What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire and the Time of a Deadly Emotion

Until recently, the concept of nostalgia has been the purview of scholars of literature or sociology. Historians have paid it scant attention, usually relegating it to the wistful, hence less unreliable, spectrum of memory. In this meticulously researched work, Dodman argues that the refusal to take nostalgia seriously as a historical category allows its persistence as an ahistorical, universal feeling that overlooks the significant societal role that it plays. He sets out to prove that as a phenomenon grounded in everyday practices, it should be accepted as a viable source for understanding sociological or political developments at any given time. He traces its unusual trajectory from clinical disease, causing some patients to sicken and die, to an emotion that was mobilized to abet settlement in colonial Algeria. This trajectory, he argues, makes it a useful historical concept in understanding how nostalgic sensibilities developed in relation to monumental historical change, notably...