Eli Jeannin (QMUL), Motherhood Excellence, Excellent Mothers. The Medal of the French Family Between France and Algeria, 1946-1958

What makes someone a good mother? Is it possible to quantify the “quality” of motherhood? For decades, the French state tried to promote a narrative of exceptional French motherhood, to make motherhood and childbirth core parts of French women’s citizenship and patriotic duties. This paper considers the idea of motherhood exceptionalism through the Medal of the French Family, which rewarded French mothers who birthed and raised at least 5 French children with “exceptional dignity”. Building on the work of Sophia Lamri and Hannah Stamler, this paper explores the plurality of meanings of the Medal of the French Family through new material history to uncover what “excellent motherhood” truly represented in France during the postwar years. By dissecting application files submitted by women for this medal across France and Algeria, we will discuss changes in standards of motherhood during the postwar years. By paying close attention to the applicants and the review panels for the Medal of the French Family, as individuals rather than as archetypes of particular social groups, we will uncover what roles colonialism, class, and gender played in French and Algerian mothers’ relationships with national awards and French natality politics.

Zhang Zhen (University of Edinburgh), The State on Display: Friendship Stores and Foreign-Facing Retail in Cold War China, 1958–1991

Established in 1958, Friendship Stores (youyi shangdian) are orthodoxically viewed as special supply outlets catering to foreigners and select groups, such as overseas Chinese or privileged Party cadres. This paper situates this retailing institute within the history of Cold War China (1958–1991) to examine how the state utilized foreign-oriented retail to perform paradiplomatic functions and to mitigate the demands between showcasing commerce to the outside world and managing the domestic supply of scarce goods. Based on Chinese central and local commercial archives and diplomatic logs and corporate documents from the UK and Japan, the article traces their historical evolution from specialized suppliers in the Mao era to participants in urban commercial modernization during the Reform and Opening-up period. It argues that Friendship Stores differed from foreign guest shops (Torgsin and Beryozka) in the Soviet Union which played the role of luxury consumption on the fringes of the planned economy. Instead, Friendship Stores served as micro-level coordinators of state dominated transnational exchange and commerce during the Cold War. They transformed diverse customer groups (i.e. foreign visitors, overseas Chinese, and/or foreign sailors, etc.) into sources of foreign exchange revenue, simultaneously advertising a modern image of socialist China through lavish product displays and high service standards. A particularly notable case is the Guangzhou Friendship Store, which became socialist China’s first modern self-service supermarket in 1981. Thus, a previously elite consumption space has been ultimately evolved into a pioneering testing ground for retail innovation to the mass public in the early Reform stage.