Routledge Studies in the Modern History of France – serie

Edmond Fleg and Jewish Minority Culture in Twentieth-Century France, the first critical biography of the leading French writer Edmond Fleg (1874–1963), explores his role in forging a modern French Jewish identity before and after the Second World War.Through his writings – plays, novels, poems, and essays based on Jewish and Christian texts – Fleg fashioned a minority identity within the context of French Third Republic universalism. At the heart of his work we find a radical ecumenism, a rejection of exclusive and homogenous nationalism, and a deep understanding of the necessity of supporting vibrant minority subcultures within the context of a liberal democratic republic. This account is both individual and social, pointing to the ways in which Fleg acted within the possibilities and constraints of his milieu and used his writing to engage with and shape the discursive fabric of twentieth-century French culture.This book appeals to a number of scholarly audiences, including historians and literary critics who work on modern France and Jewish and religious studies and those who focus on issues of identity and difference, as well as a more general audience interested in Modern France and/or modern Jewish history.

Historians, since the 1960s, argue that the French economy performed as well as did any economy in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries thanks to the opportunities for profit available on the market, especially the large consumer market in Paris. Whatever economic weaknesses existed did not stem from the social structure but from exogenous forces such as wars, the lack of natural resources or slow demographic growth. This book challenges the foregoing consensus by showing that the French economy performed poorly relative to its rivals because of noncapitalist social relations. Specifically, peasants and artisans controlled lands and workshops in autonomous communities and did not have to improve labor productivity to survive. Merchants and manufacturers cornered markets instead of being subject to the market’s competitive imperatives. Thus, distinctive features of capitalism—primitive accumulation (the dispossession of peasants and artisans) and the competitive obligation faced by merchants and manufacturers to reinvest profits in order to keep the profits—did not prevail until the state imposed them in a process lasting for a century after the 1850s. For this reason, it was not until the 1960s that France caught up to (and in some cases surpassed) its economic rivals.

Historians, since the 1960s, argue that the French economy performed as well as did any economy in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries thanks to the opportunities for profit available on the market, especially the large consumer market in Paris. Whatever economic weaknesses existed did not stem from the social structure but from exogenous forces such as wars, the lack of natural resources or slow demographic growth. This book challenges the foregoing consensus by showing that the French economy performed poorly relative to its rivals because of noncapitalist social relations. Specifically, peasants and artisans controlled lands and workshops in autonomous communities and did not have to improve labor productivity to survive. Merchants and manufacturers cornered markets instead of being subject to the market’s competitive imperatives. Thus, distinctive features of capitalism—primitive accumulation (the dispossession of peasants and artisans) and the competitive obligation faced by merchants and manufacturers to reinvest profits in order to keep the profits—did not prevail until the state imposed them in a process lasting for a century after the 1850s. For this reason, it was not until the 1960s that France caught up to (and in some cases surpassed) its economic rivals.

The collapse of the French army in 1940 is a well-researched topic in Second World War Studies but a surprising gap in the historiography emerges when it comes to the study of the French military prior to the German offensive of May 1940.Using various public and private sources in different languages, this book aims to address this gap by studying morale on the frontline and its management by the French Government, the Grand Quartier Général, at the scale of the regiment and on a personal level. This research also investigates German and British propaganda in French and aimed at the French sector of the frontline in order to offer the first comprehensive comparative study of French army morale in any language.

Edmond Fleg and Jewish Minority Culture in Twentieth-Century France, the first critical biography of the leading French writer Edmond Fleg (1874–1963), explores his role in forging a modern French Jewish identity before and after the Second World War.Through his writings – plays, novels, poems, and essays based on Jewish and Christian texts – Fleg fashioned a minority identity within the context of French Third Republic universalism. At the heart of his work we find a radical ecumenism, a rejection of exclusive and homogenous nationalism, and a deep understanding of the necessity of supporting vibrant minority subcultures within the context of a liberal democratic republic. This account is both individual and social, pointing to the ways in which Fleg acted within the possibilities and constraints of his milieu and used his writing to engage with and shape the discursive fabric of twentieth-century French culture.This book appeals to a number of scholarly audiences, including historians and literary critics who work on modern France and Jewish and religious studies and those who focus on issues of identity and difference, as well as a more general audience interested in Modern France and/or modern Jewish history.

Over the course of the 19th century, European societies started thinking of themselves as “civilisations of work.” In the wake of the political and industrial revolutions, labour as a human activity and condition gradually came to embody a general principle of order, progress, and governance. How did work become so central to our systems of citizenship and social recognition?The book addresses this question by considering the French context in the long transition between the 1789 and 1848 revolutions and focusing on a specific “fragment” of history in the early 1830s marked by a pandemic crisis and the first consequences of industrialisation. It combines the analysis of both political institutions and social movements to retrace the rise of a labour-based social contract revolving around the “citizen-worker” as the quintessential subject of rights.The first part of the book highlights the role played by the genesis of the modern social sciences and analyses it as a political process that established work as an “object” of governance and scientific investigation, thus fostering pioneering measures of welfare centred on work conditions. The second part focuses on the emergence of the concept of “working class” and the modern labour movement, which structured the world of work as a collective political “subject.”Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Over the course of the 19th century, European societies started thinking of themselves as “civilisations of work.” In the wake of the political and industrial revolutions, labour as a human activity and condition gradually came to embody a general principle of order, progress, and governance. How did work become so central to our systems of citizenship and social recognition?The book addresses this question by considering the French context in the long transition between the 1789 and 1848 revolutions and focusing on a specific “fragment” of history in the early 1830s marked by a pandemic crisis and the first consequences of industrialisation. It combines the analysis of both political institutions and social movements to retrace the rise of a labour-based social contract revolving around the “citizen-worker” as the quintessential subject of rights.The first part of the book highlights the role played by the genesis of the modern social sciences and analyses it as a political process that established work as an “object” of governance and scientific investigation, thus fostering pioneering measures of welfare centred on work conditions. The second part focuses on the emergence of the concept of “working class” and the modern labour movement, which structured the world of work as a collective political “subject.”Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 has traditionally been seen as a limited conflict between French and German forces. This edited volume challenges this view and shows that it was a war of ideas, values, and perceptions, which transformed the political, diplomatic, and military culture across Europe.Based on interdisciplinary research, the book suggests that the war raised new questions about power, the nation, violence, and notions of civilization, which brought about a decisive shift in how warfare was experienced and perceived. While the Franco-Prussian War may have begun as a traditional dynastic struggle, it became a modern war and an important precursor to the First World War in its use of new weaponry and industrialized warfare. At the same time, the development of humanitarian movements and international law on the conduct of war meant that the fighting was subjected to unprecedented scrutiny, while new technologies accelerated the pace at which narratives about the war were constructed and consumed.This volume will appeal to scholars in the fields of war studies, international relations and diplomacy, and intellectual and cultural history. It will also be a useful addition to undergraduate and postgraduate courses on nineteenth-century European history and cultural studies.

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 has traditionally been seen as a limited conflict between French and German forces. This edited volume challenges this view and shows that it was a war of ideas, values, and perceptions, which transformed the political, diplomatic, and military culture across Europe.Based on interdisciplinary research, the book suggests that the war raised new questions about power, the nation, violence, and notions of civilization, which brought about a decisive shift in how warfare was experienced and perceived. While the Franco-Prussian War may have begun as a traditional dynastic struggle, it became a modern war and an important precursor to the First World War in its use of new weaponry and industrialized warfare. At the same time, the development of humanitarian movements and international law on the conduct of war meant that the fighting was subjected to unprecedented scrutiny, while new technologies accelerated the pace at which narratives about the war were constructed and consumed.This volume will appeal to scholars in the fields of war studies, international relations and diplomacy, and intellectual and cultural history. It will also be a useful addition to undergraduate and postgraduate courses on nineteenth-century European history and cultural studies.

Repeating Revolutions examines how activists, intellectuals, social scientists, and historians looked to France’s Revolutionary past to negotiate Algeria’s struggle for decolonization from the 1930s to the 1960s.The French Empire justified their claims over Algeria in part through messages of universal progress marked by the political visions tied to the French Revolution. Supporters of Algerian independence confronted those historical claims by identifying the Algerian cause with the French Revolution and by highlighting the apparent contradictions between the history of 1789 and imperial rule. Far-right activists, meanwhile, saw the movement to decolonize Algeria as another manifestation of the revolutionary disorder stemming from the French Revolution. Behind these analogies lay broader changes in the study of North African society and contemporary political relevance of the French Revolution. The focus on analogies to the French Revolution puts different sets of actors in conversation with one another and offers a fresh take on how people’s experiences and expectations changed throughout the Algerian War.This book will appeal to readers interested in the intellectual history of decolonization, the historiography of the French Revolution, the historiography of North African studies, and questions of historical comparison and conceptual change.The introduction of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Repeating Revolutions examines how activists, intellectuals, social scientists, and historians looked to France’s Revolutionary past to negotiate Algeria’s struggle for decolonization from the 1930s to the 1960s.The French Empire justified their claims over Algeria in part through messages of universal progress marked by the political visions tied to the French Revolution. Supporters of Algerian independence confronted those historical claims by identifying the Algerian cause with the French Revolution and by highlighting the apparent contradictions between the history of 1789 and imperial rule. Far-right activists, meanwhile, saw the movement to decolonize Algeria as another manifestation of the revolutionary disorder stemming from the French Revolution. Behind these analogies lay broader changes in the study of North African society and contemporary political relevance of the French Revolution. The focus on analogies to the French Revolution puts different sets of actors in conversation with one another and offers a fresh take on how people’s experiences and expectations changed throughout the Algerian War.This book will appeal to readers interested in the intellectual history of decolonization, the historiography of the French Revolution, the historiography of North African studies, and questions of historical comparison and conceptual change.The introduction of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This innovative exploration of Jewish experiences in France and the Francophone world through nuanced questions and representations offers an intertwining of perspectives that challenge geographical, chronological, and theoretical boundaries.Engaging the transnational, it brings together studies highlighting the importance of migration, diaspora, identity, and empire for Jewish communities in metropolitan France and beyond. New and emerging scholars are invited into conversation with established thinkers to capture the present and future of French, Francophone, and Jewish Studies. Because identities are layered and multifaceted, the multidisciplinary studies in this volume are intended to illustrate how frameworks interact, overlap, and shift. The result of these efforts is a collection of essays that reveals the complex interplay between French and Jewish identities and how they have changed over time. Grounded in historical, literary, visual, sociological, and legal analyses, they delve into questions of gender, race, religion, empire, migration, culture, and communal life. Taken together, they problematize the categories often created to make meaning of complex dynamics.This book is an important secondary source for researchers, undergraduate and graduate students, and general readers interested in world history, Jewish Studies, French Studies, European Studies, and immigration and diaspora studies.

In November 1942 Anglo-American forces landed in French North Africa, which soon afterwards broke with Marshal Pétain’s Vichy regime in France and re-entered the war on the Allies’ side. On Christmas Eve the high commissioner Admiral François Darlan was assassinated in Algiers. Why? Like the press and public opinion in Britain and America, General Charles de Gaulle’s Free French movement and the resistance in France were appalled that the Allies had allowed Darlan to retain office, even though as prime minister under Pétain he had previously advocated military collaboration with Nazi Germany. Few mourned Darlan’s death, many were relieved, some were jubilant.His killer was Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle. Who was this twenty year old and what drove him to murder? Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon paints a sympathetic portrait of the young idealist manipulated by local resistance leaders. As she tells Bonnier’s story, the author illuminates the imbroglio of North Africa’s competing political forces. She traces Bonnier’s short life, the assassination, his court-martial and execution within 48 hours, the subsequent judicial investigations which became bogged down in the complex rivalry between the Allies, the remnants of the Vichy regime, the Resistance and other factions. The story ends with Bonnier’s posthumous rehabilitation and recognition as a member of the French Resistance.Bonnier’s biography reads like an absorbing novel, with its twists and turns, reconstructed dialogue and author’s acute observations. As well as being a tragic human story, It is an illuminating study of the convoluted political context of the affair, which will be unfamiliar to some Anglophone readers. It is an academically rigorous piece of original research, based in part on previously inaccessible family archives.The book has been translated into English by Richard Carswell.Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon’s story of Darlan’s assassination was received in France as* ‘a shocking book and a historian’s great work’ (Le Patriote Résistant)* ‘a detailed enquiry … bordering on a detective novel which brings out the conspiratorial atmosphere reigning in Algiers in the wake of the Allied landing of 8 November 1942’ (Le Monde des Livres)* it ‘shows the extent to which the 1940s were years of complete ambiguity’ (Le Figaro Littéraire)* ‘Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon, a meticulous historian, paints the portrait of a young idealist dying to wash away the stain of defeat’ (Midi Libre).

In November 1942 Anglo-American forces landed in French North Africa, which soon afterwards broke with Marshal Pétain’s Vichy regime in France and re-entered the war on the Allies’ side. On Christmas Eve the high commissioner Admiral François Darlan was assassinated in Algiers. Why? Like the press and public opinion in Britain and America, General Charles de Gaulle’s Free French movement and the resistance in France were appalled that the Allies had allowed Darlan to retain office, even though as prime minister under Pétain he had previously advocated military collaboration with Nazi Germany. Few mourned Darlan’s death, many were relieved, some were jubilant.His killer was Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle. Who was this twenty year old and what drove him to murder? Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon paints a sympathetic portrait of the young idealist manipulated by local resistance leaders. As she tells Bonnier’s story, the author illuminates the imbroglio of North Africa’s competing political forces. She traces Bonnier’s short life, the assassination, his court-martial and execution within 48 hours, the subsequent judicial investigations which became bogged down in the complex rivalry between the Allies, the remnants of the Vichy regime, the Resistance and other factions. The story ends with Bonnier’s posthumous rehabilitation and recognition as a member of the French Resistance.Bonnier’s biography reads like an absorbing novel, with its twists and turns, reconstructed dialogue and author’s acute observations. As well as being a tragic human story, It is an illuminating study of the convoluted political context of the affair, which will be unfamiliar to some Anglophone readers. It is an academically rigorous piece of original research, based in part on previously inaccessible family archives.The book has been translated into English by Richard Carswell.Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon’s story of Darlan’s assassination was received in France as* ‘a shocking book and a historian’s great work’ (Le Patriote Résistant)* ‘a detailed enquiry … bordering on a detective novel which brings out the conspiratorial atmosphere reigning in Algiers in the wake of the Allied landing of 8 November 1942’ (Le Monde des Livres)* it ‘shows the extent to which the 1940s were years of complete ambiguity’ (Le Figaro Littéraire)* ‘Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon, a meticulous historian, paints the portrait of a young idealist dying to wash away the stain of defeat’ (Midi Libre).

This book focuses on the tension between the modernising thrust that places France on a trajectory of convergence with comparable liberal democracies and the defence of a national specificity that can act as a brake, complicating France’s relationship with its neighbours, its present and its past.This ambivalence in French political and social life stems from the conscious attempt to rebuild the nation after the trauma of Occupation during World War II and the new beginning provided by the Liberation. The government of the Fourth Republic embraced the pursuit of a modernisation that would enable it to regain its place among the world’s leading democratic states. However, this modernising ambition co-exists with the belief in a specific destiny and a unique sense of mission that are intrinsic to the emergence of a sense of nationhood after the revolution of 1789. Raymond defines a critical perspective that draws together historical, economic, social, and political issues into a coherent understanding of what makes France the way it is today.Written with both academic rigour and a highly accessible clarity of style, this volume is a valuable resource for students, educators, and researchers in French and European Studies.

This book focuses on the tension between the modernising thrust that places France on a trajectory of convergence with comparable liberal democracies and the defence of a national specificity that can act as a brake, complicating France’s relationship with its neighbours, its present and its past.This ambivalence in French political and social life stems from the conscious attempt to rebuild the nation after the trauma of Occupation during World War II and the new beginning provided by the Liberation. The government of the Fourth Republic embraced the pursuit of a modernisation that would enable it to regain its place among the world’s leading democratic states. However, this modernising ambition co-exists with the belief in a specific destiny and a unique sense of mission that are intrinsic to the emergence of a sense of nationhood after the revolution of 1789. Raymond defines a critical perspective that draws together historical, economic, social, and political issues into a coherent understanding of what makes France the way it is today.Written with both academic rigour and a highly accessible clarity of style, this volume is a valuable resource for students, educators, and researchers in French and European Studies.

Éliane Brault’s book tells a remarkable tale of betrayal and bravery on an unexpected scale. Its audience includes everyone fascinated by the drama of the German invasion and occupation of France in World War II. But only now, for the first time, is Brault’s moving story available in English translation.This account of 1940 draws on Brault’s extensive network of fellow journalists and social activists. The exceptionally well-informed author highlights the role played by defeatists and collaborators in the Fall of France and the creation of the Vichy Regime. She also celebrates the unsung courage of the French in the face of national calamity, a disaster worsened by the internal divisions and venality of the Germans during the occupation.Brault’s vibrant writing is rendered here with sensitivity. This Anglophone edition retains the originality of Brault’s style, a unique hybrid of newspaper reporting, critical commentary, and personal reflection. Her book now joins the classic accounts in English of the same events by the historian Marc Bloch, the novelist Irène Némirovsky, and the literary critic Jean Guéhenno, however different the genres of writing they explored. Simply put, Brault’s work deserves to be as well-known as theirs.