The Touring-Club de France: an association at war (1914–1918)

Abstract This article analyses the involvement of the Touring-Club de France, an association promoting open air tourism, in the First World War. While it was hard to remain unaffected given the departure of part of its membership to the Front, it is necessary to delve into the inner workings of the club’s leadership to understand how its initiatives were put together in a nationalist environment which, in a wartime context, favoured the reorientation of the association’s resources towards military and propaganda objectives as well as the spreading of a discourse of hatred towards the enemy. The club’s mode of operation reveals the ‘war culture’ of its leaders, who were representatives of a consenting elite who became involved in the conflict even as they remained at a distance from the fighting. It also illustrates the transformation of methods of peacetime international tourist cooperation by the Touring-Club. Finally, it emphasizes the diversity of the material and mental reconfigurations carried out by French associations during this crisis period.