The diverse ways in which Basques responded to war and displacement during the most tumultuous period in contemporary history War and occupation anywhere test the resilience of local values and institutions and often undermine accepted standards of human conduct. The Basque communities in the Pyrenees were no exception. Between 1914 and 1945, two world wars and the turbulent interwar years had a profound impact on Basque society, affecting even remote villages and rural farmers.In this book, anthropologist Sandra Ott examines the impact of war and occupation on four Basque communities in the French commune of Xiberoa. These communities were long accustomed to the exercise of ancient rights of self-determination and to unique forms of familial and vicinal interdependence. They had their own interpretations of what constituted legitimate private and public behavior, and they were normally reliant on their own forms of judgment, justice, and reconciliation to maintain social order.Using archival documents, many of them classified, and interviews with numerous Basque witnesses, Ott recounts how these tightly knit communities reacted to war, occupation, resistance, and denunciations, as well as to the upheavals of liberation. Finally, she reveals how Basque traditional culture allowed these communities to cope with the violence and tumult of war and how ancient traditions helped restore intracommunity harmony following the divisiveness of occupation and liberation, as well as shape communal memories of these events."War, Judgment, and Memory in the Basque Borderlands, 1914-1945" is an important contribution to our understanding of the ways a traditional community responds to crisis and change, and the way historical memory is shaped by popular local culture.
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