Une base de données sur les monuments aux morts : histoire concrète et valorisation numérique

After the First World War, families, local authorities and the whole nation wanted to pay homage to ‘the heroes fallen for France’. From 1919 on war memorials appeared in practically each French commune, with commemorative messages that could vary according to the location, the date of construction or the number of war dead to be remembered. Like the statues themselves, the wording of the texts engraved, is a subject worth studying. The database set up by the research department IRHIS (UMR 8529) and given the label of the French mission for the First World War centenary commemorations aims to draw up an exhaustive inventory of these war memorials, thought to number about 40,000 in all. The database also sets out to provide illustrations with historic and contemporary pictures, press cuttings, archival documents, geolocalisation data and texts concerning iconographic or economic aspects of the monument. The analysis of the results of this database for the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region has produced some surprising results and the first conclusions of this on-going project already allow for some interregional and national comparisons