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This paper analyzes the development of the 'military preparation' movement during the Third Republic in France, which, in turn, gives an insight into sports development in France in comparison with its neighbouring countries. On the eve of the First World War, militarized physical activities were widespread in France. Gymnastics (USGF), shooting (USTF), and military preparation (USPMF) federations had more members than sports federations. The spread of training societies was linked to military and political issues, with the support of the republican government being a key explanation for the rise in the number of training societies. The latter aimed to prepare young men for military service and turn them into French citizens. Furthermore, gymnastics and shooting societies fulfilled a social function in providing leisure activities. The distinction between sports activities and militarized activities was not always clear. Recent studies have underlined that the growth of shooting and gymnastics societies has been underestimated, especially for the interwar period. Such associations were still numerous in the 1930s. For a long time, physical activities were oriented by military or political issues, and early sports policies were mostly designed to develop militarized activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the global trade of guinée cloth mainly produced in French India and exported to French West Africa from 1826 to 1925. The article first re-examines the guinée cloth and its role in the western Sahel. Second, it argues that the guinée produced in the French factories established in French India was costly but of poor quality. Consequently, a similar type of cloth made in Europe began replacing the guinée in the Senegalese market in the late nineteenth century. Therefore, the producers of the guinée in the French empire supported protective measures, although merchants and relevant governments did not always share this opinion. Furthermore, the unstable political climate of the early French Third Republic promoted frequent changes in the trade policy on guinée cloth. Consequently, in addition to the traditional route from Saint Louis, Senegal, the article demonstrates that the export of Indian guinée began through more protected routes in northern Africa and was then distributed within the wider region of West Africa. Even the Méline Tariff opened the guinée producers in French India to new markets. Through the guinée cloth trade, this study demonstrates how colonialism and imperialism could lead to globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1905, Jacques Parlier, a former artillery captain in the French army, published the first of two Méthode(s) de cartographie, cartes à main levée et de mémoire tracés rapides to teach French students how to draw maps. Parlier had become convinced of the centrality of geographical knowledge to French national security and interests. His manuals brought geographical and cartographical literacy to a generation of students in France. This paper examines those manuals, specifically in terms of how they were designed to present the cartographic craft to school-aged children, a new market for this discipline. Parlier's strategy involved simplifying continents and countries to appear as geometrical forms and going on to focus on their physical attributes, such as rivers, mountains and coasts, thus encouraging teachers to lecture less and students to draw more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Belle Époque quest for a modern beauty (an 'art nouveau') extended into France's system of free primary schooling, established in the 1880s by the Third Republic to educate the popular masses. Design reformers' belief in the underlying unity of the fine and applied arts, and their growing emphasis on the importance of individual initiative and creativity to the latter, suggested that integrating the right form of artistic education into public education, especially primary schools, would serve both economic and democratic ends. The quasi-official Société Nationale de l'Art à l'École (National Society for Art in School) was founded in 1907 to support this goal. An examination of its efforts nevertheless reveals that its distinction of didactic and aesthetic aims, as well as the parameters it imposed upon content and style, blunted their democratic, emancipatory potential in ways that echoed the broader limitations of the French expansion of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a comprehensive geographic information system of Third Republic France: the TRF-GIS. It provides annual nomenclatures and shapefiles of administrative constituencies of metropolitan France from 1870 to 1940, encompassing general administrative constituencies (départements, arrondissements, cantons) as well as the most significant special administrative constituencies: military, judicial and penitentiary, electoral, academic, labor inspection, and ecclesiastical constituencies. It further proposes annual nomenclatures at the contemporaneous commune level that map each municipality into its corresponding administrative framework along with its population count. The 901 nomenclatures, 830 shapefiles, and complete reproduction material of the TRF-GIS are available at . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exodus provoked by the Civil War (1936–1939) is, due to its magnitude, the principal field of study on Spanish exile. Nevertheless, during the Spanish Republic in peacetime (1931–1936), different exiles took place which have not raised as much interest within the historiography. This is the case of those that had to flee Spain after being involved in the October Revolution of 1934. They were anonymous activists, the middle ranks, and also well-known leaders of the working-class movement, many of whom would play an important role during the time of the Popular Front, the Civil War and exile. In order to carry out this study, the archives of the five French départements bordering Spain, the Archives Nationales and the Archives de la Préfecture de Police in Paris were consulted. That facilitated identifying two hundred and seventy-five refugees, as well as understanding important aspects of their route towards exile, how they crossed the border, what their the journey was and the vicissitudes they experienced in French territory and what the conduct of the French authorities was. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dell discusses the connections of portraiture, practices of looking and the re-making of men. Dell explores how the portraiture functioned in the colonial project. Dell asserts that Gide was ambivalent in his approach to French colonialism and that his work displays the many contradictions he had towards it. [Extracted from the article]

To explain racial fissures in France today, one must revisit the structural and ideological failings in the origin of key Republican institutions. This article analyzes how the symbolic and material significance of labor structures imposed on black French citizens in the Third Republic produced differentiation in the value of labor to the nation. The production of social patterns and belief systems based on racial inequality were integrated into the structure of the French welfare state. The experience of black political actors, Hégésippe Légitimus, Blaise Diange, Lamine Senghor, and the state illustrates how the welfare state, as an engine of assimilation, defined a differential and racialized status for blacks during the process of crucial institution building. Although the majority of blacks in the French Empire were subjects during the Third Republic, the experience of those who were citizens indicates contradictions related to incorporation and race. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When discussing positivism today, it almost systematically falls into the realm of epistemological discourse. This discursive turn is primarily the by-product of the social sciences’ now-traditional approach to positivism—a turn which has been seen as largely dismissive of positivism for its antiquated and reductionist approaches to research. Without trying to make an apologetic account of positivism, this article reframes it in its broader social and historical dimensions. In particular, this article aims to illustrate how positivism—as a social and political movement—conveyed a cultural policy. In other words, this article attempts to re-engage with the intellectual legacy of positivism to resituate its significance in cultural and artistic terms in French culture, society and beyond. By drawing on the notion of implicit cultural policy, this article retraces the steps of positivism and specifically builds a case for its influence on French cultural policy in the Third Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Intelligence in France evolved as it professionalized at the end of the nineteenth century, led by determined individuals within the French army. However, in the centuries prior to the professionalization of espionage and counterespionage, military men rejected intelligence, viewing the practice with skepticism and disdain. This article asserts that there was a change in views towards espionage, particularly among the military, beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century. As the army went from eschewing intelligence to embracing it and taking the lead in its practice, the nature of intelligence work in France consequently reflected the goals and aims of the army, prioritizing military intelligence over others. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the summer of 1907, France experienced one of its largest social disturbances since the Revolution, as the winegrowers of the Languedoc-Roussillon led a mass protest movement that paralysed the region and challenged the state. Although the Grande Révolte evoked references to the Albigensian Crusade, and juxtaposed North and South, it never fully represented a moment of Occitan regionalist rising. The failure of the cultural organisation the Félibrige to fully engage with protesters led to a fissure between political and cultural expressions of Occitan identity that marked the movement thereafter. By combining linguistic anthropology and historical analysis, the authors are able to foreground a key aspect of national identity formation as it occurred in 1907. Considering the impact of the Grande Révolte on the identity and language of the Midi offers us an insight into the development of regionalism both within and beyond the borders of the French nation. Pendant l'été 1907, la France vécut de grands troubles sociaux auxquels l'État dut faire face, à savoir la Grande Révolte des vignerons du Languedoc-Roussillon qui glaça la région. Bien que la Grande Révolte ait évoqué des références à la Croisade des Albigeois et ait juxtaposé le Nord et le Sud, elle n'atteignit jamais le niveau d'un vrai soulèvement régionaliste occitan. Le manque de coopération entre l'organisation culturelle du Félibrige d'un côté et les manifestants de l'autre provoqua une fissure entre les expressions politiques et culturelles de l'identité occitane, qui désormais marquerait le mouvement. Les auteurs allient l'anthropologie linguistique et l'analyse historique afin de souligner un aspect principal de la création d'une identité nationale en 1907. Prendre en considération l'impact de la Grande Révolte sur l'identité et les langues du Midi nous donne un aperçu du développement du régionalisme en France et hors de France. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]