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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]

About 2,800 volunteers of the American contingent of the International Brigades, generally known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, served in Spain from 1937 to 1939. After the fall of Barcelona at the end of January 1939 many ended up in French refugee camps. This article draws on first-hand eye-witness accounts to paint a picture not only of the withdrawal from Spain after the fall of Barcelona in January 1939 but also of conditions within the camps in France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1934 French politics became polarized in a bitter struggle for the soul of France between Jeanne d'Arc and Marianne. In the course of the war in Spain, the positions taken by the Left and Right did not change; they simply hardened. Socialist doctrine was grounded in pacifism, but now it had to confront fascism. The Right, in its many varieties, was pro-appeasement and pro-Mussolini, and did its best to close its eyes to Italo-German rapprochement; Hitlerism was viewed as a terrible danger, but it was still the lesser ideological evil. Toulouse provided a fine observation point on Spain, and its varied press included the centre-left La Dépêche, of international renown. Among its writers, Heinrich Mann and Émile Vandervelde expressed an excessive pro-Republican optimism (as did Léon Blum in Le Midi Socialiste). L'Express du Midi called for volunteers for Franco, and Franco fumed at the poor response. Guglielmo Ferrero meanwhile warned that Europe was now plunged into the greatest intellectual and moral confusion in all its history. With Franco's victory, what all sides came to realize was that France now faced hostile forces on three frontiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the conceptual and organisational connections between late nineteenth-century civil-liberties activism and the emerging human-rights paradigm of the twentieth century. The comparison of the two largest and most influential civil-liberties organisations to emerge in Britain and France before the First World War (the British Personal Rights Association and the French Ligue des droits de l'homme) has three objectives: to place the two groups in a wider context of civil-liberty organisations of the pre-First World War era and to identify personal connections and inspirations. Secondly, by analysing functional definitions of ‘rights’ and who these rights should apply to, the article argues that although one group conceptualised their activism on the basis of ‘civil liberties’ and the other on ‘human rights’ there were significant similarities between the approaches of the two groups. Moreover, differences stemmed from internal politics within each group rather than the dissimilar conceptual framework. Finally the article seeks to understand why the Ligue des droits de l'homme was much more successful than the British Personal Rights Association both in its ability to mobilise supporters, and in inspiring sister organisations in other European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Alphonse Aulard (1849–1928) institutionalised and professionalised the practice of history. Beyond this undisputed contribution, however, Aulard's place in historiography remains contested. Scholars' perceptions that anti-clerical and radical-republican commitments skewed his research findings, and that he chose narrowly to study history as a series of constitutional, institutional and political developments in stark contrast with his student Albert Mathiez, have divided opinion regarding the beliefs and significance of Aulard. Yet Aulard's work and the cultural and political contribution it made have become a source of inspiration for a generation of scholars now studying revolutionary and European history. Based for the first time on an examination of his private papers, professional activities and oeuvre in tandem, this article revisits Aulard, and, using a post-analytic hermeneutics, re-reads his work in order to show how in his age Aulard advanced a demonstrably original contribution to historical research. He likewise left behind him a neo-Jacobin legacy more attentive to raison d'état than party division and championing international, liberal democracy and human rights. Multifaceted commitments therefore both explain the content of Aulard's oeuvre and help to understand contemporary developments, and suggest future directions, in historical enquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how official and unofficial early film footage intersects in the representation of France's mission civilisatrice in films taken in West Congo in the early twentieth century. We study uncut, and largely unseen footage of the French soldier General Henri Gouraud in Syria and Lebanon, filmed during the French acquisition of these territories following the First World War. This footage taken by Albert Kahn's photographer Lucien Le Saint, and now in the Archives de la Planète in Paris, reveals twin images of the General: one a powerful military commander of France's ‘civilizing mission’ and the other a relaxed, modern man of the kind not usually seen in public film footage. This article then, examines various contradictions at the heart of imperialistic discourse that characterised French cultural self-confidence in the last decades of the Third Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The seize mai crisis of 1877 was the occasion for last of the three war scares that punctuated Franco–German relations in the 1870s. However, it has not been given the detailed scrutiny it deserves. It was not only important for the amount of influence that Bismarck exerted during a six month period to influence the course of French domestic politics at a critical juncture. This crisis also provides a cipher for understanding the earlier crises of 1873–1874 and 1875 since the German Chancellor pursued his key objective of supporting the establishment of a republic much more openly in 1877 and his tactics are much better documented than in the earlier scares. A closer look at the events of 1877 reveals more continuity in both the means and ends used by Bismarck in his dealings with France during the mid-1870s than was previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Jean Renoir's post-war films are generally not given the same critical attention as his great works of the 1930s, and are usually regarded as indicating a withdrawal of interest in politics. Although it deals with a possible coup d'état, Elena et les hommes/ Paris Does Strange Things (1956) appears to be principally a light-hearted film about love set in a fantasized nineteenth century. This article argues that the political context is more important to the film than has so far been acknowledged. It draws out some of the links between the film's treatment of the emergence of right-wing extremism during the Third Republic and the situation in France in the mid-1950s. In particular, the film is shown to allude to tensions in France arising from decolonization and the dangers of a public all too ready to submit to dictatorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As many unused sources in the Service Historique de la Defense in Vincennes and the Quai d'Orsay in Paris reveal the French Deuxieme Bureau, and also naval intelligence, monitored events during the home rule crisis, the Easter Rising, the First World War, the Peace Conference in Paris and the Civil War. Also worthy of note are the elaboration of Franco-Irish invasion plans during the Boer War and the secret mission of an Irish general in Paris shortly after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921. The aims of this article will be to give an overview of French military intelligence activities regarding Ireland and to give an assessment of its interest in the country during the period under consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article approaches international feminisms in historical comparative perspective by looking at three feminist federations, called national councils of women, that were established in France, Italy and Portugal in 1901, 1903 and 1914, respectively. All of these organisations emerged from the International Council of Women, which had been founded in Washington in 1888 'to stimulate the sentiment of internationalism among women throughout the world', as an attempt to build a collective women's identity. The comparison between France, Italy and Portugal during the first three decades of the twentieth century must take into account the fact that the last two countries faced authoritarian regimes (fascist and Salazarist dictatorships, respectively) while, by contrast, France spent the period considered in this article under the Third Republic. After examining the origins of these three national councils of women, the focus will be on their common agenda, taking into account the national contexts to which they had to adapt themselves. The aim of this article is to contribute to the history of transnational feminisms and to a comparative women's history of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The French Protestant minority has always maintained an ambiguous relationship to the French nation. At the end of the nineteenth century, confronted by a Catholic supremacy that placed their continued existence in doubt, they found in the Republican cause a mode of integrating themselves into the national political community. Their integration into the nation went hand in hand with their efforts to decrease the danger of Catholic domination through the laws separating church and state. The association with the war effort in 1914, and again in 1939, enabled them to silence the anti-Protestant rhetoric of Maurrasian nationalists and overcome the ultimate barrier to their full integration into the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers whether a specifically French 'appeasement' developed among policymakers of the inter-war years and, if so, how various appeasement strategies changed over time. It does so firstly, by attempting to define this French version of appeasement partly by reference to the historiography of French inter-war foreign policy and strategic planning. The article then considers the various impersonal forces that led to changes of course in foreign policy. These include domestic social and political pressures, economic conditions, and the changing strategic balance of power in Europe. The article suggests that French appeasement was neither a constant feature of France's international strategy in the 1930s nor simply a mirror image of its British counterpart. The foundations of French diplomacy, military thinking and strategic outlook were altogether different. By the late 1930s the limitations of actual allies, the recalcitrance of some potential friends, the elusiveness of others, had all provided a powerful fillip to proponents of appeasement, although substantial minorities continued to oppose it. Ultimately, France without a great power ally was a nation compelled to appease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Images of women in French Masonry closely resemble those of men in the movement from the eighteenth century onwards and for many of the same reasons: masonic secrecy leaves non-masons to suspect the worst, especially with state and church opposition to the craft from its inception in France. This suspicion intensified because of the revolutionary and Napoleonic disruption attributed to an apparent masonic conspiracy identified by conservative commentators. When the French Third Republic (1870–1940) embraced Masonry's anticlericalism, the new regime's political leaders embraced as well its republican tendencies, to the exclusion, however, of its women. Images of the New Woman captured well the French fin-de-siècle's hostility to women in Masonry. From George Sand to Clothilde Bersone, literary accounts of mostly para-masonic activity portray women engaged in demonic, sacrilegious, and occult practices dangerous to social and political stability. This perception became particularly problematic in the hands of unscrupulous journalists, political partisans, and literary hacks like Léo Taxil and Roger Lambelin. In the absence of better informed and more favorable views, masonic women were thus seen as rebellious without any ostensible cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the contents of the April 1, 2006 issue of "Labour History Review," which discuss the relationship between Freemasonry and the history of labour in Great Britain. The differences regarding class attitudes toward 18th century Freemasonry and contemporary Freemasonry are discussed, as well as the suspicion which right and left wing groups have about Freemasonry. Roger Burt's essay regarding Freemasonry's role in coal and non-ferrous mining labor relations is discussed, as well as an article by James Smith Allen on women in French Freemasonry. Andrew Prescott and John Hamill investigate allegations of Freemason involvement in 1935 Labour Party elections in Great Britain.

In 1904, the largest banquet of the fin de siècle celebrated a new direction in evolving public opinion on national social solidarity. Flanked by the National Guard, 30,000 French citizens marched down the Champs-Elysées before pledging to the President of the Republic Emile Loubet the support of the new National Mutualist Federation of France (FNMF) to 'lead the nation [...] in the path of fraternity'. For two million rank-and-file members of the largest social movement of the Third Republic, concerts and casse-croûte, songs, plays, and poetry cemented ties of financial solidarity in group health insurance, medical care, and pensions. In the shadow of divisive events like the Dreyfus affair and labour demonstrations, Mutualists gave stability to and generated consensus on the emergent welfare state. Mutualist celebrations suggest a politicization of popular culture but also its endurance in the face of commercialized entertainment. Borrowing from traditions of Republican fraternity, these gatherings transmitted values regarding class, gender, religion, and politics as well as secular, civic, and hygienic duties, including the fight against depopulation and tuberculosis. The planting of 'trees of solidarity and mutuality' consecrated the shift from liberty to solidarity as a core value which continues to shape modern French political culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]