French History - recent issues

Duchesses and devils: the Breton succession crisis (1148-1189)

Pollock, M. — 2009-05-25

The duchy of Brittany is unusual in its development compared to contemporary polities of the twelfth century. The choice of Conan III to support his daughter Bertha's succession over that of his son, Hoël, just before his death in 1148, tore the traditional concepts of power apart and allowed for a series of counter claims through the female line to dominate ducal politics into the next century. The construct of female authority became a means to an end for male contenders, like Eudo de Porhöet, Conan IV, King Henry II and Henry's son, Geoffrey; however, the very recognition of the rights to succession through Bertha and her granddaughter, Constance, also elevated the role of the duchesses in a series of cross-Channel alliances, thereby placing the duchy itself at the centre of royal intrigue in France and England.

Le povre peuple estoit moult opprime: elite discourses on 'the people' in the Burgundian Netherlands (fourteenth to fifteenth centuries)

Dumolyn, J. — 2009-05-25

This article looks at discourses on ‘the people’, ‘the common man’ and other classifications of the subaltern social groups, produced by Jean Froissart and the Burgundian chroniclers who followed in his footsteps. In contrast to the significant political and economic dynamism attributed to the Flemish burghers in the development of the Burgundian state, these urban groups occupy only a very modest place in this chronicle tradition, while peasants are even less evident. If the lower classes are mentioned at all, it is in the most stereotyped manner. To the political elites of the Burgundian state, the common man was an unknown quantity, despised and feared, powerless to act on his own behalf. The people were considered good Christians when they suffered passively, but portrayed as evil or bestial creatures if they rebelled against authority.

Conflicts of memory: republicanism and the commemoration of the past in modern France

Hazareesingh, S. — 2009-05-25

The question of how State institutions should commemorate the past has generated considerable public controversy. Recent polemics point to the dilemma which political elites have grappled with since the Revolution: what content to give to the nation's ‘civil religion’ and which specific set of historical and ideological values should be collectively celebrated. Since its emergence after 1870, the Republic has sought to create a consensus in France through the sheer power of its commemorative force. Focusing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this article will delve deeper into the complexities of modern republican collective memory. It will be argued that this memory needs to be understood in the context of its dialectical relationship with the memory of the democratic struggles of the French Left after 1871. The article touches on four interrelated themes: first, the ongoing debates about the heuristic value of the memory ‘label’; second, the strengths and dissonances of republican collective memory in the century that followed the French Revolution; third, the tension between republicanism and democracy in France, and how this was played out in the arena of the nation's civil religion in the early decades of the Third Republic; and finally, the continuing reflection of these divisions in contemporary French political culture.

Philanthropies croisees: a joint venture in public health at Lyon (1917-1940)

Saunier, P.-Y., Tournes, L. — 2009-05-25

Since the end of the First World War the Rockefeller Foundation has spearheaded a large-scale programme in the field of education for the health professions (doctors and nurses). In several countries throughout the world, but with its efforts concentrated on Europe, it has financed schools, constructed information networks, granted research scholarships and awarded training bursaries. In so doing it has not, however, been in the business of propagating an irresistible ‘American model’, nor has it pursued a huge undertaking in disinterested aid. Through an attempt to contextualize these programmes, to bring to light the existence of common reference points, to retrace the work with local participants and to appraise cleavages within the philanthropic apparatus, this article proposes a fine-grained reading of the role of the Rockefeller Foundation at the Faculté de Médecine (Faculty of Medicine) and the Ecole d’Infirmières et d’assistantes sociales (Training School for Nurses and Social Workers) in Lyon between 1917- and 1940. It analyses these institutions in terms of the transactions, negotiations and appropriations that highlight their joint-venture character and it identifies their varied impact.

The Marseille police and the German forced labour draft (1943-1944)

Kitson, S. — 2009-05-25

The German forced labour draft of 1943 has long been seen as a major catalyst for the French Resistance. It also clearly helped undermine the Vichy government. But what effect did it have on the police who were expected to implement it? This article demonstrates that it helped damage their relationship with Vichy, police officers engaged in widespread acts of defiance on this issue and it changed the social composition of the police by encouraging many to join the force simply to avoid being drafted. One of the preferred weapons of the police for sabotaging the scheme was theatrical zeal, which was open to misinterpretation.

Who was the author of L'Histoire des desastres de Saint-Domingue, published in Paris in the year III?

Benzaken, J.-C. — 2009-05-25

France and the American Tropics to 1700 * In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670-1730

McLay, K. — 2009-05-25

Les Huguenots dans les iles britanniques de la Renaissance aux Lumieres, Ecrits religieux et representations * Dictionnaire des pasteurs dans la France du XVIIIe siecle

Chaze, E. — 2009-05-25

Memoirs, Hortense Mancini and Marie Mancini

Chaze, E. — 2009-05-25

The Great Nation in Decline: Sex, Modernity and Health Crisis in Revolutionary France c. 1750-1850

Macdonald, J. M. — 2009-05-25

Hospital Politics in Seventeenth-Century France: The Crown, Urban Elites and the Poor

Macdonald, J. M. — 2009-05-25

Sociabilite et politique en milieu rural

Plack, N. — 2009-05-25

Reading Tocqueville: From Oracle to Actor

Armenteros, C. — 2009-05-25

Paris and the Commune 1871-78: The Politics of Forgetting

Rockett, S. — 2009-05-25

France from 1851 to the Present: Universalism in Crisis

Baycroft, T. — 2009-05-25

The Boundaries of the Republic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in France, 1918-1940

Dodds, D. — 2009-05-25

The Lasting War; Society and Identity in Britain, France, and Germany after 1945

Barros, A. — 2009-05-25

Shantytown Kid [Le Gone du Chaaba] * Ethnicity and Equality: France in the Balance

Von Bulow, M. — 2009-05-25

SSFH Society News

2009-05-25

Commerce before crusade? France, the Ottoman Empire and the Barbary pirates (1661-1669)

McCluskey, P. — 2009-02-13

French and Islamic forces clashed with an unprecedented frequency during the first decade of Louis XIV's personal rule. This article examines France's troubled relations with the Ottoman Empire and the Barbary States in the 1660s, with the aim of shedding light on the real motives of Louis XIV in sending his forces against those of the ‘Infidel’. It finds that far from having a single policy towards their Muslim neighbours in the Mediterranean, the French government's behaviour was in fact characterized by chronic inconsistency. In essence, French strategy was driven by the Bourbon government's long-term objective of developing commerce in the eastern and southern Mediterranean, but this programme of commercial expansion was frustrated—and repeatedly jeopardized—by issues of power politics, in particular the king's avid pursuit of prestige and personal gloire.

Vengeance, justice and the reactions in the Revolutionary Midi

Clay, S. — 2009-02-13

This article explores the nature of political conflict, violence and justice in the Midi provençal during the French Revolution. It emphasizes the continuity of conflict between rival factions dividing most communes in the region throughout the Revolutionary decade, conflict that frequently issued in individual and collective violence, most notoriously the prison massacres of the White Terror (or the Reaction, as it was known among contemporaries) at Aix, Tarascon and Marseille in the spring of 1795. These massacres, among the most spectacular expressions of collective vengeance and popular justice in the Revolution, presented the nascent judicial system of the Revolution with some of its greatest challenges in the pursuit and punishment of these crimes, not least because of the political partiality of the judicial authorities. This article further illustrates how the phenomenon of multiple Reactions between warring factions, representing fundamental socio-economic differences and competing visions of the Republic, provides an understanding of the whole Revolutionary process in the region.

Military justice under the Directory: the Armies of Italy and of the Sambre and Meuse

Germani, I. — 2009-02-13

The military justice records of the Armies of Italy and the Sambre and Meuse reveal that, despite their contrasting military fortunes during the campaigns of 1796–97, their experiences were very similar in many respects. The records of the conseils militaires of the year IV (1795–96) and the conseils de guerre of the following year reveal both conditions of service in the two armies and the circumstances and attitudes that regulated the relationship between soldiers and civilians in Italy and Germany. The conseils de guerre, instituted to remedy the perceived laxity of the conseils militaires, operated on similar principles to their much-maligned predecessors. Occasional instances of exemplary severity apart, these conseils frequently mitigated both charges and sentences, reserving the full severity of the law for soldiers who were not present to receive punishment. The councils protected miscreant soldiers more effectively than they did vulnerable civilians, but they nonetheless affirmed, if only in principle, the idea that revolutionary warfare should be contained within legal limits.

Power through Europe? The case of the European Defence Community in France (1950-1954)

Gavin, V. — 2009-02-13

This paper analyses how the European Defence Community (EDC) project sparked off an internal debate inside the French government, foreign ministry and military concerning the country's position in the world. The conclusion that the outcome of the EDC would signify a reduction, rather than an increase, in French power, led Paris to reject a project that it had itself launched four years previously. Though the EDC created great tensions in public, the private debates in the corridors of power can, today, shed more light on the connection that Paris established between European integration and the exercise of the country's power abroad. According to classic historiographical analyses, the French were genuinely committed to creating an integrated Europe in the early 1950s. This article aligns itself with the opposite thesis defended by the British historian Alan Milward, according to which the aim of France's European integration project was, from its very start, to strengthen the nation state, not to substitute it with a federal European structure.1

'We've never had a voice': memory construction and the children of the harkis (1962-1991)

Eldridge, C. — 2009-02-13

When riots broke out in the Bias Camp east of Bordeaux in May 1975, few in France had heard of the harkis, the Algerian auxiliaries who fought for the French during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). This began to change, however, as the rapidly spreading protests instigated by their children garnered increasing media coverage. Seeking to end their status as les oubliés de l'histoire, the children of the harkis sought recognition for the history of their parents, particularly the sacrifices they had made for France and the suffering endured as a consequence. What is particularly interesting about this campaign is that the children of the harkis were not alone in this desire and in fact were relative latecomers to the harki activist scene. The years since the end of the Algerian War had witnessed a range of representations offered by a series of self-appointed spokespersons who, in the absence of direct testimony from within the harki community, and often serving their own objectives, took it upon themselves to speak on behalf of the harkis. This article seeks to analyse the relationship between these external narratives, put forward by actors including the Algerian and French governments, the former Muslim elite of colonial Algeria, French veterans and the pied-noir community and those offered by the children of the harkis in order to illustrate some of the issues pertaining to the mobilization and transmission of France's colonial past in a postcolonial context.

Forty years on: French writing on 1968 in 2008

Gildea, R. — 2009-02-13

Henry II. New Interpretations

Weiler, B. — 2009-02-13

The Ancient Enemy. England, France and Europe from the Angevins to the Tudors

Power, D. — 2009-02-13

La Reforme en France et en Italie: contacts, comparaisons et contrastes

Racaut, L. — 2009-02-13

Law, City and King: Legal Culture, Municipal Politics, and State Formation in Early Modern Dijon

Mclay, K. A. J. — 2009-02-13

Representation et pouvoir: La politique symbolique en France (1789-1830)

Takeda, J. T. — 2009-02-13

Le Dix-huit brumaire: L'epilogue de la Revolution francaise

Doyle, W. — 2009-02-13

The Melodramatic Thread: Spectacle and Political Culture in Modern France

Smyth, J. — 2009-02-13

Ecrire, calculer, classer. Comment une revolution de papier a transforme les societes contemporaines (1800-1940)

O'brien, L. — 2009-02-13

The Stonemasons of Creuse in Nineteenth-Century Paris

Todd, D. — 2009-02-13

Les Juifs de France sous la Monarchie de Juillet

Davies, H. — 2009-02-13

La Bourgogne et ses vins: image d'origine controlee

Baycroft, T. — 2009-02-13

Prisoners of Want. The Experience and Protest of the Unemployed in France, 1921-1945

Carrol, A. — 2009-02-13

Reconciling France Against Democracy: The Croix de Feu and the Parti Social Francais, 1927-1945

Millington, C. — 2009-02-13

French-American Relations: Remembering D-Day after September 11

Imlay, T. — 2009-02-13

Annual Conference Trinity College Dublin 29-30 June 2009

2009-02-13

SSFH SOCIETY NEWS

Plack, N. — 2009-02-13

Divided memories? Historical calendars, commemorative processions and the recollection of the Wars of Religion during the ancien regime

Benedict, P. — 2008-11-17

In the centuries that followed the Edict of Nantes, a number of texts and rituals preserved partisan historical recollections of episodes from the Wars of Religion. One important Huguenot ‘site of memory’ was the historical calendar. The calendars published between 1590 and 1685 displayed a particular concern with the Wars of Religion, recalling events that illustrated Protestant victimization and Catholic sedition. One important Catholic site of memory was the commemorative procession. Ten or more cities staged annual processions throughout the ancien régime thanking God for delivering them from the violent, sacrilegious Huguenots during the civil wars.

The princesse de Conde at the head of the Fronde des Princes: modern Amazon or femme pretexte?

Vergnes, S. — 2008-11-17

We are accustomed to the contrast drawn between the flamboyant Amazons de la Fronde—the duchesses de Montpensier, Longueville and Chevreuse–and other, duller, women, who seem to have simply acted as foils for the factions which they represented. The princesse de Condé is very often included in the latter category. However, a careful scrutiny of the texts produced on and about her involvement in the Fronde des Princes, from April to October 1650, proves that she was not simply a femme prétexte, or puppet, in the hands of those who headed the struggle for the liberation of the princes. As events transpired, she slipped out of the Amazon costume in which she had been decked out and forged a public persona for herself that was less conventional, more complex and closer to her own personality. With steely pragmatism the princess alternated, as the situation required, references to the highly aristocratic Amazon and those appealing to more popular images, such as the feeble woman in search of protection or the merciful Virgin.

Louis XVI's chapel and the French Revolution (1789-1792)

Caiani, A. A. — 2008-11-17

The close association of Christianity with the late Bourbon monarchy's style of governance has often been interpreted as a burdensome legacy, which impacted greatly on the period preceding the French Revolution. In recent years, historians have referred to the ideological, juridical and intellectual assaults on the religious foundations of the French crown, throughout the eighteenth century, either as a process of ‘desacralization’ or as the religious origins of the French Revolution. This article, though inspired by this school of thought, takes a different approach by examining the less well-known ceremonial and ritual components of this form of kingship, with particular reference to the king's chapel. Louis XVI's ecclesiastical household was both the centre of royal patronage for the Gallican Church and the chief regulatory authority of the monarch's personal religious devotion. Its actions, transformation and fate during the Revolution are instructive in two ways. First, its survival during the first three years of the revolutionary troubles highlights its fundamental and constraining influence over the French monarchy. Secondly, the gradual, though determined, effort to undermine the pact between throne and altar that it represented exemplifies a lesser known aspect of the national deputies’ anticlerical agenda.

'Il ne faut pas etre le roi de deux peuples': strategies of national reconciliation in Restoration France

Frederking, B. — 2008-11-17

On 4 June 1814, Louis XVIII, recently restored to the throne of France, promulgated the Constitutional Charter, a royal gift (‘octroi’) ratifying the major achievements of the French Revolution. The monarchy had to resolve a crucial problem: how, after the divisions of the revolutionary and imperial years, could the reconciliation of the ‘deux France’ be realized so as to create a stable foundation for the regime? This article analyses different strategies for national reconciliation in the light of the crisis of legitimacy and representation faced by the restored monarchy: not only amnesty, oubli (forgetting), pardon, commemoration and its religious version, expiation, but also the punishment of coupables (culprits) and attempts at integration. It will also examine the reactions provoked by these contradictory, often mutually exclusive strategies, as well as evaluating their success and their contribution to either strengthening or weakening the restored monarchy.

'How many Frenchmen did you kill?' British bombing policy towards France (1940-1945)

Dodd, L., Knapp, A. — 2008-11-17

The Allied bombing of France between 1940 and 1945 has received comparatively little attention from historians, although the civilian death toll, at about 60,000, was comparable to that of German raids on the UK. This article considers how Allied, and particularly British, bombing policy towards France was developed, what its objectives were and how French concerns about attacks on their territory were (or were not) addressed. It argues that while British policymakers were sensitive to the delicate political implications of attacking France, perceived military necessities tended to trump political misgivings; that Vichy, before November 1942, was a stronger constraint on Allied bombing than the Free French at any time and that the bombing programme largely escaped political control from May 1944.

Un roman bourgeois sous Louis XIV. Recits de vies marchandes et mobilite social: les itineraires des Homassel

Brunelle, G. K. — 2008-11-17

Une histoire de l'identite: France, 1715-1815.

Caradonna, J. L. — 2008-11-17

Commemorating the Dead in Revolutionary France: Revolution and Remembrance, 1789-1799

Jones, P. M. — 2008-11-17

A Paris sous la Revolution. Nouvelles approaches de la ville

Jones, C. — 2008-11-17

Napoleon's Sorcerers: The Sophesians

Baycroft, T. — 2008-11-17

France after Revolution. Urban Life, Gender, and the New Social Order

Francois, P. — 2008-11-17

Brittany 1750-1950. The Invisible Nation. * Brittany. A Concise History

Carrol, A. — 2008-11-17

Napoleon III: un Saint-Simon a cheval.

Guyver, C. — 2008-11-17

Reconciling France Against Democracy: The Croix de Feu and the Parti Social Francais, 1927-1945

Millington, C. — 2008-11-17

The French Educator Celestin Freinet (1896-1966). An Inquiry into How His Ideas Shaped Education

Divanna, I. — 2008-11-17

SSFH Society News

2008-11-17