Abstracts

Chronological by Volume Volume 1

Volume 1

Natalie Adamson

Against the Amnesiacs: The Art Criticism of Jean Bazaine, 1934-1944

This essay discusses the art criticism written by the painter Jean Bazaine between 1934 and 1939 in the form of exhibition reviews for the “social” Catholic publications, Esprit and Temps présent, where Bazaine began to articulate the premises of a new, re-spiritualized route for painting. His art criticism participated in the “third-way” Personalist project of Emmanuel Mounier and Esprit to renovate the foundations of contemporary French society; it also contributed to the effort in the interwar period to modernize sacred art. The implications of Bazaine’s attempt to establish an alternative circuit between modernist painting and politics are highlighted by his epistolary debate with the realist painter Marcel Gromaire. The sequence of articles written by Bazaine during the war for the Nouvelle Revue Française and Comoedia explicitly extend the tension in his theory of painting between its conservative, nationalist aspects and the modernist, radical revisions he proposed to the French tradition of realism.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Cynthia Bouton

Cowardly Bourgeois, Brave Bourgeoises, and Loyal Servants: Bourgeois Identity during the Crisis of 1846-47

This paper interrogates the formation of bourgeois identity at mid-19th century through a close study of a riot in January 1847 in the French town of Buzançais (Indre). It explores how riot, repression and trial (during which the government actively worked to rouse bourgeois solidarity) and the local and national press reflected and shaped social identities. Rioters specifically targeted households they identified as “bourgeois” and Buzançéen notables generally accepted the label, even as they wished to redefine it. The public trial of rioters also generated opportunities to imagine proper bourgeois identity and contrast it sharply with actual bourgeois behavior during the riot. Moreover, analyzing female behavior and narratives of their behavior—bourgeoises as well as female servants and rioters— elucidates this process more fully. I therefore suggest not only that there existed a bourgeoisie conscious, if painfully so, of its existence and that practices such as riot and public trial helped to shape it.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Greg Burgess

Selection, Exclusion and Assimilation. The Projet Lambert of 1931 on the Reform of French Immigration Policy

The unemployment crisis of 1926-7 focused attention onto the question of immigration. Historians of this period have generally focused on the crisis of public policy and popular antipathies towards foreigners; more recently historians have become attuned to voices of racism. Less attention has been paid to attempts to redress the policy weaknesses through a new legislative regime on immigration. This paper reviews one such proposal, made by Charles Lambert, a deputy from the Rhone, in 1931. Instrumental in a revision of the naturalization law in 1927 to encourage the assimilation of foreigners through the acquisition of French citizenship, Lambert proposed a comprehensive statute on immigration to select “desirable” foreigners and exclude the “undesirables” to promote the assimilation of the “better” elements. The paper argues that his rationale betrays a profound fear of mounting French weakness in the face of economic and demographic decline, and grave anxieties for the future health of the French nation.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Ian Coller

Egypte-sur-Seine: The Making of an Arabic Community in Paris 1800-1830"

This paper analyses the formation of a significant Arabic presence in Paris during the first decades of the nineteenth century, a presence which has remained almost entirely invisible to historians. It argues that the population of “Egyptian Refugees” which arrived in Marseille after the evacuation of the French occupation of Egypt in 1801 evolved into a settled but highly mobile community established both at Marseille and in Paris, yet with continuing links to the Arab world.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Máire Cross

Tuning into Politics: Flora Tristan’s Songs for the Union ouvrière

>From 1789 onwards in revolutionary France, singing was a common form of political communication of the lower orders: the published works of song-writer Béranger are testimony to the prolific nature of opposition political song writing during the Restoration monarchy. However, there remains little evidence of the oral practices and of the lesser known amateur song-writers or what inspired them to write. I have come across an unusual trace of how this collective activity functioned as propaganda in the network of lesser known activist-composers who emerge from Flora Tristan's mantra of feminist socialism but whose voice is now dim in labor history. In 1843, in her bid to increase the sales of her book Union ouvrière and to promote collective action among the laboring classes, Flora Tristan included in the first edition a call for an anthem for the organization she intended to create. Clearly in harmony with the workers’ customs of singing for politics, Tristan included her preferred verses in the subsequent two editions of Union ouvrière. Although the other proposals did not make it to print, some of them have survived in her correspondence. In this study I examine the themes of the songs, (published and unpublished), composed especially for Flora Tristan's project and compare them with the essence of her political statement. In concluding with references to another song competition this time an official one organized by Carnot, I contextualize the actions of Flora Tristan and socialist militants of the late July Monarchy and show how their political composition and singing practices anticipated 1848 and were an important element of politicization. This interpretation of political songs provides an opportunity for closer analysis of how Tristan's action was perceived by those grass roots social activists who were tuned into politics.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Vesna Drapac

A King is killed in Marseille: France and Yugoslavia in 1934

French responses to the 1934 assassination in Marseille of King Alexander of Yugoslavia by Croatian and Macedonian émigrés provide the focus of this paper. French enthusiasm for the Yugoslav successor state, strong in the immediate post-war years, eventually subsided, markedly so following the assassination in the Belgrade parliament, in 1928, of leaders and representatives of the most popular Croatian party (the Croat Peasant Party) and the establishment of a repressive dictatorship in 1929. However, on the death of Alexander on French soil, republican France came out in support of the royal dictatorship of the Serbian “hero-king.” French reactions to the King’s death drew on iconic images of the Great War and Serbia’s role in it: companions in arms, the French and Yugoslavs were tied by an “indestructible” bond of friendship and a “boundless trust.” This paper invites speculation on the political consequences of the ways in which the Great War was remembered in the two countries.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Susan Foley

“I felt such a need to be loved […] in a letter:” Reading the Correspondence of Léonie Léon and Léon Gambetta

The theoretical literature on correspondence warns against viewing personal letters as transparent evidence of the feelings and ideas of the author. It emphasizes the need to read them against the codes of letter-writing and cultural rituals of their time and place. This injunction will be applied here to the correspondence between Léon Gambetta, a Republican leader of the 1870s, and his lover, Léonie Léon. Their letters are of particular interest because they are simultaneously love letters and political discussions. This paper shows, first, how their correspondence reflects the epistolary conventions of intimacy in the post-Romantic age. It also shows how intimacy could be expressed through a shared political language. The paper concludes that intimate relationships enabled some women to carve out spaces in men’s lives as loved and desired– and therefore necessary–political partners, at a time when the formal structures of political life were becoming more exclusively masculine.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Pieter François

Images of French Catholicism and Belgian Protestantism

This article analyses the mid-nineteenth-century British views on religion in France and Belgium. This analysis is based on the numerous travel guides and accounts of British travelers touring through the continent. Whereas the observed religious situation was relatively similar, Catholicism was in both countries overwhelmingly dominant, the interpretation was strikingly different. French Catholicism was perceived as an integral part of the French national identity. The opposition between French Catholicism and British Protestantism was part of a long chain of perceived interconnected oppositions between France and Britain. After the independence of 1830, Belgium and the Belgians occupied a unique position in British imagination. Belgium was increasingly perceived as a “little Britain” or “little England on the continent.” The construction of the image of “Protestant Belgians in Catholic Belgium” is a powerful example of the projection of British/English values on Belgium. In Belgium Catholicism was perceived as hostile to the true Belgian national identity and was associated with the perceived chain of foreign rulers of Belgium.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

James Friguglietti

A Scholar “in Exile:” George Rudé as a Historian of Australia

George Rudé devoted most of his career as a historian to studying French and British history “from below.” Until 1959 Rudé taught and published in Great Britain. But his left-wing politics compelled him to accept a teaching post in Australia where he would remain for some ten years. During this decade Rudé undertook to examine the history of his new homeland. He focused on individuals convicted of crimes, both common law and political, who were transported to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land. Amassing data from the archives about hundreds of criminals, he summarized his discoveries in Protest and Punishment (1978). Rudé’s Marxist outlook led him to identify with the transported criminals and consider himself as being “in exile.” Eventually he “escaped” from Australia when he left to teach in Canada in 1970. But his years down under proved a valuable experience. The numerous publications that Rudé produced while there testify to his considerable scholarly abilities.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

David Garrioch

The Local Experience of Revolution: The Gobelins/Finistère Section in Paris

When reading the revolutionary history of Paris, it is easy to make a direct connection between the socioeconomic composition of the different sections, or of their personnel, and the degree of radicalism and the levels of violence they experienced. The example of the Gobelins/Finistère Section shows that these variables, while not unrelated, were not necessarily connected. Despite being poor and consistently radical, this Section experienced little violence in the 1790s. Its political stance was determined not only by the poverty of much of its population, but just as much by its location and political traditions and by the personal networks and rivalries of its militants. These factors created a sectional culture that played a significant part in determining the political trajectory and the revolutionary experience of the area.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Dominique Godineau

Pratiques du suicide à Paris pendant la Révolution française

The police archives offer much information about suicide in Paris during the Revolution. This article will undertake an analysis of this source, and from this, set out, first, a typology of suicides (gender, age, marital and social status) and of the act of suicide (means, motive according to next of kin, suicide notes or interrogations of those who did not succeed in their attempt). Reactions of those around them (family, neighbors), and of authorities will also be analyzed. Finally, I will look at the link between suicide and the Revolution, that is, the impact of particular events and the political suicides of wellknown revolutionary leaders, but also of less-known militants who took their own lives following Thermidor, an II, or Prairial, an III.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Carol Harrison

Protecting Catholic Boys and Forming Catholic Men at the Collège Stanislas in Restoration Paris

In 1804, the abbé Claude Rosalie Liautard opened the Collège Stanislas with the goal of educating a Catholic elite for post revolutionary France. Liautard believed that the Revolution's most lasting damage was in the realm of education, and under the Empire and Restoration he railed against the last institution that “prevents the healing of wounds to the social body,” the Napoleonic University. Stanislas would give boys modern academic training coupled with spiritual discipline and devotion. Liautard’s effort to create Catholic education for the new regime was in many ways contradictory. Although Liautard often wrote of the need to restore paternal authority, his educational program mistrusted familial influence and preferred to shelter boys within the boarding school. Moreover, Liautard’s pedagogical style derived from a language of fraternity and romantic notions of intense friendship. The early years of the Collège Stanislas thus suggest a more dynamic view of Restoration Catholicism as a faith influenced by and coming to terms with the revolutionary past.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Peter Jones

“Fraternising with the Enemy”: Problems of Identity during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars

This paper examines the problem of citizenship in an age that gave birth to the multiple concepts of nationality that we know today. The theme is explored via a case study of the experiences of the Russell family of Birmingham, England. William Russell was a prominent victim of the 1791 riots in that city which were aimed at religious Dissenters who saw no reason to conceal their enthusiasm for the principles of the French Revolution. The family joined the flow of political refugees heading for America. However, they were intercepted by a French frigate in the Channel and spent the latter months of 1794 imprisoned in the port of Brest. The Russells were allowed to resume their journey to America the following year, and, in due course, William succeeded in becoming a citizen of his adoptive land. In 1801, though, he returned to France in order to take possession of a large monastic property which he had acquired as a result of the sales of biens nationaux. Whilst resident on his estate near Caen in 1807, he petitioned—successfully—for naturalization as a French subject having identified Napoleon Bonaparte as the new Messiah. Despite a civil status that was complicated—to say the least—he managed to dispose of his French assets and to retire to England when hostilities came to an end in 1814.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Julie Kalman

Rothschildian Greed: This New Variety of Despotism

In July 1846, a train on the newly inaugurated northern line owned by the Baron James de Rothschild ran into a marsh in Fampoux, causing several deaths. The accident unleashed a wave of righteous outrage: graphic descriptions of the accident were given in the press, and public emotion was incited by stories of the dead and the wounded. It was demanded that those responsible be brought to justice, and newspapers and pamphlets came to focus public indignation on the prominent, fabulously wealthy and Jewish Baron. How was he depicted? In this article, I examine reactions to the accident in newspapers and pamphlets and notions of Rothschildian greed and influence. I then go on to explore whether this discourse has a place in a broader context of anti-Jewish writings in France.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

André Lambelet

Back to the Future: Politics, Propaganda and the Centennial of the Conquest of Algeria

In the Spring of 1929, the French government formed a Propaganda Committee whose mission was to “study the means of associating all of France with the commemoration of the Centennial of Algeria.” The Committee’s task was two-fold: to teach “sadly uninformed” French about Algeria, and, by examining the benefits that French domination had brought to Algerians, to teach the French about the virtues of colonialism. The paper, focusing particularly on the Cahiers du Centenaire de l’Algérie and on the works of General Paul Azan, argues that the propaganda campaign upon which the French government embarked in 1929 suggests that opponents of republicanism had used their colonial experience to move from the margins to the center of the Third Republic.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Peter McPhee

Frontiers, Ethnicity and Identity in the French Revolution: Catalans and Occitans

The French Revolution was a critical period in the forging and contesting of collective identities. Most obviously, the practice of popular sovereignty at a time of national military crisis underpinned the shift from subject to citizen. Historians of political culture and of regional identities have tended, quite understandably, to focus on the ways in which national and regional élites constructed French citizenship after 1789. Historians of the regions, however, have tended to see this as a process of “francisation d'en haut,” often characterized as imposed and even destructive. But how did members of ethnic minorities define themselves within this new polity? Was there a phenomenon of “francisation d'en bas” as well as one from above? Equally important, how did they define members of neighboring ethnies? This paper looks at the evidence, especially from the cahiers de doleances, of how Catalans and Occitans viewed each other—and themselves—across the frontier between Languedoc and Roussillon, and how they represented the Catalans south of the border. It argues that the Revolution only accentuated expressions of similarity and difference already present in 1789.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Colin Nettelbeck

From La nouvelle vague to Histoire(s) du cinéma: History in Godard, Godard in History

Throughout his career Godard has sought to create a cinematographic language capable of reflecting simultaneously on itself as cinema and on the world outside the cinema. This paper examines how Godard’s work constitutes a form which incorporates historical traces and at the same time claims historiographical value for itself as a document capable of both documenting history and “making” history. In examining the complexities of the task Godard has set himself, the paper explores the tensions that exist between contemporary French history and cinema more generally.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Alison Patrick

The Price of Revolution

Though the principles involved in the Terror have had a lot of attention, the debate associated with the King’s trial has not been examined as a crisis of principle which contained the seeds of the Terror. On no other occasion was every deputy in a Revolutionary assembly expected to cast a public vote on a constitutional issue. Nearly all the deputies voted; the detail of the voting was published by the Convention itself. Nearly forty percent of deputies also published some explication of their votes, addressing the questions of principle they thought were involved. Their three months of bitter argument demonstrate that Revolutionary Terror was closely linked with the Revolution of 1789. However, in 1793 there were no right answers. The Revolution, which had brought equality to Frenchmen, could now produce Frenchmen who were no longer potential citizens; all men were not equal. This was part of the price of revolution.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Pam Pilbeam

Fourier and the Fourierists: A Case of Mistaken Identity?

Charles Fourier and his followers, the Fourierists, shared little, apart from their name. The objective of this communication is to explain why this was so. It focuses on three issues which were fundamental to both Fourier and his followers, women, social organization and morality, to try to understand why their ideas were so different. Ironically it was the important role played by women in Fourierism that toned down the bachelor Fourier’s strident feminism. The utopian dream of ideal communities was abandoned when several experiments failed. The recourse to state intervention echoed the experience of Fourierists in their day jobs, often as state engineers. A new interest in religion seemed to reflect declining optimism in human agency.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Michael Sibalis

Gay Liberation Comes to France: The Front Homosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire (FHAR)

The opening salvo of the modern gay liberation movement in France occurred when a group of homosexuals (mainly lesbians) disrupted a live radio broadcast entitled “Homosexuality, This Painful Problem” on 10 March 1971. They then founded FHAR (Front Homosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire, or Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action), which would be active until early 1974. Inspired by the American gay movement, FHAR drew its left-wing rhetoric from the French student movement of May 1968. In opposition to the French homophile movement, Arcadie, which urged homosexuals to accept and assimilate into existing society, FHAR believed that homosexuality was a revolutionary force that could transform the world. FHAR’s deliberately provocative tactics garnered some publicity for the gay cause but achieved no change. The mid- to late 1970s therefore saw a shift of the gay movement toward reformism, the formulation of specific demands for equal rights and sustained political lobbying.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Thomas Sosnowski

Revolutionary Émigrés and Exiles in the United States: Problems of Economic Survival in a New Republican Society

This article explores the problem of economic survival by the thousands of Frenchmen who exiled themselves in the United States during the tumultuous 1790s, examining the sojourns of those whose letters, diaries and memoirs remain, such as Talleyrand, Moreau de St.-Méry and Mme de la Tour du Pin. What became apparent is that many of them were able to maintain themselves without seeking employment and turn their attention to travel or scholarly pursuits. Volney and La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt are noted exemplars of this category. Some were forced to work like Moreau de St.-Méry in his Philadelphia bookstore and Mme de la Tour du Pin and husband on their 200 acre farm near Troy, New York. Others shared their musical talents whether in performance or in teaching. Heading this list was Brillat-Savarin, the noted gastronome. Others performed in the theatre—Charleston, South Carolina even maintained two French companies during this decade. Many, if not most of them, however, returned to la douce France when the political and social situation improved. Nonetheless, many others “disappeared” into the American demographic scene without written records—their story remains to be told.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Charles Sowerwine

The Sexual Contract of the Third Republic

Carole Pateman argued that the creation of the public sphere was made possible by the creation of the private sphere and that the public sphere was created masculine. If Pateman’s argument is valid, we should expect to find continuity in the exclusion of women. The present paper opens two lines of inquiry around the issue of continuity in exclusion following the founding of the Third Republic. This paper interrogates the discourse of feminists and radical republicans, women and men, after the constitutional laws of 1875, to see in what terms the position of women was avoided. Special attention is paid to the correspondence of Léon Gambetta and his mistress, Léonie Léon. In the 1187 letters to which we had access, politics are inextricably linked with passion. The paper concludes that republican discourse turns on metaphors which are consonant with fraternity.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Ingrid Sykes

The Globalization of French Sound: French Convents in Australia

This paper examines the spread of French convent musical culture to Australia and the nature of its establishment on Australian soil. The global movement of convents from France to Australia in the nineteenth century was an important manifestation of imperialist expansion by the congréganistes, a group of Catholic monarchists who had experienced a massive national resurgence from the 1820s in France. This particular form of imperialist activity involved the transportation of a clearly identifiable “unit” of domestic identity. French convent spaces in Australia were virtual reality constructions of their French counterparts containing real artifacts, people and sensual stimuli. Some even included French machinery purchased by the convents from respected French inventors. The transportation of French nineteenth-century convent organs to Sydney and Melbourne by French Sacré-Coeur nuns ensured the transferal of the sonorous component of French convent life. Built by the established French organ building firms of Joseph Merklin and the Puget family, these instruments embodied mystical communication through powerful acoustical sonorities and acoustical delay. In conclusion, I suggest that the construction of the convent space in Australia contributed to the survival of a particular French Catholic tradition whilst it was under attack in France in the anti-clericalist political climate of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Tim Tackett

Becoming a Counterrevolutionary: A Conservative Noble in the National Assembly, 1789-1791

For a variety of reasons, the evolution of the political ideas of conservative members of the Constituent Assembly has always been more difficult to follow than that of the patriots. The recently discovered correspondence of the robe noble and deputy from Poitiers, Irland de Bazôges, helps to fill this gap. The correspondence reveals that Irland initially hoped to cooperate with the Revolution and avoid all political factions. The turning point was clearly the Dom Gerle Affair of April 1790. These decrees not only offended his religious sensibilities, but also focused the anger that had accumulated over a number of other issues. Intense peer pressure exercised by other nobles also seems to have played a role. The correspondence thus suggests that conservative deputies, like their radical colleagues, substantially evolved during the first year of the Revolution, adopting positions which they might scarcely have imagined just a few months earlier.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Françoise Thébaud

Un féminisme d’État est-il possible en France? L’exemple du Ministère des Droits de la femme, 1981-1986

L’article étudie l’expérience de féminisme d’État du ministère des Droits de la femme (1981-1986) dont la titulaire fut la socialiste Yvette Roudy. Au-delà d’une description des actions et de leurs effets, il se demande pourquoi ce féminisme d’État fut difficile et identifie trois raisons: des rapports complexes entre socialisme et féminisme; une société française frileuse, ou du moins comprenant de forts courants conservateurs; un féminisme français majoritairement méfiant vis-à-vis de l’État.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

John West-Sooby and Jean Fornasiero

A Cordial Encounter? The Meeting of Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin (8-9 April 1802)

The 1802 encounter between Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders has now entered Australian folklore. Most commentators concur that the famous meeting was conducted in a spirit of scientific cooperation that transcended the national rivalries of the day. Yet certain discrepancies between the accounts of the two captains are difficult to explain. These have generally been attributed to communication difficulties between the French navigator and his English-speaking counterpart. This assumption, however, is far from self-evident. We have thus chosen to canvass the full range of possible explanations for the conflicting accounts of that meeting, including the hypothesis that Flinders, who is generally considered a reliable witness, may indeed have misrepresented his encounter with Baudin. What emerges from this analysis is a picture of a meeting that was far less altruistic than is commonly believed—a meeting characterized, contrary to the legend, by the persistent undercurrent of political and personal motives.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

Joseph Zizek

Marat: Historian of the French Revolution?

Jean-Paul Marat harbored the surprising ambition to provide his readers with a historical understanding of the French Revolution. This paper argues that Marat’s journalism depended on, and sought to propagate, a distinctive and somewhat unusual historical sensibility devoted to sniffing out the Revolution’s enemies and charting a path by which its gains could be secured. For Marat, verbal violence, denunciations, pessimism and attacks on popular lassitude were justified by his understanding of the historical “lessons” embedded in the ongoing Revolution. Yet Marat’s writing also revealed the difficulty of communicating those lessons, and the challenges posed by a revolutionary “history” in which the historian and his audience were simultaneously caught up in an unfolding series of events and meanings.

French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar.
Volume 1 (2005)

---