news and announcements

We are happy to begin a redesign of our website. New pages will go up gradually as they are recoded. For now, you can still navigate the site as usual.

In other news:

We are pleased to announce the first annual


Distinguished Service Award

In his 1995 dissertation, Au Bien du Commerce, David Kammerling Smith investigated a communication network established by the king's Council of Commerce in the first decade of the 1700s, an entity that provided unprecedented points of contact between individuals of diverse backgrounds and prompted a deluge of communications.

Little did David realize, as he wrote, that within a short time he himself would be developing and animating a communication network, H-France, that likewise encourages discussion, links far-flung persons with similar needs and interests into a network, and induces participants to seek and offer advice, and resolve each others' issues.

Or that under his leadership, H-France would become without question the single most important new resource for French historians since the founding of the Society for French Historical Studies and its journal in the 1950s.

For that leadership, the Editorial Board of H-France is today honoring David Kammerling Smith with its first-ever Distinguished Service Award. 

David's handling, on a daily basis, of a bewildering range of issues—intellectual, technical, legal, and financial—continuously amazes and gratifies and elicits respect from the Editorial Board. Even under the pressure of deadlines or technical complexities David's exchanges are always pleasant and professional, his decisions balanced and fair, his judgments intellectually sound. We literally do not know how he does it, but are most grateful that he does. We, our colleagues, our students, and French historians everywhere owe him our gratitude for a very big job very well done.

So, to our exemplary Editor-in-Chief, on behalf of the H-France Editorial Board, we are pleased to present this inaugural Distinguished Service Award.