​​Make Cheese Not War: Transnational Resistance and the Larzac​

When the French government sought to extend a military base on the Larzac plateau in Southern France, local farmers fought back in a decade-long nonviolent campaign. Better yet, they won.

From expansive globe-trotting solidarities to locally rooted action, the Larzac struggle illustrates the development of a form of rough-handed solidarity which served to link the roots that characterised their resistance with the international routes along which they travelled. The peasants on the Larzac plateau marshalled their cause, forging solidarities with a handshake, and inviting common cause with a range of different movements.

This talk repositions the fight for the Larzac plateau in rural south-west France within a wider network of international solidarities from the USA to the UK, Germany, Burkina Faso, New Caledonia, Japan and beyond. Retracing the actors who moved across these political networks of activism, we can see how pacifists, environmentalist, anti-nuclear protest, indigenous activists, and many more forged rough-handed solidarities with this peasant campaign.

Dr Andrew WM Smith is an historian of modern France interested particularly in ideologies and strategies of resistance, and how identities are shaped by interaction with the state. This has led him to write on wartime resistance, protest movements, and the end of empire spanning the Second World War and Cold War.

His first book Terror and Terroir, explored wine and violence in the South of France, looking at how wider economic changes unsettled professional identities, fostered unrest and altered regional and national politics.

His upcoming book explores the Larzac struggle and its international connections. Andrew is Deputy Dean of Education in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary University of London.

We’re also offering an online version of this event. If you’d prefer to join remotely, you can register here for the Zoom session.

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Host or Publisher University of London Institute in Paris