ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an international perspective on remembering the First World War. It assesses some of the differing national contexts in which remembrance has been shaped and investigates the impact of the two global events that have prompted intensive efforts at re-conceiving the First World War for contemporary purposes: the Second World War and the denouement of the Cold War. The last quarter-century since 1989 has seen an international surge of interest in the Great War and those who fought in it, and this requires explanation. While persistent, the processes of remembrance have not been uniform either in intensity or trajectory. The afterlife of the Great War over the course of the twentieth century has been a tale of continued reshaping, in light of the preoccupations of those who returned to 1914-18, to find meaning in and for their own time and place.
