That is, do people put on period costumes/uniforms and re-enact famous battles of the English Civil War? The Irish Civil War? The Spanish Civil War? The Russian Civil War? The Chinese Civil War? The Vietnam War (really a prolonged civil war – with foreign intervention, but that’s not unusual in civil wars)?
Not that I am aware of.
The Russian Civil War wasn’t exactly something that was celebrated. I also don’t know of anyone who re-enacted something like the Napoleonic Wars or the Siege of Leningrad. Those weren’t things to celebrate. Too many people were killed.
I don’t recall anyone re-enacting the Soviet invasion of Budapest when I lived in Hungary. There were still enough people that remembered the actual invasion and it was something to mourn. They told stories of it but more along the lines about how the country got screwed.
I know a Swedish guy who’s obsessed with the civil war, and would do a reenactment if he could. I also know a Canadian (born in Canada to Canadian parents) who planned a visit to Georgia to coencide with a civil war reenactment just so he could participate or watch or something.
So apparently foreigners like the American civil war if that means anything.
There are reenactors for the English civil war. Here is a web page for one group of them:
http://english-civil-war-society.org.uk/www/cms/
If you aren’t limiting yourself to civil wars, there are reenactors for other wars as well, like the Napoleonic wars.
Warning - if you google Napoleonic war reenactors there are a couple of sites near the top of the list with annoying pop-ups and such.
After a brief search though I did find this mention about a Napoleonic reenactment:
I didn’t find anything for Chinese or Irish civil wars, but I did find reenactment groups for the Russian Revolution.
I believe that there are reenactment groups that focus on Roman Legionaries, though I don’t have a cite for that and I don’t believe that they fight mock battles.
There are US Civil War re-enactments in Australia. I’ve seen the odd reference to them now and again in newspapers.
Michael Perry lost his hand during a reenatment of the Battle of Crécy, part of the Hundred Years’ War, which was a civil war of sorts. Does a war game model sculptor who has a passion for reenacting the battles that he likes to design miniatures for losing a hand in one of those reenactments count as irony? It would make for a tough lyric…
Apparently they do. I went googling and found this reenactment for Hadrian’s Wall. For those that aren’t aware, Hadrian’s Wall was a Roman wall that marked the dividing line between the Roman Empire and the rest of the world in northern England.
(Bolding mine) From here:
http://www.hadrians-wall.org/page.aspx//Things-To-See-And-Do/Roman-ReEnactors-on-the-Hadrian's-Wall-Path-National-Trail
For the English civil war (the Cromwell vs Charles 1st one) there’s the Sealed Knotwho re-enact the battles.
Terry Pratchett fans may remember the Discworld’s Peeled Nut society.
Well we don’t in Australia, though that’s mostly due to the lack of a civil war scenario to reenact.
Closest we’d come are the Battle of Vinegar Hill in 1804 and the more well known Eureka Stockade in 1854, both armed engagements were over in around 15 minutes. I’d bet most Australian’s couldn’t tell you the year or date of either. But there is a “dramatic re-enactment” of the Eureka Rebellion at Sovereign Hill, Ballarat every day.
As to countries with more substantial civil conflicts nd then there is always the quick option of looking up Google/Wiki for public domain information
US Civil War reenactors have a big benefit in that they have a large interested base who identify with both sides, not just the winners. Plenty of people who are very enthusiastic on both sides in one geographic location that happens to be the same place the war was fought. WWII reenactors (who do exist, I believe) have it much tougher; they can’t travel en masse to France to meet up with Germans because it’s prohibitively expensive, not to mention that many of the sort of people who’d want to pretend to be Nazis for the weekend aren’t the type you’d want to spend the weekend with.
In the UK there are reenactors for pretty much all periods of military history. As well as the English civil war the Wars of the Roses are pretty popular. Sometimes theere are European get togethers, for example to reenact Agincourt.
Last year I saw a spectacular show based on the first World War.
I know a guy who was planning to participate in a Battle of the Bulge re-enactment in Germany this past January , but he got sick and couldn’t go. We’re US-ians, BTW.
I have fielded with a Legion a couple times; they will fight in a manner of speaking what they call tactical displays - doing the movements and such without actually hurling spears and arrows at each other. I am told that some larger events will have basic weapons competitions and assign value to different troops and treat it like a war game but I haven’t done anything like that myself.
I don’t know what they have online but Smoke and Fire News, in their print edition, will give dates for reenactments of almost every era and from many different countries.
You would be surprised at how easy it is to find Nazi troops in PA or New York to do battle with. Many people in the hobby will have more than one set of uniforms and weapons so they can (as they say in Civil War Reenactments) “galvanize” to another side to make more equal sides. When you want to have events, you do what it takes to make those events as interesting as possible.
I do F&I which is small compared to many other eras. Where I think (but cannot prove) the popularity of Civil War and later wars comes from is the photographic record available. In F&I I need to study paintings and look at various records of supplies ordered and such to develop a “kit”. It can take from a year to years to build a certain character. And then 90% of the time I am going to find a site or another group put there that is going to tell me I have it all wrong.
Starting with the American Civil War I can go right into the photographs and know that what I am building is right to the time the image was shot. That makes it fairly easy. Easy enough that “off the rack” is common in Civil War and still fairly rare in F&I. And for WW I and II original stuff can still be had at affordable prices although the price of Third Reich gear has shot up like a rocket the past 20 years or so. But the “picture wars” beat the “painting wars” hands down as for total numbers of enthusiasts.
So what’s Gettysburg, chopped liver?
French & Indian War?
I haven’t listened in awhile, but I’m partway through a history podcast on the War of the Spanish Succession, and the (British) podcaster went to Belgium, I think, to witness a big reenactment of a battle. He described the participants, and it sounded like they were from all over Europe.
Interesting that some of you mentioned reenactments of the US Civil war outside the US.
Why is the Civil War even a big deal outside the US, let alone big enough that anyone would know about it and re-enact it?
EnglishRussia has had posts regarding various reenactors in Russia; I definitely remember WWII, but there may have been Russian Civil War as well. (The Revolution(s) themselves didn’t really involve battles–as I recall, there were at most occasional riots.) And there was something I recall hearing just recently about American Civil War reenactors in… England?
Here it is: American Civil War in the UK – Why? There’s also a site for the American Civil War Society (UK).
Kyla–hopefully we’re due another Historyzine soon. I’d never even heard of the War of the Spanish Succession, but it’s been quite interesting–just slow.