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Focuses on the political crises that endangered the Third Republic in France before the Second World War. Impact of Boulangism on politics; Emergence of ecclesiastical hierarchy and monarchist deputies; Massive injection of capital.

Examines anti-Protestant writings during France's early Third Republic era. French reexamination of their national identity in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune; Alien elements invading the French body politic; Prominent position that individual Protestants held during the formative years of the Third Republic.

Examines the existence of a third side to the barricades in France's civil war of 1871. Analogies that are implicit in François Furet's presentation of the Edgar Quinet/Alphonse Peyrat debate; Groups which comprise the Party of Conciliation.

Stresses that military monuments were the only obvious examples of the modern cult of death and the statue-mania of France's Third Republic. Number of monuments studied in the Department of the Aisne; Information on the religious form to some of the monuments.

Focuses on the political career of Frederic Joseph Caillaux and his association with Alliance Republicaine Democratique (ARD) of the Third Republic of France for the period 1901-1912. Reasons for the creation of ARD; Caillaux's objective to join ARD; Fall of the Caillaux government; Shift of the Alliance from cosmopolitanism to jingo nationalism.

It has often been noted that Seurat’s early paintings and drawings downplay representation in favour of an increased attention to formal properties. What remains unexplored is how this quality can be understood in relation to the politics of the French Third Republic. This essay argues that Seurat’s early work was haunted by political events (most notably the Paris Commune), and by aspects of the artistic past (specifically the radical associations of naturalism) that many wished in the early 1880s to forget. With reference to the writings of Marx and Zola, each of whom offered perceptive diagnoses of the Third Republic’s uncertain relation to the past, I read Seurat’s depiction of the Tuileries Palace ruins and his series of stonebreaker images as reflections upon this crisis in historical memory. Whilst the repetitive weave of paint and conté crayon from which these images are constituted might seem to predict the emphasis on pictorial structure that characterized later forms of abstraction, it is argued here that in Seurat’s work it operates as a screen that occludes but at the same recalls repressed histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conflicts over cultural memory represent a significant stake in definitions of Frenchness advanced by opposing nationalist groups in the years before the First World War. The concept of a new ‘renaissance française’, broached by conservative critics and historians of art and literature often at odds with prevailing democratic republicanism, looked to the past to fashion a programme of renewal that challenged both the artistic vanguard and royalists’ advocacy of a Latinist classicism. This essay maps the social and cultural forces that shaped critics’ promotion of a new generation of artists credited with reinvigorating an indigenous tradition rooted in the Gothic and in a vernacular classicism associated with figures such as the Le Nains and Chardin. This loose grouping sought to reassert France’s cultural leadership in Europe under the aegis of a creative elite committed to the synthesis of the nation’s exceptional qualities embedded in its diverse, though complementary, artistic traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cover of the Autumn 2010 issue of the journal is presented, showing an image from the Bibliothéque Nationale in France, titled "The arrest of Deputy Baudin, 1 May 1893."