Representations of Difference in the Caricatures of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune

The Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune dominated the attention of its contemporaries, inspiring a wide range of reactions from horror to fascination across Europe, and often beyond. A captivated print culture articulated these responses.
Thousands of images flooded the continent during 1870-1, each acting as a kernel of interpretation in fiercely contested abstract conflicts of representation. Though historiography of this moment’s visual culture has tended to focus on high art and photography, printed imagery emerged as a prominent weapon in a fight for identity by artists across a wide political spectrum and of varying backgrounds. From Honoré Daumier and Cham in Paris, draughtsmen working for newspapers in London, to anonymous amateurs publishing through local bookstores in German towns, artists imparted their critical interpretations in satirical and documentary images alike, which defined and adapted overlapping categories of identity to magnify difference. Crucially, I argue that the notions of ‘civilisation’, deployed to varying ends, provided a central force in delineating difference during the war and the Commune, working against and with other political constructs and ideas of race, nation, gender and class.
These configurations were not limited to artists within the geographical boundaries of the major belligerents, and images which were popular throughout the conflicts passed across borders as part of the discursive understandings of the war and revolution. These constructions in print were developed most prominently in polemical caricature, but also in other guises – prints which had the effect of realism in lieu of viable photography also outlined otherness. In assessing how these prints depict dissimilarity, we can demarcate a number of themes which indicate how artists understood the contemporary conflicts. Working predominantly with caricatures and printed imagery drawn from France, Germany, Britain, and Austria-Hungary, this thesis assesses the cultural importance of such material during the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune across Europe and even further afield.