French History - recent issues

Officiers 'moyens' and absolute monarchy in France, from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries: a provincial case study in social and political disillusion

Meyzie, V. — 2008-06-11

The links between royal servants at the intermediate level and the absolute monarchy, notably in the pays d’élections, remain neglected in work which regards relations between the provincial elites and the royal State as prime examples of social collaboration. By studying the case of the magistrature seconde (second-rank magistrature) in the Limousin and Périgord, this article demonstrates the advantages of applying this historiographical approach to the increasing disillusion of officiers ‘moyens’ de justice (those in non-ennobling offices) towards the central power during the early modern period. The intensive venal policy adopted in the latter half of the reign of Louis XIV weakened both the economics of the office ‘moyen’ (‘middling’ office) and the confidence that judges in the présidial courts placed in the monarchy. In the mid-eighteenth century, the magistrature in these secondary jurisdictions experienced a profound and widespread crisis. The campaign mobilized in the présidial seats in the1750s and 1760s emphasized the need for a redefinition of their collaboration with the monarchy, with a major demand for the gradual ennoblement of those holding offices ‘moyens’ de justice.

The king and his generals: the military correspondence of Louis XIV in 1696

Sarmant, T., Waksman, P. — 2008-06-11

From 1691 until 1712 Louis XIV corresponded directly with the generals in command of his armies. This correspondence, conserved in the army archives at Vincennes, is almost entirely unpublished. A critical edition is underway, and we already have the transcription of the letters written by the king in 1696. Reading these missives brings to light a very different sun-king from the one we know from official propaganda or from historical memory: a cautious and scrupulous prince, slow to action, more a leader of the general staff than a war leader. What we take away from the study of the monarch's military correspondence is, in fact, nothing less than a fresh understanding of the ‘stratégie de cabinet’—the direction of the French armies from Versailles.

Ancient warriors on modern soil: French military reform and American military images in eighteenth-century France

Osman, J. — 2008-06-11

The American Revolution made idealized characteristics of ancient militaries seem like actual possibilities in France. Roger Chartier recognized that a change occurred in French thinking that had made certain revolutionary ideas ‘conceivable’ by 1789. When French adulation of ancient militaries intermingled with the reports of the early American Revolution, against a backdrop of the urgent need for French military reform, the abstract met the concrete, and the idealized characteristics of effective ancient militaries become practical possibilities. In addition to the potential for a more disciplined, patriotic army reminiscent of the Greeks and Romans, press representations of the American army and militia further introduced more concrete ideas about republican government and a more merit-based society. To old regime France, these ideas were revolutionary indeed. French perceptions of the American military gave new power to old ideas; through the lens of ‘classical republican discourse’ French commentators began to visualize a future revolution.

How to make a revolution without firing a shot: thoughts on the Brissot-Chastellux polemic (1786-1788)

Harsanyi, D. P. — 2008-06-11

This article proposes an examination of Jacques-Pierre Brissot's rebuttal of the marquis de Chastellux's writings on America in the context of Brissot's activities at the Gallo-American Society, themselves part of a larger plan to stimulate changes within French society. Brissot employed the trope of America to prepare the reading public for his own ambitious political agenda of revolution by means of domestic and international commerce. I hasten to mention that this article will in no way reopen the ‘Darnton debate’ which turned Brissot into a byword for ‘Grub Street’ politics of resentment. Robert Darnton's brilliant essay on Brissot, as a case study on the dynamics of the High/Low Enlightenment, remains as riveting now as it was at the time of its publication. The present article, however, seeks to sidestep the Darnton debate altogether and focus instead on the clash of ideas occasioned by Brissot's angry open letter to Chastellux.

Cenotaphs and cypress trees: commemorating the citizen-soldier in the Year II

Clarke, J. — 2008-06-11

Much of the scholarship on commemoration and collective memory has identified World War I as the decisive event in the making of ‘modern memory’ in Western Europe. However, this article contends that many of the cultural practices that historians have singled out as specific to the twentieth century, the commemoration of the common soldier, the erection of monuments aux morts inscribed with the names of the dead and the honouring of unknown soldiers, had already emerged during the Revolutionary wars of the 1790s, and more particularly, during the Revolution's most ‘democratic’ phase, the Terror. By examining the evolution of these commemorative practices within the Jacobin club network in 1793 and 1794, this essay explores the interaction between the Revolutionary politics of mass mobilization and the customary culture of commemoration and argues that the ‘modern’ culture of memory may not be quite as modern as historians assume.

Redefining Female Religious Life: French Ursulines and English Ladies in Seventeenth-Century Catholicism

Richards, P. — 2008-06-11

The Perilous Crown: France between Revolutions 1814-1848

Guyver, C. — 2008-06-11

Les prefets de Gambetta

Crook, M. — 2008-06-11

Soldiers as Police. The French and Prussian Armies and the Policing of Popular Protest, 1889-1914

Lawrence, P. — 2008-06-11

Paris and the Right in the Twentieth Century

Wright, J. — 2008-06-11

The Hunt for Nazi Spies. Fighting Espionage in Vichy France

Moore, B. — 2008-06-11

We Only Know Men. The Rescue of Jews in France during the Holocaust.

Moore, B. — 2008-06-11

SSFH SOCIETY NEWS

2008-06-11

EDITORIAL

Crook, M. — 2008-02-21

Drama societies in the French Revolution: from Jacobin enthusiasts to royalist amateurs

Bourdin, P. — 2008-02-21

During the French Revolution the network of Jacobin clubs was to an extent mirrored by the existence of drama societies. Encouraged by the militants who took part in them and by the government of the Year II, they knew how to stage patriotic theatre. They competed with the professional companies and reproduced their regulations concerning morality and charity, the individual sanctions on unmotivated artists and control over repertory by the municipalities. These formal measures were not necessarily a proof of quality, but members of their audiences were indulgent since they were used to amateur theatre and because they approved of the ideas being represented. Nevertheless, drama societies were the victims of political purges and, in the Year IV, these theatres of propaganda were taken over by moderates and royalists, a development which led to their closure by the Directory.

French Republicans and the suffrage: the birth of the doctrine of false consciousness

Gunn, J.A.W. — 2008-02-21

Paradoxically, the suffrage of the French Second Republic endorsed outcomes that were anathema to its republican authors. There thus arose the formula that the Republic could not be threatened by an electoral outcome however conservative that might be. A related aspect of the defence of the Republic fixed blame on an unsophisticated electorate—and specifically the peasant voter—that was too readily imposed upon by forces of reaction. Here, one finds the essentials of the doctrine relating to the misreading of class interests later called false consciousness. These ideas formed the most characteristic political theories of the period and were revived with the coming of the Third Republic. The constitutional entrenchment of the Republic, in 1884, ended the debate. The tension between republicanism and the democracy sought by universal suffrage is a chapter in French political thought now little noted in scholarship, whereas the events referred to here are reasonably familiar. An investigation of the intellectual debate surrounding universal suffrage reveals a surprisingly neglected aspect of nineteenth-century republican ideas.

Punishing the mad bomber: questions of moral responsibility in the trials of French anarchist terrorists, 1886-1897

Erickson, E. J. — 2008-02-21

In late nineteenth-century France, several criminologists maintained that the perpetrators of the contemporary wave of anarchist terrorism were victims of mental disorders who deserved judicial leniency. French courts did not accept this theory, but instead declared the principal terrorists sane and fully responsible for their crimes and, based on this view, handed down severe sentences. Many criminologists accused the jurists of deliberately ignoring the mental illness of the anarchists because of government and public pressures to impose the death penalty, but evidence from the anarchist trials fails to support this charge. The controversy highlights the conflicts between the judicial establishment and the emerging discipline of criminology, whose pathological explanations of anarchist terrorism reflected a positivist attack on the traditional concepts of free will and moral responsibility, concepts the jurists viewed as fundamental to the legal system.

'Un rire nouveau': Action Francaise and the art of political satire

Wardhaugh, J. — 2008-02-21

Action Française was one of the most notorious political movements of the Third Republic, and its intellectual influence is widely recognized. Yet the theatre of Action Française remains almost unknown. Based on hitherto neglected archives, this article reveals the close relationship between the plays and revues of Action Française and its literary and political ambitions. First, it examines Maurice Pujo's theory of counter-revolutionary theatre and his intention to provoke a ‘new laugh’ at the Republic through the development of political satire on the classical model. Secondly, it analyses the 1907 production of Pujo's Les Nuées (modelled on Aristophanes’ The Clouds) and the subsequent development of musical revues by the Camelots du Roi. Finally, it discusses the significance of this political theatre and suggests its potential to shed light on a social and cultural life that has hitherto remained behind the scenes.

The informer, the lover and the gift giver: female collaborators in Pau 1940-1946

Ott, S. — 2008-02-21

In July 1940 the Armistice Commission sent a German delegation to Pau in south-western France. The delegation included André Müller, a Nazi who also worked for the German Security Police. Müller's twenty-nine letters to a female collaborator, alongside the testimonies of those who knew the two friends, provide an unusual opportunity to recapture a sense of day-to-day relations between the occupied and occupiers. The Nazi officer's letters reveal his reflections on the war, his hopes and, above all, his material needs. The cycle of epistolary exchange that linked the two friends entailed a unidirectional flow of gifts from the female collaborator to Müller. The letters, goods and services they exchanged raise important questions about the location of power, indebtedness and gratitude in Franco-German partnerships; they also provide an opportunity to test assumptions about the inequality of such relationships in occupied France. The court testimonies in Pau also offer rare insights into female involvement in collaborationist movements, which were primarily a male sphere of activity and influence.

Six Hundred Years of Reform. Bishops and the French Church, 1190-1789

Aston, N. — 2008-02-21

Captive Histories: English, French and Native Narratives of the 1704 Deerfield Raid

Marsh, B. — 2008-02-21

Talleyrand: Betrayer and Saviour of France

Pilbeam, P. — 2008-02-21

Napoleon: Symbol for an Age. A Brief History with Documents

Crook, M. — 2008-02-21

La France des annees 1830 et l'esprit de reforme. Actes du colloque de Rennes (6-7 octobre 2005) organise par le CRHISCO (Rennes 2-CNRS) et le Centre d'histoire du XIXe siecle (Paris I-Paris IV)

Francois, P. — 2008-02-21

Alexis de Tocqueville: Prophet of Democracy in the Age of Revolution

Guyver, C. — 2008-02-21

SSFH SOCIETY NEWS

2008-02-21

Eugen Weber (1924 2007)

Gildea, R. — 2007-11-27

France's Grotian moment? Hugo Grotius and Cardinal Richelieu's commercial statecraft

Thomson, E. — 2007-11-27

Cardinal Richelieu's commercial projects have long been seen as a part of his early efforts to reform the French state. This paper argues that Richelieu's commercial activity can more profitably be viewed in the context of his thinking about relations between France and its neighbours and of a pan-European movement to reconsider the connections among commerce, governance and sovereignty spawned by the Dutch war with Spain. Specifically, it examines Richelieu's relations with the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius. In 1626 the cardinal attempted to hire Grotius as a commercial expert, consulting with him on several occasions. Although Grotius declined, the cardinal was deeply influenced by Grotius’ arguments about the freedom of commerce and trade. Richelieu adapted these arguments to suit French needs and his own Catholic vision of the state.

Not a right but a public function: the debate in the French National Assembly over the 1872 law on jury formation

Donovan, J. M. — 2007-11-27

Because of the highly politicized nature of the French judicial system in the nineteenth century, laws governing the selection of jurors were often the subject of strong political debate. There were repeated controversies over which citizens should be jurors and which authorities should draw up the annual jury lists from which the trial panels were drawn. Perhaps no event better reflected the nature of the controversy than the debate which occurred in the National Assembly in 1872, when the conservative government proposed an act which gave the judiciary power to revise the annual jury lists drawn up by elected officials. However, liberal deputies opposed the act because they maintained it gave too much power to a conservative judiciary in determining which citizens should be jurors. The debate in fact went to the heart of the nineteenth-century struggle between the Right and Left.

The Virgin with the sword: Marian apparitions, religion and national identity in Alsace in the 1870s

Klein, D. — 2007-11-27

French public attitudes towards the prospect of war in 1938 1939: 'pacifism' or 'war anxiety'?

Hucker, D. — 2007-11-27

This article challenges the received wisdom that French public opinion was infused with pacifist sentiment during the 1930s and that this sentiment in turn contributed to the French defeat of 1940. It will suggest that French public attitudes towards the prospect of war can be better defined as ‘war anxiety’ rather than the value-laden term ‘pacifism’. Taking as a test case the period between the Munich Agreement of September 1938 and the outbreak of the Second World War less than a year later, the article will tease out the necessary distinction between ‘pacifism’ and war anxiety. By employing a notion of ‘representations’ of public opinion, it will be shown how French opinion was demonstrably less pacifist than many existing analyses assume. Instead, it will be contended that the public's anxieties with regard to a future war manifested themselves in a variety of ways, of which pacifism was merely one example. Indeed, war anxiety increasingly demanded that France prepare for an inevitable conflict, in stark contrast to simply retreating into a defeatist mindset. War anxiety was far from being a contributing factor in the defeat of 1940.

The State and the Left in modern France

Wright, J. — 2007-11-27

French historians have recently begun to pursue the history of left-wing politics in a manner which suggests that the Marxist frame of reference has begun to disappear, even in this field of history. The eminent historian and public intellectual Pierre Rosanvallon is leading the way in the field of political and intellectual history, through his sustained examination of the State and the ongoing debate about French democracy. The connection between history and current political discourse is important, and it is significant that historians are attempting to revise common perceptions of the evolution of French political institutions. Wide areas of new research have been opened out and this article hopes to offer some reflections on how these new approaches to French political history may be used in future research.

Joan of Arc. La Pucelle

King, A. — 2007-11-27

Blood and Violence in Early Modern France

Racaut, L. — 2007-11-27

La Varenne's Cookery: The French Cook; the French Pastry Chef; the French Confectioner

Oliver, F. — 2007-11-27

Saint-Evremond: A Voice from Exile: Newly Discovered Letters to Madame de Gouville and the Abbe de Hautefeuille

Richards, P. — 2007-11-27

The Bellicose Dove: Claude Brousson and Protestant Resistance to Louis XIV, 1647 1698

Bryant, M. — 2007-11-27

Tragedy Walks the Streets. The French Revolution in the Making of Modern Drama

Astbury, K. — 2007-11-27

The Path Not Taken. French Industrialization in the Age of Revolution 1750 1830

Pilbeam, P. — 2007-11-27

An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880 1914

Eldridge, C. — 2007-11-27

Policing Paris. The Origins of Modern Immigration Control between the Wars

Burgess, G. — 2007-11-27

A History of the French Senate, vol. 1: The Third Republic, 1870 1940 and vol. 2: The Fourth and Fifth Republics, 1946 2004

Taithe, B. — 2007-11-27