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Following the balloon's invention in 1783, the French greeted the technology with enthusiasm, speculating extensively about its potential scientific and practical applications. However, the lack of progress in navigating against the winds discredited ballooning, and in the following decades it became the domain of spectacular forms of entertainment and of swindlers trying to defraud public subscriptions. All of this changed after the 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War, during which balloons were used to breach the siege of Paris. This essay explores how the aeronautical community, led by the recently established Société Française de Navigation Aérienne, mobilized the memory of the war to transform the balloon into a symbol of a heroic republican science. Paramount in that process was the Zénith's 1875 high-altitude ascent that killed two aeronauts—Joseph Crocé-Spinelli and Théodore Sivel. The tragedy reverberated beyond France's scientific community, and through popular acclaim the two aeronauts became the Third Republic's first scientific martyrs, anticipating the eventual apotheoses of figures like Claude Bernard and Louis Pasteur. The ballooning revival in the last third of the century helped strengthen the association between France and aeronautics, thus setting the stage for the country to acquire a central position in the field by the early twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When shipping companies first experimented with transporting wine in steel containers in the 1930s they promised to revolutionize the way French Algeria sent its most important export to metropolitan France. What capitalists saw as a rational and efficient use of new technology, however, dockworkers and barrelmakers saw as a dire threat to their livelihoods in a time of intense economic hardship. This article traces the social conflict that followed the introduction of the wine tanker and the declining use of wine barrels in port cities in both Algeria and France. In doing so it illustrates the wide range of people and places that held a direct stake in economic activity arising from France's colonization of Algeria, from the rural environments in which wine was produced all the way to distant urban spaces such as Rouen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By 1939, there were an estimated 150,000 immigrant Jews in Paris: half the entire Jewish population of France. More than seventy-five percent of them came from Eastern Europe. Scholarship on the immigrant Jewish community in Paris primarily focuses on the role that the Yiddish-language immigrant press played in demarcating political affiliation. Less explored, however, are the roles that the Yiddish press played in creating a Jewish community rooted in both French and Jewish cultural norms. This article analyzes Naye prese through its use of culture and gender constructs to understand more fully the larger implications of the Yiddish press in Paris. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a theory of military retrenchment by states in relative decline. I argue that a declining state will choose to withdraw foreign military deployments and security commitments when there exists a suitable regional 'successor' to which it can devolve its current responsibilities. The degree of a successor's suitability and the strategic importance of the region to the declining state interact to determine when and how rapidly retrenchment will occur. Importantly, this devolutionary model of retrenchment predicts significant variations in retrenchment patterns across a declining state's multiple regional commitments. It advances the literature by producing nuanced predictions of precisely where, when, and how quickly retrenchment will occur. This paper assesses the theory empirically through an examination of Great Britain's varying regional retrenchment strategies prior to World War I. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The article discusses historiography of the French Third Republic in the 20th century and also discusses public, scientific and political debates based on it. Various topics discussed include republican historiography of the republic, anti-feminism, political history of the republic, republican model between 1989-1992, republicanization of France and brief discussion on national identity.

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]

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]

National and international critics of Paris's 1900 Universal Exposition claimed that it was a disaster on various levels. That year, in addition to two walkway collapses that killed thirteen people, Paris experienced numerous construction and transportation accidents; electrical failures and fires; a deadly heal wave followed by a water shortage, near sewer failure, and "great stink"; and typhoid and smallpox outbreaks that killed more than a thousand people. Taking the spatial turn in exposition studies, this article interprets these claims as part of a conservative disaster discourse that targeted the exposition to undermine the Third Republic and its progressive conception of urban modernity. Thus, rather than examining an actual disaster, I show how the Republic's critics used fears of impending disaster to cast modem Paris as a "risk society" characterized by "normal accidents," which in turn questioned the Republic's project, widely hyped at the exposition, of controlling nature and achieving social progress through science and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

D'une façon générale, l'enseignement de l'histoire a acquis une légitimité sociale du fait que l'étude du passé est censée délivrer aux élèves des clés de compréhension du présent, c'est-à-dire du temps où ils vivent. Mais ce topos ne dit rien du sens que donnent à cette expression les historiographies scolaires, inscrites dans des sociétés où l'expérience du passé a configuré le rapport qu'elles entretiennent avec les diverses facettes du temps. On peut donc se demander de quelles significations, selon les contextes et les aires géographiques, est chargée cette généralité, en d'autres termes historiciser la notion même "comprendre le présent". C'est ce questionnement qui a été appliqué à l'enseignement de l'histoire en France, pour la période 1870–1940 – celle de la Troisième République – où il a représenté, sept ans durant, un des piliers de la formation des élèves – masculins – de l'enseignement secondaire. Les républicains, arrivés au pouvoir après la défaite de 1871 contre la Prusse, entendaient en effet dispenser à la jeunesse française, appelée à constituer les futures élites de la nation, de solides connaissances historiques. L'enjeu était de taille: dans un pays affaibli et, de surcroît, divisé politiquement, il s'agissait de rassembler, autour de la nation et des valeurs républicaines, les forces du pays. Quel statut a donc donné au présent cet usage scolaire de l'étude du passé alors que les historiens, dans le contexte de professionnalisation de la discipline historique qui caractérise au 19è siècle les États-nations, posaient les règles de la critique érudite et affirmaient leur volonté d'élaborer une histoire qui ne servît que la "Vérité"? Nous avons ici distingué deux niveaux: d'une part celui des programmes et autres textes officiels complétés par les publications des historiens qui, à la fin du 19è siècle, dominent le paysage historiographique. En effet, Gabriel Monod, un des fondateurs en 1876 de la Revue historique dont l'objectif est de créer en France une école historique, Ernest Lavisse et leur cadet Charles Seignobos s'impliquent tous également dans la renaissance des études historiques savantes et dans l'organisation de l'histoire scolaire; d'autre part, les auteurs ont exploité les articles et rapports des revues pédagogiques, les cahiers d'élèves, les témoignages recueillis spontanément ou non, toutes traces qui, en nous introduisant à la connaissance de l'histoire enseignée, élargissent le spectre des sources de l'histoire de la discipline. Car si la périodisation établie par les programmes fait de l'étude du présent l'aboutissement de la connaissance du passé, il importe de se demander à quelles pratiques du présent a donné lieu ce que Lavisse appelait "la théorie de l'enseignement"? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at an incident which happened in 1906 and involved French politician Georges Clemenceau and the administration of the Protestant Hungarian newspaper titled "Magyar Szó." The author advances that this isolated event probably influenced Clemenceau's opinion of Hungary during the years preceding World War I and the Trianon (Versailles, France) peace treaty in 1920. Topics of discussion include the newspaper's historical context from 1900 to 1914, Clemenceau's editorial entitled "le divorce austro-hongrois" which was published in his newspaper "l'Aurore" in September 29, 1905, and the Hungarian newspaper's decision to republish the interviews of three French politicians, including Clemenceau and Ernest Vallé, on March 15, 1906.

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]

Perhaps no other French historian led such a sordid academic career as that of Bernard Faÿ, who held the first European chair in American history at the Collège de France from 1932 to his removal in 1944. Celebrated as the leading interwar specialist on America, Faÿ was a steadfast ally of the Catholic political Right. His conservatism, however, never threatened his international stature or his domestic academic standing until 1940, after which he led the Vichy regime's assault on Freemasonry. He succeeded as a historian by employing research on the United States to reject traditions of popular sovereignty, while also embracing new methodological trends that critiqued scientific positivism, often as an attack on the intellectual foundation of the Third Republic. His legacy suggests how the conceptual legitimacy of secular, egalitarian society could be contested through the very ideas that "cosmopolitan modernity" had sought to support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores Jean Benoît-Lévy and Marie Epstein's box-office success La Maternelle and their lesser-known Maternité in the context of interwar debates over women's roles in society. Reflecting natalist-familialist conceptions of motherhood and femininity, the films magnified three pervasive cultural icons in French social and political discourse: the monstrous, childless "modern woman," the exalted mother, and the "single woman" who fell somewhere in the middle. As both products and vehicles of these tropes, La Maternelle and Maternité not only illustrate how popular cinema disseminated and justified certain value- laden assumptions about female identity in the late 1920s and early 1930s; they also reveal the limitations of French feminism and socially-engaged, progressive art of the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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