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Origins of Historical Re-enactment

"Modern" historical reenactment originated in the United States and England.

 

In 1876 survivors of General Custer's 7th Cavalry returned to the scene of the Battle of the Little Big Horn in Montana to reenact a battle that had taken place earlier that year. Some photographers immortalized this first reenactment role-play. Some years later, in 1895, a hundred or so members of the Gloucestershire Engineer Volunteers staged the epic defense of the British troops in Rorkes Drift (Natal, South Africa) against Zulu warriors. Soon, various battles of the American Civil War (1861-1865) began to be periodically recreated in the United States.

 

Reenactments of famous battles soon spread first to Britain and later to mainland Europe, especially Great Britain, Germany and the Netherlands. In these countries Napoleonic wars were the first to be recreated. However, reenactments soon widened -their scope going back and forth in time- including the First and Second World Wars, the Middle Ages and the Ancient Period.

 

A fully detailed explanation of the origins of historical reenactment can be found at www.eventplan.co.uk/history_of_reenactment.

 

Very soon, reenactment displays added in civil and religious themes, which offered new educational and cultural possibilities, despite being less spectacular than military performances. This, in turn, allowed women and children to take part in reenactment events.

 

Throughout the 1980s, historical reenactment settled in Southern European Countries, Catalonia among them. Numerous groups have flourished in Catalonia. They have few resources but are plentiful of desire, thrust and wish to carry out a very important task: to spread and make known Catalonia's history to the most uninformed: Catalans themselves.