outburst of mass violence, historians have dismissed the sharp political conflict of the interwar years as pretense and bluster confined to the pages of newspapers and thunderous speeches. This article argues that the routine occurrence of politica…
Gender and Justice
Gender and Justice: Violence, Intimacy, and Community in Fin-de-Siècle Paris. By Eliza Earle Ferguson/Gender and Justice: Violence, Intimacy, and Community in Fin-de-Siècle Paris." Cultural and Social History, 9(2), pp. 305–306
The French Veterans and the Republic
Since Antoine Prost’s Les anciens combattants et la société française, 1914 – 1939 (1977), subsequent histories of the period have largely accepted the benign role of French Great War veterans during the interwar period. In focusing on the period between the riots of 6 February 1934 and the Daladier government in 1938, this article re-examines the history of the veterans from the perspective of their movement for state reform. The two largest ass…
French Colonial Fascism
Samuel Kalman’s French Colonial Fascism is an important book that will be required reading not only for scholars and students of interwar fascism but also for researchers of the later war in Algeria. It investigates the political culture of the European settler population, which believed itself to be caught between the perceived threat of an independent Algeria under the leadership of Arab Muslim hordes, Jews, communists and socialists and a metr…
Street-fighting Men
Journal Article Street-fighting Men: Political Violence in Inter-war France Get access Chris Millington Chris Millington Swansea University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume 129, Issue 538, June 2014, Pages 606–638, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cet327 Published: 19 December 2013
France and Fascism
Political Violence and Democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940
The essays in this book concern manifestations of political violence in the democracies of interwar Europe. While research in this area usually focuses on the countries that fell to fascism, the autho
The Republic of Men
Communist Veterans and Paramilitarism in 1920s France
This article investigates the French communist veterans’ association the Association républicaine des anciens combattants (ARAC) during the 1920s. Historians have paid little attention to the ARAC, preferring instead to investigate both larger Republican associations and the extreme right-wing leagues of the period who appealed to veterans for support. The ARAC differed from other veterans’ associations: from its founding in 1917, it denounced th…
The Memory of the Cambodian Genocide
This article examines the representation of the memory of the Cambodian genocide in the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. The museum is housed in the former Tuol Sleng prison, a detention and torture centre through which thousands of people passed before execution at the Choeung Ek killing field. From its opening in 1980, the museum was a stake in the ongoing conflict between the new Vietnamese‐backed government and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge …
Political belief in France, 1927–1945
Political belief in France, 1927–1945: gender, empire, and fascism in the Croix de Feu and Parti Social Français." Modern & Contemporary France, 24(4), pp. 446–447
Philip Nord, France 1940
Teenage Resistance Fighter
This short book is divided into three parts. The first part is the diary of teenager Hubert Verneret, written between 1938 and 1944. The entries for the years 1938–43 are brief, yet they contain some vivid recollections, notably of the exodus of refugees in 1940. In 1944, the nineteen-year-old Verneret joined the Louis Maquis group in the south of the Morvan region. In fifty-five pages, Verneret recounts his experiences after D-Day, from the Alli…
Immigrants and undesirables
This article investigates French understandings of the terms “terrorism” and “terrorist” in the period of the late Third Republic when a series of assassinations, murders and bombings suggested that France was dangerously exposed to the threat of terror. The article deconstructs contemporary understandings of the phenomenon, showing that, if a variety of actions were labelled “terrorist”, the term was deployed in particular in relation to matters…
Were we terrorists? History, terrorism, and the French Resistance
This article argues that scholars of historical terrorism should abandon the practice of defining the phenomenon in favour of prioritising past understandings of terrorist violence. Research into the history of terrorism often uses a definition informed by contemporary concerns to reveal previous incidents and outbreaks of terrorism. This approach speaks more to the concerns of the present than those of the past. We must refocus our attention on …
Ángel Alcalde, War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Europe
Getting Away with Murder
This article examines the trial and punishment of men and women involved in violence in a political context in interwar France. The law courts offered parties and leagues a staging ground to further expose the brutality of their enemy and skewer the alleged partiality of the democratic Third Republic. The investigation and punishment of such crimes encountered important obstacles, from the reluctance of witnesses to speak to the police to the pra…
Valerie Deacon, The Extreme Right in the French Resistance
Heroes and Antiheroes of the French Resistance
Léon Werth, Deposition 1940–1944
Political science (26 works) · History (23 works) · Law (23 works) · French Historical and Cultural Studies (21 works) · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis (18 works) · Politics (18 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Law (16 works) · Art (13 works) · History (13 works)