The Silence of the Salient: the memory of the First World War around Ypres

The Ypres Salient, as the area around Ypres is called, is a real landscape of remembrance. For almost four years (1914-1918), the front line of the First World War formed a semi-arc around the city. It made the Salient (as such a bulge in the front line is called) one of the most violent front zones of the First World War.
Even today, the war remains overwhelmingly tangible in the many cemeteries and monuments in the region. Every year, many thousands of people visit the war museums and take part in all kinds of commemoration rituals.
The Silence of the Salient is the first comprehensive study of the memory of the First World War in the Ypres region. This unique book is based on the doctoral study that anthropologist Johan Meire (KULeuven) worked on for four years. For the first time, it examines how people in the Ypres region have dealt with the war past since the war and also maps the recent, surprising revival of the memory of the First World War.
The richly illustrated book shows how that memory was always supported in all kinds of activities by the people in the region of Ypres itself. At the same time, the region remains the destination of foreign, often British visitors who come to look for the grave of a family member who died long ago.
With all that, the war memory in the region around Ypres has never really been determined by major political issues or ideas. It has remained alive because it is rooted in the very concrete local and family world of the various groups for whom the Great War was or is an important past.