1The model of Lutyen’s Memorial as displayed in a showcase at the Thiépval Interpretive Centre which opened in 2004 is representative of the mutations at work in the promotion of sites of memory of the Great War in Picardy: the Memorial, which for decades had been a destination for visits and pilgrimage, has become the object of displayed and explained history through museographical mediation. The Thiépval Visitor Centre embodies the tourism implementation of a site which draws close to 200,000 visitors per year and which, according to its initiators, requires some reception and interpretation. As a Franco-British creation set on a “British land of memory”, namely the space of the Battle of the Somme, it forms part of a process of the symbolic reappropriation of a painful “shared” past. This “Visitor Centre” is the place of expression for a new representation of the tourist imaginary linked to spaces of memory of the Great War. We shall not tackle this place of expression from the point of view of tourist motives and experiences (Stone, Sharpley, 2009; Winter, 2011), but rather from that of local public actors who initiated the tourism implementation.
2War is experienced as a trauma which deeply influences the local imaginary; it is therefore perceived as a founding milestone of local identity, with its imprints converted into tourist spaces. Ever since the 1990s, it has thus produced and fuelled a regional touristic imaginary based on the war, which signifies a turning point in the representations of “places of death turned into commemorative spaces” (Audoin-Rouzeau, Becker, 2009, p. 219) and of “touristic destinations” (MacCannell). The creation of the Thiépval Interpretive Centre testifies to the invention of a “tourism of memory” - see Hobsbawm (Hobsbawm, Ranger, 2005) - by the local public actors. Discussing the idea of invention may seem surprising while places like the “Somme” battlefields have drawn thousands of British visitors each year since the war. However, the rather recent investment in this British “living legend” (Winter J., 1995, p. 129) by local public actors on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the varying interests aroused by the promotion of a warlike past within the “destination-Picardy” on a local scale show to which extent the “tourism of memory” is indeed akin to the construction of a new tourism category which is “imagined” within a specific context. This concept thus resorts to various approaches, produces places and images and offers a new relationship with the past and with territories.
3The present contribution will firstly develop the extent to which the war and its imprints gradually pervade the local touristic imaginary representations, while it is also perceived as a collective trauma which has durably marked the region and its population. Secondly it will focus on the various conceptions of the “tourism of memory” as developed by the public actors in Picardy: we shall try to show the way in which its social meaning, values and functions make it a “tourism of the present in search of synchrony with the contemporary world” (Urbain, 2003), but also somehow a “taboo-tourism” as intrinsically linked to the imaginary of the pilgrimage. This contribution will eventually question the way in which spaces of conflicts are remodelled both in their symbolic meaning but also in their geography by the contemporary conceptions of “tourism implementation” (MIT, 2005) envisaged as a social construction of “desirability” and of an imperative of seduction on the part of these places associated to violence, death, mourning and sacrifice.
4The present contribution will firstly develop the extent to which the war and its imprints gradually pervade the local touristic imaginary representations, while it is also perceived as a collective trauma which has durably marked the region and its population.
- 1 The significant role of the local actors as of the 1970s/1980s in the promotion of historical sites (...)
- 2 Diagram of Tourism in Picardy, period 2000.
5Initiated in the 1990s by local public actors, the tourist developments aiming at promoting the battlefields have multiplied in Picardy : the signposting of tourist trails in the Somme and the Aisne, the funding of museums like the Péronne’s Historial (1992) or Interpretive Centres such as the Caverne du Dragon on the Chemin des Dames (1995), the staging of ruins of destroyed villages and the installation of works of public art all represent the “marks” (MacCannell) of a tourism implementation which is integrated into development and land settlement policies. Hence the local public actors – first from Local Councils (at department level), then from town councils or from “communautés de communes” (several towns gathering into a metropolitan council) and more recently actors from the Regional Council1 - invest this past, the legacy of which is construed as a tourism “potential”, a resource (Pecqueur, 2007) perhaps even as a “priority product”2.
- 3 Local Council documentary material - Mission of the Chemin des Dames, 1994-2011.
- 4 At another scale level the touristic development of the "Communautés de Communes", local areas as w (...)
6However, this touristic imaginary strongly manifests itself according to various temporalities and spatialities at region level. Whereas the first initiatives in the Somme date back to the late 1970s, only in the 1990s does a “programme for the cultural and tourist promotion of the Chemin des Dames” start to develop3 in the department of Aisne; as for the department of Oise it remained in the background until very recently. Ever since the beginning of the 2000s the Regional Council has in turn been remarkably active in this regard4. It is therefore presented in the year 2000 Diagram of Tourism as follows: “History, culture and heritage are a fundamental resource for the development of the tourist industry in Picardy. Its Gothic heritage and the fact that it is branded by two world wars as well as its industrial tradition may contribute to the attractiveness of the region and help Picardy stand out from other regions”.
- 5 The historians have extensively shown the path to the sites of memory for the various nations and e (...)
- 6 In this regard, see Offenstadt, 2004 in particular.
7The process of integrating the war into the regional touristic imaginary is based on the geography of war traces, itself determined by the extension of the battlefront but also by the geography of war traces in the process of constructing a heritage. The uneven patrimonial and memorial appropriation of the tracks is therefore an important factor in the contrasting inclusion of the Great War into the touristic imaginary at region level. In the 1970s, this appropriation was much more visible in the British sectors of the front where a “genuine complex of British mourning in the interwar period which contributed to turning the Somme into a sacred myth for the British, while at the same time the French imaginary of the war would focus on Verdun” (Gueissaz, 2001, p. 96)5. Thus, the first initiatives from the Somme Tourist Board in the 1970s relied on old commemorative and tourist practices connected to the military sectors of the Commonwealth nations (Somme Battelfields) which have become memorial spaces and pilgrimage destinations extensively developed by the various nations as early as the interwar period. The integration of the Chemin des Dames (located in the Aisne) into the regional tourist imaginary took longer, as a sign of its more marginal status in national memory and in the imaginary of the Great War. Several reasons may account for this: the Chemin des Dames is firstly a “geographically non identifiable battle” as coined by Philippe Olivera (in Offenstadt, 2004, p. 36), whose geographical identification remains blurred, which impedes the spatial rooting of memory. It is also inseparable from one of the most important French military “failures” (the 1917 Nivelle Offensive) and from “the 1917 French Mutinies” (Offenstadt, 2004). Lastly, as a “place of national amnesia” (F. Rousseau, dans Offenstadt, 2004, p 36) the Chemin des Dames is much visited by officials which gives it a limited symbolic political impact, at least until 1998, when on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the end of the war, Lionel Jospin's (then Prime Minister) visit integrated it back into the national memorial space6.
- 7 A heritage inventory of the Great War in Picardy was launched from 1991 on by the Regional Departme (...)
8The process of integrating the war into the regional touristic imaginary is regulated by the commemorative anniversaries which temporarily remodel the regional tourist and memorial geography. However, the promotion of this warlike past in the context of ‘destination-Picardy’ is more ambivalent than it seems. This promotion resorts to identity-linked conceptions and actors' strategies in the construction of the territory image. The case of the Oise thus shows that the longstanding and total concealment of this segment of the past in the local touristic imaginary - despite local initiatives for inventory purposes7 followed by the patrimonial promotion of the traces in the North-East of the department from the 1980s onward - is to an important extent linked to the readiness of local actors to root the department in other imaginaries (Hertzog, 2011) which associate it with the capital-region. Thus, the territorial discourses and representations identify the department of Oise with a holiday space integrated into the Parisian metropolis, as a vision of the inherited territory which has long structured the regional imaginary space, as shown by the development projects for a Great Paris including the South of the department as early as the beginning of the twentieth century (Bonnard, 2008). The promotion of castles, of the “royal”, “imperial” or “princely” past of towns such as Senlis, Compiègne and Chantilly, of the artistic heritage (important princely or bourgeois collections), of forests (hunting) and of an unspoilt nature on the edge of Paris, are the expression of an imaginary holiday space and of the “Echappées belles” (Great Escapes, slogan of the Local Tourist Board (CDT) in the early 2000s), which does not leave much room for the promotion of the memory of the Great War. Until recently, even in “devastated” towns (Noyon), the war has competed with more glorious episodes of urban history which nurture religion or archaeology-linked local historiographical traditions.
- 8 An approach which is currently shared by the whole of the public actors of development, culture and (...)
9In the Somme, land planning is at stake in the invention of a tourism and cultural policy in connection with the war. Initiated by the Local Tourist Board in the late 1970s, the ‘souvenir tour’ relates the whole memory of the site and necropolis located in the East of the department in order to structure an already much invested in territory, mostly by Commonwealth actors. The importance of the tourism of memory in the Somme also accounts for the momentum initiated by Max Lejeune, President of the Local Council, former Secretary of Veterans Affairs and whose family history was marked by the conflict. As of the late 1970s Max Lejeune suggests the idea of a museum dedicated to the Battle of the Somme, which became the Great War Historial, launched in 1986 and inaugurated in 1992. The construction of the Historial in Peronne reveals the importance of local territorial stakes in the promotion of the battlefields: its diversified cultural functions (museum, research centre, temporary exhibitions and concert halls...) have turned it into a development tool whose mission is to help balance the tourism offer in a marginal territory considered as a “tourism and cultural desert”8. Building territorial identity and using local “patrimonial resources” in the perspective of cultural and economic development are at stake in this project which seeks to attract the British public. The project for the tourism development of the Chemin des Dames launched in 1994 by the Expansion Committee of Aisne on a declining rural territory entails similar issues:
- 9 Quoted in: Estelmann F., Müller O., "Schlachtfeldtourismus und dissidente Diskurse: Zu den Geschich (...)
“At the time when the Chemin des Dames was first invested in the 1990s […] people became aware of the fact that sites of memory could have some tourism value. This concept and its economic issues were very popular at that time in the department of the Aisne and in other places which were deeply marked by the war, and a widespread topic of discussion as regards land planning and development. The Chemin des Dames developments are certainly essential in terms of heritage preservation and promotion, though they also clearly answer this ambition to reconcile tourism and memory. This remains relevant today”. Damien Becquart, the Aisne Local Council representative9
10In the 1980s/1990s, facing the de-industrialisation and vulnerability of some economic activities, the “construction” of new territorial resources based on memory and tourism appears locally as a possible answer. The “tourism of memory” category is called forth more and more often by local public actors as a territories development and requalification leverage. The expression thus coined is now commonly used and has been formalized by the State policy which put it forth as a new “field” from the late 1990s on. The “tourism of memory” therefore meets political and diplomatic objectives, the latter through the notion of “shared memory” jointly promoted by UNESCO and the Ministry of Defence10. This new “field” also meets economic objectives as shown by a convention signed between the Ministry of Tourism and the State Ministry of Veterans Affairs in February 2004 which ratifies its “economic role in the development of territories”11. However, the organisation of the “tourism of memory” is to a large extent achieved by the local bodies in a context of political decentralisation and State withdrawal.
- 12 The Crid is an international research and discussion group which focuses on WW1 and settled in Crao (...)
11As a consequence, the invention of a tourism policy linked to the Great War heritage occurs in a national, European and world context in the course of a reshaping process. It is thus important to note the emergence of the Great War in the French historiographical scope as of the 1970/80s (Winter, Prost, 2004) which plays an essential role in the construction of imaginary representations linked to the war. These works which revolve around the Péronne School of thought and the Crid more particularly12, produce new historiographical approaches to the conflict and are involved in the “return” of the Great War which, far from being confined to the university sphere, have manifested themselves through the multiplication of documentaries, films (Lafon, 2009), novels and even songs since the 1990s. Historian Nicolas Offenstadt describes it as a large-scale cultural movement (Offenstadt, 2010). With hardly any “Poilus” [WWI veterans] left, this cultural production could offer new conditions for the dissemination of knowledge and for the transmission of imaginaries linked to the Great War among extended social categories. However, one could question the fact that it may create as structuring imaginaries as those described by Mireille Gueissaz regarding the British: “The British, Australian and Canadian visitor paces around the Somme and its renowned sites as one would visit Ypres, Paschendaele or Gallipoli : one does it with reference to a patriotic, warlike and at times mystical mythology. One travels through a land made sacred by the blood of its heroes. It is not in History class but rather in Literature class that the memory of the Great War and its 850,000 victims was imparted to us. […] The British mourning complex cannot be reduced to cemeteries and memorials maintained by British Commonwealth countries. A symbolic closely knit relationship contributes to making the “Somme” extensively familiar to Commonwealth visitors: the fact that a powerful imaginary has influenced visitors from an early age, the road signposting network which marks the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the importance of war and/or tourism literature linked to “the Somme” and its battlefields”. (Gueissaz, 2001, p 103).
12The fact that the war and its marks belong to the regional tourist imaginary is also to be linked to the context of globalization: the one of touristic migrations and, on another level, the one of the “currents of memory” (Maurice Halbwachs). According to historian Patrick Garcia, these “currents” mark most of our contemporary societies and henceforth organise themselves on an international scale, according to the hypothesis that the Shoah as a “inverted founding event” (Ricoeur) makes up “the matrix of the contemporary link to the past which entails an introspection movement and compels societies to revisit to the most tragic and least glorious of their historical periods” (Garcia, 2008, p. 373).
13This leads us to question the role of the war in the regional imaginary: it is perceived as a collective trauma which has durably marked the territory and its inhabitants.
- 13 Le Monde, « Les Picards entre la mémoire du feu et le désespoir de l’eau » (The inhabitants of Pica (...)
14The devastating consequences of both world conflicts are often called upon by local actors to explain economic backwardness or obstacles to development to which Picardy is structurally confronted : in a 1998 paper focusing on the effects of the front crossing the Somme, the Amiens-based historian Philippe Nivet questions “the long term handicap” : “Can the WWI's echoes and the indirect consequences of the impact of the destructions and demographical substance loss for the region contribute to account for some forms of backwardness which preclude local development?” (Nivet, 1994, p. 185). In 2001 historian Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, Great War specialist and researcher at the Péronne Historial Centre, develops similar conceptions: “After the hell of WWI […] resilience is broken down. Much of today's structural backwardness is thus accounted for: educational backwardness in particular”13. (Le Monde, 17th May 2001).
- 14 Interview conducted by Régis Guyotat for Le Monde publication: « Les Picards entre la mémoire du fe (...)
15Besides, a representation of the “sacrificed” land which is inseparable from the war and a regional imaginary associated to the idea of trauma provoked by the conflict appear to have built up locally. Thus in 2001 the extent of the Somme flood and the project of a third Parisian airport may have reactivated representations of Picardy as a territory “devastated by History”, “forgotten” (by the State) and “sacrificed” (by the nation). Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau presents a similar interpretation in the newspaper Le Monde14: citing “old wounds” reopened by the devastating floods:
“There is a return of the memory, he contends. Water replaces the fire of the war. Water destroys homes, lands and facilities... which is experienced in a traumatic way like in the two world conflicts. […] I think that Picardy has never totally recovered from the destructions of the first and second world wars. It is impossible to understand this region while disregarding the battlefield”.
- 15 Jean-Pierre Dufour, "La mémoire de la bataille de la Somme contrarie le troisième aéroport parisien (...)
- 16 Le Monde, op.cit., 1st December 2001.
- 17 This "cultural and patrimonial" approach of reconstructed spaces must be put into perspective. Admi (...)
- 18 La Voix du Nord, Christophe Lépine, 2001.
- 19 "The inhabitants of Picardy : between memory of fire and despair from water"(The inhabitants of Pic (...)
- 20 In the press but also in the whole of the historical and television productions or exhibition catal (...)
- 21 Le Monde, op.cit., 17th May 2001.
16The floods would therefore have revived a feeling of latent vulnerability which also manifested itself at the time of the collective mobilisation against the project of a third Parisian airport. Facing this development project which includes the destruction of the Picard plateau, all the whole imaginary of the “martyred land” re-emerges as evidenced by the slogans displayed at the entrances to some of the threatened villages : “a region sacrificed by the madness of man”; “torn down in 1918, rebuilt and destroyed again in 2015”15. Historian Annette Becker comments in the newspaper Le Monde: “Everything had to be rebuilt after the war. In this region the villages are symbols of that reconstruction, of resistance facing adversity. This is why inhabitants of the region are attached to them and would find it unbearable to see them destroyed again. With a few exceptions, all of the Somme politicians share this highly cultural and patrimonial approach to their region”16. Such an interpretation17 is widely publicized by the local and regional press: the headline in La Voix du Nord reads “Floods, war, airport: Eastern Somme cultivates the wounds of centuries”18, which portrays a territory whose inhabitants “suffered during the war and go on suffering now”. The Great War is therefore perceived as a “founding event” which structures regional identity and even its inhabitants’ traits. The “Picard” is therefore seen as having developed a “culture of imprisonment associated with these events” as well as a strong feeling of difference intermingled with the frustration linked to the lack of recognition by the nation and the State of the “sacrifices” made during the war. According to Philippe Nivet, the trauma of war would have led to “the development of a siege mentality, a firm will to remain among Picards”19. This portrayal is completed by landscapes marked by necropolis and grounds filled with shells20 both as allegorical representation and physical imprints of the “ubiquity of war at the heart of Picardy where death prowls in the landscape and in the ground”21.
17Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau points out that the idea of an identity “peculiar to regions rebuilt after the first world war, where acknowledgement from the nation has never been expressed to its fair extent, as if a stain had developed through contact with the enemy […] is something obscure that remains to be explained, but still, traces remain...”. Yet the memory of trauma is probably not the only factor in the mobilisation of local actors against the airport. The commitment to preserve the “green lung” of Picardy, to avoid a nuisance-causing facility, or more simply the fear of environmental destruction also account for this. Similarly, the 2001 anti-Parisian reactions linked to the floods fit in the local and national political game (The political party “Chasse Pêche Nature et Tradition” opposed the then Minister of Ecology on hunting issues...). At any rate, they reveal a complex relationship with this traumatic past and the reconstruction of a memory of the trauma with respect to present stakes (Hartog, 2003).
18The approach of Picardy as a “sacrificed and wounded land” linked to the image of the Picardy inhabitant for whom living would mean “suffering” represents the invention of an “imaginary of territoriality” which involves the notion of the “imaginary figure” suggested by Bernard Debarbieux with regards to mountain dwellers (Debardieux, 2008). This imaginary of territoriality founded on the war happens to be widely circulated by tourism discourses. The Regional Council for Tourism website thus explicitly refers to a specifically Picard disposition born out of adversity (consulted in 2011):
- 22 Regional Tourist Board website, consulted in May 2001.
“All of these ordeals have given birth to very specific traits of character in the Picardy inhabitant. Thus, suspicion, withdrawal from others but also a great nobility in action, intelligence of the heart, loyalty and a remarkable capacity to internalise: “a character of underground cathedral...” as Sophie de Paillette sums up so well in her book “Picardie Corps et âme”. “If we ignore the wars and the sufferings they had to endure, it is impossible to understand the Picards”, historian Philippe Nivet contends”22
19The war heritage occupies an ambivalent place in the regional tourist imaginary: sometimes presented as a tourism asset in terms of visibility and development, sometimes also presented as a constraint. The year 2000 Diagram of Tourism for the Somme expresses the following point:
“The name of the department is associated with the grim image of the Great War, with flat and monotonous landscapes and with cold and rainy weather. Population lacks self-pride and knowledge of history and heritage. A First World War topic which only reaches a limited audience and reinforces the grim image associated with the department. A culture and a history of withdrawal in inhabitants that is not always conducive to human contact and exchange”.
20Ten years later, the regional diagram of tourism still evokes the image of a Picardy “failing to stir one’s imagination”, an image which is very little related to tourism and scarcely perceived as a “rewarding destination”. The war is not as explicitly mentioned but the document puts forward a “real seduction-related issue” and makes an inventory of the “obstacles to dream and emotion”: “located to the North of France, the harsh weather perceived as cold and damp, the dreary plains and the destruction of the landscape, some urban and industrial wastelands”.
- 23 See in this regard, Auzas V., Jewsiewicki B., (dir.), "Traumatisme collectif pour patrimoine : rega (...)
21Hence the heritage of the Great War became part of the regional tourist imaginary through specific context and stakes since the 1980/1990s, while the collective trauma defines an “imaginary of territoriality”, namely a component of contemporary Picard regional identity23.
22We may now consider the way in which the meaning, values and social functions assigned to the “tourism of memory” make it “a tourism of the present in search of synchrony with the contemporary world” (Urbain, 2003) but also somehow a taboo-tourism insofar as it remains intrinsically linked to the imaginary of pilgrimage and trauma.
- 24 Former controller general of the armed forces in charge of memorial policies for the Ministry of De (...)
- 25 Online report, 2009; see also Barcellini Serge, "Introduction", Guerres mondiales et conflits conte (...)
23For most of the actors in charge of coordinating the “tourism of memory”, its contemporary representations revolve around the idea of a paradigmatic change related to the shift from a tourism of “pilgrimage” to a tourism of “history”. This representation prevails as of the 1980/90s when the heritage of the war precisely forms part of the regional touristic imaginary in Picardy. This turning-point for tourism, generally accepted to have taken place in the 1960/70s, is explained by the gradual disappearance of veterans, which entails a profound alteration in the nature of tourism, habits and motives. Antoine Prost is undoubtedly one of the first to emphasise these mutations on the basis of his works on Verdun. “The pilgrimages are progressively changing in nature”, he writes about places of memory in the article “Verdun” (Prost, 1986), “history is taking over from fervour” (Prost, 1986, p. 1771). Other historians concur, like Serge Barcellini24, author of a report published in 2009 entitled “The Time of History” on the tourist promotion of the Meuse battlefields, in which the contemporary tourism of history focusing on education and the quest for knowledge, breaks with the tourism of pilgrimage and the “time of memory”25. These conceptions are widespread throughout the public space as shown in the Gazette des Communes 1995 publication which observes:
“the era of the pilgrimages is over, there are only a few veterans left. The sites have lost their 'reliquary' symbolism and entered a new historical and cultural phase”.
- 26 Dominique Camus's intervention, "The tourism of memory in Picardy: for a regional integration" at t (...)
24The tourism of memory is mainly perceived as an “educational” tourism supposedly responding to the need to understand and interpret the battle spaces and places of memory, the meaning of which couldn't otherwise be grasped by contemporary generations. The political representative in charge of tourism in the Somme advocates the idea of a “shift from a tourism of pilgrimage to a tourism of historical understanding”26. The Somme “souvenir trail” is now known as “the historical space of the Battle of the Somme”. This tourism of history has established the expert-historian as the central figure of the contemporary process of tourism implementation. The “educational purpose” of the battlefields is rooted in the 1960s in the context of a “battle” history centred on the understanding of military events and on veteran remembrance. However, from the 1980/1990s onwards, this “educational purpose” takes advantage of historiographical renewals (cultural history, social history, comparative approaches as for Péronne and integrates several debates; some of which are not devoid of ideology as evidenced by the importance the “shot for cowardice” topic has been taking in the communication and mediation strategies implemented for the Chemin des Dames in the last few years (Estelmann, Müller, 2009).
- 27 The analysis of the tourism practices has become an object of research per se, whether in the field (...)
25Anglo-Saxon researches27 applied to the tourism of battlefields or to the tourism of memory, shade the opposition between “tourism” and “pilgrimage” by insisting on converging elements and on the complexity of practices and motivations (Winter, 2011). Consequently, most of the contemporary Anglo-Saxon work sets itself apart from approaches based on the succession of “regimes of touristicity” (as a reference to Hartog's regimes of historicity). To move in this direction, we may also point out that very early, battlefields appear to have generated a tourism of history, that is a tourism driven by the desire to understand the historical facts which happened there and then. In 1919 the Guide Michelin dedicated to the Ourcq is both “a practical guide and a history”:
- 28 Volume dedicated to the Ourcq (Chantilly, Senlis, Meaux), 1919 – see also Brandt, 1994.
“We do not conceive such a visit as a mere race through the devastated areas, but rather as a real pilgrimage. Seeing is not enough, one must also understand28”
26As early as the war, a form of tourism linked to the discovery of “devastated” landscapes (Panni, Jagelski, 2000; Bonnard, 2008) developed and which local actors try to handle. Various tourist imaginaries have therefore coexisted throughout the 20th century; this is equally pointed out by Antoine Prost about Verdun.
- 29 Extract of the State Defence Secretary's speech, quoted in Actes des Premières rencontres de la Mém (...)
- 30 Dominique Camus’ lecture, « Le tourisme de mémoire en Picardie : pour une intégration régionale » a (...)
27He also shows that the veteran pilgrimages raise peace as a “supreme value” as early as the interwar period (Prost, 1986). On the Chemin des Dames some clearly pacifist monuments are subject to visiting practices and regular commemorations (see Jagielski in Offenstadt, 2004, p. 270). The theme of peace has become increasingly important since the 1980s (as evidenced by the construction of the Peace Memorial in Verdun). Likewise, if some places of memory have been established as symbols of Franco-German reconciliation as early as the 1960s in the context of the European construction (Chemin des Dames), the theme of “shared memory” is summoned more and more often in the process of contemporary tourism implementation. The pacifying function of the tourism of memory therefore fuels the touristic imaginary and informs discourses both at State and at local level. In 2005, the State Secretary to Veterans Affairs declared: “in a time troubled by major international events, the tourism of memory thus appears as a vector of peace, a vector of exchange and mutual respect between peoples”29. In 2008, the elected representative in charge of tourism at the Somme Local Council considered the tourism of memory as “a way to celebrate peace between nations”30. His lecture at a conference held in Picardy in 2008 was particularly revealing of the understanding of this form of tourism:
- 31 Dominique Camus's lecture quoted, 2008 (acts online).
“The tourism of memory takes part in the construction - or should we say reconstruction - of a new territorial identity. A new identity develops and is henceforth based on hospitality, openness to others, exchange and mutual enrichment. The tourism of memory accompanies the inhabitants of these territories marked by tragedies and by the weight of history through a necessary process of evolution and a salutary redevelopment, which turns a land of invasions into a welcoming one.”31
28Here, we move beyond the pacifying function of tourism in favour of an imaginary of resilience: tourism is summoned as the “reconstruction” and “redevelopment” of a territory and a shattered local society. In this sense, tourism is perceived as a component of the identity of territories which allows them to overcome trauma. The same political representative calls for a “form of tourism in which ethics and morality are even more present and through which the visiting of these places of memory will be a means to give meaning to our future”. Consequently, the tourism of memory is more and more often associated with an “ethical”, “durable tourism” inasmuch as it is perceived as a means to reconcile the protection of heritage, economic development and social and ethical values, therefore harnessing the rationales peculiar to some contemporary conceptions of sustainable development.
29These comments clearly show that however much developed on the basis of traces of the past, the tourism of memory is certainly conceived as a “tourism of the present in search of synchrony with the contemporary world” (Urbain, 2003). The significance given to tourism not only forms part of a relationship with the past and a memorial construction related to the war, it is also anchored in some - idealised - conceptions of tourism as a factor in the development of closer ties between peoples. The meanings and purposes assigned to this form of tourism also refer to the new normative frames of territory development (‘sustainable tourism’), to values (ethics, peace, human rights) and to contemporary political stakes (European construction, creation of European remembrance).
- 32 The Tourism of History Magazine n°1 which dedicates a dossier to Verdun.
30Yet the imaginary of the pilgrimage has not been erased. “To visit Verdun means going on a pilgrimage to the heart of a wounded land”, the headline of the publication Voyage et Histoire reports in 200632. The imaginary of the pilgrimage which characterises the tourism of the battlefields in the immediate after war period (Prost, 1986, Lloyd, 1998, Winter J., 2001, Winter C., 2009, 2011) continues to influence contemporary conceptions of the tourism “of memory”. The values of sacredness and respect, mourning and commemoration of sacrifice are still present in the discursive registers. Regarding the touristic promotion of the Somme, the political representative in charge of tourism for the Local Council of the Somme offers significant comments at the 2008 conference:
“To establish the tourism development and the promotion of a territory on the basis of such painful memories is a difficult task. For the public and private actors of our department, the tourism implementation of such a sensitive topic had to be handled with caution. It will seem obvious to everyone that to consider developing the tourism of memory in the same way as seaside tourism, golf or hiking is not tenable. The local authorities as well as the Department Tourist Board have always seen to the fact that the tourism implementation of these places of memory be in line with the spirit and values of respect and reverence which characterise these places”.
- 33 The Tourism of History Magazine n°1 which dedicates a dossier to Verdun.
31This is true for several reasons: the desire to reach foreign tourists, from the Commonwealth in particular, who are often first perceived as pilgrims who behave very differently compared to French tourists33 on the one hand, on the other hand the desire, despite the disappearance of veterans, to perpetuate the transmission of the values linked to this “community of memory” in dealing with some memorial sites in the present day.
32This “actuality” of the pilgrimage remains particularly perceptible in the nations of the Commonwealth. Even today, “The Vimy Pilgrimage” still designates the visit of the Vimy (department of Nord) monuments and cemeteries34; some rituals have been reactivated (the “pilgrimage medal” awarded to Canadian students visiting the battlefield). Some tour operators still refer to this imaginary. In 2006, Bruce Bilson, the Australian Minister of Veterans Affairs pointed out with regard to the development of tourism on the battlefields: “we must remember that our final objective is to commemorate the services (to the nation) and the sacrifices, it is not to create a tourist attraction” (Bilson, 2007), a statement faithfully developed in the project for the commemoration of the Great War Centenary35. Thus, we observe that even today the imaginary of pilgrimage and commemoration still marks the tourist imaginary of the Commonwealth “places of memory” - as symbols of veteran sacrifice but also of national identity (Winter, 2001, Audoin-Rouzeau, 2002) - and qualifies the idea of the emergence of a historical tourism exclusively focused on education.
33It is now time to analyse the way in which spaces of conflict are remodelled in their symbolic significance, but also in their geography by the contemporary conceptions of “tourism implementation” (MIT, 2005) envisaged as a social construction of “desirability” and as an imperative of seduction of these places related to violence, death, destruction, mourning and sacrifice. These extracts - that we underline - were taken from the Regional Diagram of Tourism in Lorraine for the 2007/2012 period concerning the “tourism of memory associated with military regional heritage” appear as indicators of this issue of tourism implementation:
- 36 Extracts from the Regional Diagram of Tourism in Lorraine, period 2007/2012.
“Ambitious action could aim at a positioning which would act as a reference on this theme in France, and even in Europe, while making it positive through a ‘peaceful’ positive angle: the battles which built Europe and brought peoples together. […] With regard to the tourism of memory more specifically, the message is worked in coherence with the image policy of the region. The themes tackled are dealt with within the scope of the future (exchange between peoples rather than war...) […] The issue here is to have products which allow the projection of a forward-looking image, one of an exchange between peoples rather than war”36
- 37 Regional Diagram of Tourism in Lorraine, period 2007/2012 (online).
34The construction of the space of conflict as a tourism destination, namely an “attractive” one, leads us to question more acutely the representations related to violence and to traces of conflict as well as the registers used to make them “desirable”. We must consider the way in which this social construction of desirability is spatially built, which makes the memory of conflict more positive, therefore re-inventing the meaning of places of memory, and even imagining new places which would be real, fictional or hyper real spaces (Crozat, 2007). Indeed, with the reconstruction and the progressive fading of the scars of war, the construction of the battlefield as a tourist destination is first of all an “invitation for the eye”. Thus, as of the 1980s, the process of unprecedented unearthing of the traces of war; the intense “signposting” of places must give visibility to elements that are not immediately perceptible as they belong to the past. The reenactment, which often requires significant technical and human measures (pageants, reconstitution of trenches, ruins...) represents a particular modality of the latter by establishing a “semblance” of truthfulness through pseudo-realistic and more or less spectacular staging. The “Schéma régional du tourisme de Lorraine” [Regional Diagram of Tourism in Lorraine] therefore presents a culture “without pedagogy”, a culture proposing “more spectacular museums, more animated patrimonial sites, possibly with live performance”37.
35Tourism implementation involves innovating socio-spatial practices which model places structured around contemporary and inherited practices. Some researchers consider these “touristically implemented” battlefields above all as spaces “in a state of tension” where an initial practice formerly related to the pilgrimage and a current inclination to develop an “a la carte” service which segments the offers (Trouche, 2010) intermingle. The installation of works of art, the multiple landscape developments on some battle sites (commemorative parks, cornflower beds...) establish new terms of place appropriation and create renewed imaginaries. They contribute to the creation of hybrid places halfway between reality and virtuality, erudition and entertainment, the sacred and the profane.
36The social construction of desirability through a positive rendering of a painful past relies on a few modalities which renew the practical, landscape and symbolic planning of these spaces of conflict. We have identified five of these modalities: estheticizing, pacification, naturalisation, involvement of local inhabitants and urbanisation.
37Estheticizing.
An “artialisation” which draws from universalising references succeeds to the commemorative monumentalization. Artists’ residencies, art exhibitions or public art implantation policies on battlefields characterise the contemporary modalities of tourism implementation. Thus in 1998, the installation of Ernest Pignon-Ernest's work in Soyécourt wood (Somme), and Haim Kern's on the Craonne plateau to name but two, led to the emergence of new uses and representations of sites. The Chemin des Dames has become the place par excellence for a hybridisation of space practices and representations. To name but one example, the California plateau battlefield has been subject, for a few years, to a promotion which aims at producing at once: a place of history (undergrowth clearing in the forest in order to exhume the trenches, installation of explanatory signposts), a place of memory (excavation of the ruins of the destroyed village of Vieux Craonne and restoration of war memorials), a place for hiking and environmental tourism (opening of new trails, ONF signposting and marking of "remarkable" trees), and a place of in situ art exhibition since the installation of Haim Kern's sculpture entitled "Ils n’ont pas choisi leur sépulture" [They did not choose their place of burial] commissioned by the State in 1998.
38The implantation of works of contemporary art on battlefields allows us to highlight another aspect of this positive rendering which at times impregnates tourism implementation: the idea that a universalist “message” must be superimposed onto the historical meaning of places. This is exemplified by the use of the peace register, one which is as old as war itself, as the theme of peace marks the memorialisation of the battlefields as early as the end of the fighting (war memorials, pacifist pilgrimages of veterans). Ever since the 1980s, as the public touristic promotion of sites developed, the distance to the memory of conflict not to mention the concealment of some modalities of war violence seem to have increased in favour of other registers like those of peace, reconciliation or more recently “shared memory”. Thus the refusal “of the enjoyment of the spectacle of war” and the will to “preserve the visitor from the emotional outcome related to the staging of the unbearable” (Wahnich, 2001) are clearly within some of the modalities of tourism implementation such as the museographical exhibition. The specificity of the Péronne Historial is that, according to Jay Winter, its scheme focuses on staging a “peaceful and soothing dimension” on the one hand, and “the discourse of this museum is one of shared calamity” (Winter, 2004) on the other hand. Historian Sophie Wahnich, pointing out the absence of heroisation, analyses the laying of soldiers’ uniforms and belongings at the foot of the graves as a desire to conceal warlike action in favour of death and mourning. The field of museography, she contends, obscures a part of war violence and precludes the appraisal of fighting on the side of those who take lives: “Sobriety, distancing, intentionally sensible aesthetics rather than emotional, induce the denial of war violence and a humanist ecumenism. It suppresses the memory of warlike conflict which could still be perceived as a political conflict” (Wahnich, 2001). The European dimension is also clearly expressed here (a trilingual museum including a triple viewpoint on the events) in the perspective of the construction of a common history. This type of planning which pertains to creation of heritage and tourism implementation fits into territorial and political issues.
39There is certain ambivalence in the approach to the battlefields landscapes or places marked by destruction: alternately landscapes convey signs of trauma (hollow teeth, ruins, emptiness left by destruction in urban landscapes...), and they embody serenity and restored peace. This description found on the website of the Regional Council of Picardy in 2006 shows the capacity of the tourism discourse to produce allegorical landscapes:
“Go hiking on the battlefields, walk through formerly mutilated villages, make a halt in a cemetery or enter the Péronne Historial. Feel the emotion well up in places now filled with calm and serenity. The Picards have rebuilt their towns through courage and strength of willpower, the verdure of the Haute Somme Valley is restored, the poppies blossom in the fields, the big trees watch over the Chemin des Dames again, the landscapes are astonishingly beautiful. Now that nature has regained its rights, a peaceful Picardy pays tribute to the men who gave their life for its freedom" (website of the Local Council of the Somme in 2006)
40The idea of resilience strongly rooted in some discourses about landscape also implies the idea of shared memory. The social construction of tourism attractivity and desirability implies the involvement of the inhabitants; the regional diagram of tourism reveals one of the backbones of the regeneration of the regional tourism policy. The CRT (Regional Tourist Board) website has recently issued inhabitants’ “testimonials” who act both as ambassadors and guides. This also implies a re-appropriation of “inhabiting” and not only “fighting” memories. Mireille Gueissaz evokes the challenge the inhabitants face in trying to position themselves on their own territory and questions the imaginary of a shared memory: “ignored by the pilgrims who travelled to celebrate their war and pay tribute to their dead […] they were doubly excluded from the French imaginary of the First World War, first as civilians from the occupied regions and second as the victims of a four-year long battle bearing hardly no status in the national imaginary”. According to Annette Becker, “the memory centred on an exclusive experience - the one of the veterans of the trenches - tended to cast aside and forget the exceptional (yet minor geographically) pains suffered by the inhabitants of occupied France. [...] First, because during the conflict, the French people in occupied zones were somehow geographically and symbolically cast aside from the national territory. The war indeed consisted in defending the national sacralised land, which the trenches symbolise as a ground permeated with blood and death. How would those who were away from this land during the war not be condemned to be excluded from this very memory? How can victims who are not heroes be commemorated?" (Becker, Audoin-Rouzeau, 2000, p. 250). And yet one of the contemporary mutations of the tourism implementation of spaces of conflict is the attempt to take an off-centre look: the inhabitants of Picardy are now solicited to “get involved” through their stories and testimonials in the shift of image and in a more personalised discourse about the places (see the website of the regional council which stages inhabitants as ambassadors of the territory) by mobilising their experience of the places. Finally, the integration of spaces located “outside” the battlefield, therefore different from major traditional memorial places (trenches, destroyed villages, memorials), into a “tourism of memory” forms part of a commitment to include other types of memories (civil, rearguard) and also new traditional territories of the tourism of memory. Thus the integration of the heritage of reconstruction in the promotion of the Somme or the Meuse project, “The Time of History” written by Serge Barcellini in the perspective of the centenary, puts the touristic and memorial territory of the memory of the war far beyond the scope of the Verdun battlefield.
41In addition, while the space of memory and pilgrimage crystallises on the battlefield as the very place of “sacrifice”, of burial of the dead and of the cult (materialised by memorials, necropolis and cemeteries), the towns became new centres in the tourism implementation of spaces of conflict as of the 1980s with the urban establishment of a new generation of museums. These history museums which constitute a specific modality of the creation of heritage and of the tourism implementation of the spaces of conflict aiming at the intelligibility of the past, distinguish themselves from the first “reliquary” museums implanted on the battlefields. The implantation of the Historial in the Château de Péronne situated in the town centre shows the dissociation of the museum from the battlefield as a form of ‘deterritorialisation’ of memory in order to better materialise a renewed historiographical concept based on the comparative approach of the war and a universal project: illustrate a community of suffering on the European scale, in other words move away from the territory to better anchor in a broader spatial imaginary. However, these new localisation rationales reveal more complexes issues. These urban museums also constitute the fulcrum of the local cultural development and often take part in urban requalification projects.
42Tourism on the battlefields and in destroyed towns is an old phenomenon which was initiated with the Great War (guides Michelin...). But in the interwar period, some distrust arose not to mention rejection. The phenomenon weakened as the inhabitants removed traces of the war in the landscape, except for spaces visited by nations of the Commonwealth. Nevertheless, after decades of concealment, the war and its traces are gradually being included in the regional tourist imaginary linked to the front, and more particularly in Picardy since the 1980s, according to various temporalities and spatialities. This turning point which turns traces of the war into a tourism resource forms part of a global context as an answer to local issues of identity construction and territorial development. It is activated by outside actors and approaches (politicians, historians...), imported practices, references and models from elsewhere, and operates in the global context of territorial reordering.
43The values and the meaning assigned by local actors to the tourism of memory have turned it into a present-focused one. The tourist imaginary of the pilgrimage does not appear to fade in favour of a tourism of history, the latter undergoing a profound mutation under the influence of historiographical renewal. The historical sites, both places of commemoration and exhibition, reverence and entertainment, which are subject to promotion policies, refer to hybrid representations and usages. In Thiépval, the 1930s memorial and its museographical replica, the place of memory and the object of history, the commemoration and pilgrimage space and the pedagogy and tourism of historical space stand side by side. On this site, artists, historians but also more recently, stage designers and technicians confront their representations in favour of the construction of desirability.
44The construction of the attractivity of the tourist destination sometimes rests on the memory of a painful past rendered positive, which testifies to the ambiguity of combining touristic registers (enjoyment, entertainment, fascination...) and those of violence and mourning.
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