THE 1920S WORLD OF bASTIEN

Bastien Bonlivre is a 12-year old boy, living in Paris in 1922. The early 1920s was an exciting but turbulent period in European and French history. As the world tried to recover from the devastating impact of the First World War, many people explored new ways of thinking, living and organising themselves.

Below is a 1922 timeline of selected historical happenings.

  • 2nd February: Sylvia Beach publishes Ulysses by James Joyce in its entirety
    Sylvia was a publisher and owner of the Shakespeare & Company bookshop in Paris, where she often sold books that were banned in Britain and the US

  • 6th February: France, along with the UK, US, Italy and Japan, sign the Limitation of Naval Armament

  • 18 March: Mahatma Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison for sedition in British India

  • 3rd April: Joseph Stalin is appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

  • 16th April to 19th November - The National Colonial Exhibition takes place in Marseille
    This exhibition highlighted the colonial ‘accomplishments’ of France in order to boost the country’s trade. Such colonial exhibitions became very popular in the Western world from the late 1800s onwards and they are examples of exploitation at its very worst.

  • 31st October: King Victor Emmanuel III appoints Benito Mussolini, leader of the National Fascist Party, as Prime Minister of Italy following the March on Rome

  • 4th November: British archaeologist Howard Carter’s crew discover the entrance to Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings

  • 18th November: Marcel Proust, French author, dies

  • November – The Paris Conference

  • 20th December - Antigone, written by Jean Cocteau, first appears on stage in Paris. Coco Chanel designs the costumes and Pablo Picasso designs the stage settings

If you’d like to know more about the 1920s and the Interwar Period (1918-1939), I recommend checking out the following resources:

  1. The National Archives: education sessions and resources for Interwar Years (KS2)

  2. BBC Bitesize: Interwar Years classroom videos (KS2)

  3. British Pathé: hundreds of brilliant videos displaying life in 1920s Paris (KS2 + up)

 

More resources coming soon!