JBH - BTNG - RBHC
Journal of Belgian History
Revue belge d'Histoire contemporaine
Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis
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Routes of Remembrance: exploring the Ypres Salient and its battlefields, 1919-1939

Mark Connelly & Tim Godden

As a focal point of British military operations during the First World War, Ypres attracted large numbers of British visitors. The sites of memory scattered across the battlefields of Ypres were created by the events of the war. However, their continuing profile, status and significance was very much shaped by the way visitors explored the district. A number of interlocking elements relating to individual, and group, interests and practical issues of access and movement influenced the evolution.

Commemorations (WW I)
Politics of Memory
First World War

Julie Podevyn and Sebastiaan Vandenbogaerde “Ce n’est pas la loi qu’il faut changer, c’est la mentalité” Ypres Tribunal for War Damages (1918 -1935): intermediary for a city in reconstruction

Julie Podevyn & Sebastiaan Vandenbogaerde

In January 1919, Sir Winston Churchill (1874–1965) chaired a session of the Imperial War Graves Commission in London during which he declared that the destroyed city of Ypres was a symbol for the suffering of the British Empire. He intended to keep the centre of Ypres in permanent ruins, as holy ground and a “zone of silence”. Initially, Belgium’s government supported the idea, which was firmly disapproved by the local Ypres population. Moreover, since 1916, state officials had drafted plans to reconstruct the country through several institutions.

First World War
Judicial History