Brave Belgians

Buffin, Camille, 1871-1928Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.1
Word count
590K words
Chapters
59

Tags

English Originals World HistoryMilitary Military StrategyPortrait GalleryHeroismSpirit of DedicationPatriotismWartime NarrativeDocumentary NarrativeBelgian StoryNational ResistanceWorld War I

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Brave Belgians by Camille BuffinAuthor: Buffin, Camille, 1871-1928,Language: English, Class: D501: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: World War I (1914-1918), Release Date: Dec 21, 2018

Editor's review

This book is a First World War work written in English by the French author Camille Buffin, focusing on Belgium's situation and conduct during the war; it belongs to the history category. For readers who want to understand the First World War from the perspective of a small nation on the Western Front, it offers supplementary material different from the mainstream narratives of Britain, France and Germany. The book is written in English, in a style characteristic of the early twentieth century; its sentence patterns and vocabulary are remote from modern English, and reading it requires some patience. As a free Project Gutenberg e-book, it is easy to obtain and suitable as extended reading or classroom supplementary material on First World War history. Readers are advised to familiarize themselves with the basic background of the violation of Belgian neutrality in the early war before starting the book, which will make it easier to follow. It is better suited to readers with some grounding in history than to general readers looking for an easy story.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read background material on the violation of Belgian neutrality in the early war before starting the text
  2. Take brief notes chapter by chapter, recording characters and events to avoid confusion
  3. Skip unfamiliar early English expressions at first and return to them after finishing a passage

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a historical work? Judging by its classification, it falls under First World War history and is a historical work rather than a fictional novel. Read it as a historical narrative, focusing on Belgium's situation and related events during the war rather than looking for fictional plot.
Can I read this book if my English is not good? The book is in the original English and was written early, with language habits of the early twentieth century, so it makes certain demands on English reading ability. Readers with weak English can first use bilingual background material to learn about Belgium in the First World War, then try the book, or start with relevant Chinese works.
Is this book suitable for understanding the First World War as a whole? It focuses on Belgium specifically and is better as a partial supplement to First World War history than as a comprehensive general history. To build an overall framework, read a general history of the war first, then use this book to add the perspective of a small nation; the two work better together.

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About the author

Buffin, Camille, 1871-1928 Author

Camille Buffin (1871–1928) is the author of Brave Belgians. His life is poorly documented in publicly available sources: his Chinese name, nationality and specific experiences are all absent from our records, and the only confirmed details are his name, dates, a single work and its broad historical setting. Judging from the title and the period in which it appeared, the book concerns Belgium's situation and the experiences of its people during the First World War, and belongs to historical narrative or reportage. Works of this kind usually follow particular people and events, with plain language bearing the marks of their time, focusing on record and communication rather than theoretical analysis. Given the limited material, a full assessment of his style and influence must await further sources; on present information he is known to Chinese readers mainly through this one work, whose value lies chiefly in its presentation of wartime Belgian experience.