John Bulaitis
John Bulaitis teaches nineteenth and twentieth century European history. He is particularly interested in the histories of France, labour movements, communism and that other political extreme of the twentieth century, fascism.
John's favourite historical personality is Flora Tristan –a French woman who fled an abusing husband, became a social commentator, travel writer, artist, champion of the poor, campaigning feminist and socialist, all before dying in 1844 at the tragically young age of 31.
Before arriving at Canterbury Christ Church in 2009, John held posts at University Campus Suffolk and the University of Essex. He has also taught history at Queen Mary (University of London), Royal Holloway, Birkbeck College and the Open University. He taught French translation at London South Bank University. He believes that Higher Education should be open to all with the ability to succeed, whatever their social background or age. With this motivation, he has worked in Widening Participation, organising outreach work in schools and colleges at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Research in Progress
John is currently writing a book on Maurice Thorez, the leader of the French Communist Party who died in 1964.
Some background to the work can be found in this paper delivered at the European Social Science History Conference (Ghent, April 2010): 'The Notebooks and Diaries of Maurice Thorez: A New Source for the History of French Communism'
http://www2.iisg.nl/esshc/programme.asp?selyear=10&pap=7535 |
Previous Publications
Book:
Communism in Rural France: French Agricultural Workers and the Popular Front, IB Tauris, London, 2008.
http://www.ibtauris.com/display.asp?K=9781845117085&aub=John%20Bulaitis&m=1&dc=1 |
Some reviews of Communism in Rural France
Tom Beaumont, University of Exeter
http://huss.exeter.ac.uk/history/exhistoria/Tom_Beaumont.pdf |
Alan RH Baker, Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Journal of Historical Geography, Vol. 35, 4, October 2009, pp.772-3.
http://0-www.sciencedirect.com.www.whitelib.emporia.edu/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6WJN-4WXXVB4-8-1&_cdi=6883&_user=7767228&_orig=browse&_coverDate=10%2F31%2F2009&_sk=999649995&view=c&wchp=dGLbVlz-zSkzk&_valck=1&md5=06b44f3f0a84a08b8adeb243e8f3178b&ie=/sdarticle.pdf |
The bitter struggle between agricultural workers and their bosses that affected many parts of France from the early-twentieth century through to reach a peak in the strikes of 1936–37, and the relationship between that farm workers' movement and the dominant political force within it, the Communist Party, are two themes investigated by John Bulaitis. He argues that the agricultural workers' movement has been neglected not only by scholars more intrigued by urban and industrial protests but also by contemporary statisticians and commentators seeking to emphasise for political and social reasons the emergence of a unified peasant France. But Bulaitis stresses that in 1936 waged workers in agriculture constituted 30 per cent of the economically active population in France: there were then more agricultural workers than metal workers or textile and clothing workers or miners. His book is a sustained effort to rescue French agricultural workers from their obscurity and to examine the role of the Communist Party in giving them a distinctive identity.'
Julian Mischi, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique
Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol 10, 2, pp. 290-2.
'A step towards a better understanding of rural communism has been taken by John Bulaitis, with his book Communism in Rural France. And this is a big step in many ways. The first of his important contributions is that his research is based on areas that had previously not been studied in depth. Indeed, most of the surveys of this subject were conducted in central France, where small peasants are numerous, or in the south-west, a region of vineyards. Here, the author deals with the cases of Paris Basin and northern France, which is interesting because of their large-scale farms. The second (and by far the most important) contribution of this book is that it provides an analysis of class relations within rural communism. Alongside the traditional cleavage opposing the countryside and the city, social division within rural areas is taken into account. While the literature often viewed the peasantry homogenously, Bulaitis examines the conflicts between its constituent groups. His third main contribution is that the book is about an invisible group, the agricultural workers. This is particularly relevant when most representations – including academic ones – of the French peasantry deal with employers, forgetting their wage workers. […] By focusing on agricultural workers, Bulaitis sheds light on a section of the rural population that has generally been overlooked in French rural and labour history. He provides not only information on communism but also on rural social life in the early twentieth century.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123305448/abstract |
Other recent publications:
Article:
'Introducing New Types of Assessment within the Discipline of History', The Higher Education Academy, July 2009, Available online at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/heahistory/resources/br_bulaitis_assessment_20090429.pdf |
Book Review:
Xavier Vigna, Jean Vigreux and Serge Wolikow, eds, Le Pain, La Paix, La Liberté: Expériences et Territoires du Front Populaire ; Gilles Morin and Gilles Richard, eds, Les Deux France du Front Populaire: Choc et Contre-Chocs.
Twentieth Century Communism: A Journal of International History, May 2009
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To practise your French, you may be interested in this article about agricultural workers in northern France.
'Les luttes agricoles de 1906-1908 : premier conflit social du XXe siècle dans les campagnes de l'Aisne', Mémoires, Fédération des Sociétés d'Histoire, vol XLVIII (2003), pp. 191-206. http://histoireaisne.org/memoires_numerises/chapitres/tome_48/Tome_048_page_191.pdf |