Fifteenth Douglas Johnson Memorial Lecture in French History.
The Society for the Study of French History
and
The Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France
Present:
The Annual Douglas Johnson Memorial Lecture,
Monday 13th January 2025.
Uncovering Josephine Baker’s War: A Historian’s Journey
Professor Hanna Diamond (Cardiff University)
The 2025 Annual Douglas Johnson Memorial Lecture will be the 15th in this series, organised by the Society for the Study of French History and the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France. It will be held at the the Institut français, South Kensington, London.
Registration is essential, though attendance is free. Reservations can be made using Eventbrite at the following link:
We are delighted to welcome Professor Hanna Diamond (Cardiff University) to give a paper entitled ‘Uncovering Josephine Baker’s War: A Historian’s Journey’.
Abstract:
The extraordinary story of Josephine Baker, the African American who came to France in 1925 and rapidly became an international star, is well known. However, her wartime contribution to French intelligence and her work supporting the Allies and the Gaullist cause have received virtually no scholarly attention. This lecture will take us through aspects of my research as I delved into this period of Baker’s life. Following in Josephine Baker’s footsteps, we will travel from Paris to French North Africa, via her chateau in Dordogne, to Spanish Morocco, Spain, Portugal and across the Middle East. As we prepare for the 80th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe, we will also learn how Baker came to the UK and participated in the original VE Day celebrations in May 1945.
Baker’s celebrity status and her troop entertainment work proved a remarkably effective cover for her clandestine operations. In unearthing her involvement with French military intelligence, we will endeavour to disentangle the complexities of its allegiances and unravel how Baker navigated her own position in the complex landscape of wartime espionage. Baker’s presence in North Africa and the Middle East also coincided with a growing demand for independence among the Arab peoples and she was a direct witness to the beginnings of decolonisation in the region. Our journey will therefore uncover how her unstinting support for Gaullism paradoxically set her against the push for freedom from colonial rule at that time. We will finish with a brief consideration of how this pivotal wartime period impacted on Baker’s later life.
Bio: Hanna Diamond is professor of French History in the School of Modern Languages at Cardiff University. She has published widely on the social and cultural history of France during the Second World War including two monographs, Women and the Second World War in France (Longman, 1999) and Fleeing Hitler: France 1940 (OUP, 2007). She collaborates with a range of non-academic partners in the creative industries (television, film and theatre) and the curatorial sector in the UK and France (Musée de la Libération de Paris). From 2021-2023, she was holder of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship to work on Josephine Baker, and her resulting book Josephine Baker’s Secret War: The African American Star Who Fought For France and Freedom will appear in April 2025 with Yale University Press.
Previous Lectures:
The First Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Julian Jackson (Queen Mary University of London), ‘The Century of Charles de Gaulle’ (November 2010).
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The Second Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Richard Thomson (Edinburgh University), ‘New Wine in Old Bottles: Adapting and Abusing Tradition in French Visual Culture, 1880-1910’ (January 2012).
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The Third Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Ruth Harris, (New College, Oxford), ‘Rolland, Gandhi and Madeleine Slade: Spiritual Politics, France and the Wider World’ (January 2013).
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The Fourth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Andrew Knapp, (University of Reading), ‘Bombing and Memory: Britain and France, 1940-1945’ (January 2014).
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The Fifth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor John Horne, (Trinity College Dublin), ‘Myth or Model? The French Revolution in the Great War’ (January 2015).
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The Sixth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Siân Reynolds, (University of Stirling), ‘Children of the Revolutionaries’ (January 2016).
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The Seventh Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Colin Jones (Queen Mary), ‘Rethinking Robespierre and the French Revolutionary Terror’ (January 2017).
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The Eighth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Malcolm Crook (Keele), ‘How the British and French Learned to Vote’ (January 2018).
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The Ninth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Máire Cross (Newcastle University), ‘Too Hot to Handle? Flora Tristan (1803-1844) Campaigner for Gender Equlality’ (January 2019).
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The Tenth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Debra Kelly (University of Westminster), ‘Free French Food: Dining Out With the Free French in Wartime London’ (January 2020).
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The Eleventh Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Michael Boers (University of Oxford), ‘Napoleon as a European: A Certain Vision of France & Europe’ (January 2021).
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The Twelfth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Penny Roberts (University of Warwick), ‘The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacres 450 years on’ (January 2022).
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The Thirteenth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Chris Tinker (Heriot-Watt University), ‘À la vie, à la mort: Media Representations of Posthumous Celebrity in France and the UK’ (January 2023).
The Fourteenth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Amy Livingstone (University of Lincoln), ‘Adventures in the French Archives: Finding Countess Ermengarde of Brittany, c.1070-1147’ (January 2024).
