French History
Undergraduate Dissertation Prize Winners
2009 Winner: James
Eastwood (Cambridge): ‘Noble Obligation and Political
Imagination in ninth-century Carolingian Francia'.
Panel citation: 'This is a clever piece, a very clever piece,
and one only really appreciates how clever as it comes towards
its
conclusion.
Mature,
confident and engaging, it copes well with difficult sources and
understands the developing historiographical issues clearly. Both
sources and the secondary literature have been subjected to very
close and independent reading. Presentation is clear, references
correctly cited although, curiously, there is no final bibliography.
Throughout the thesis, which is advanced in an extremely logical
and coherent manner, is contextualised in the light of changing
approaches to primary and secondary source material. The substantial
third chapter on imperial connections moves the study from its
focussed beginnings to significant reflection on wider European
considerations. While the author suggests much of the work is observational
(cf. Conclusion) it is in fact a useful insight into interrogating
varying source material and matching this to current historical
research on family, obligation and European structures in the early
Middle Ages.
If we have some reservations they derive from the author’s
assumption of knowledge that none of us had and from a sense that
he may occasionally be loading his sources with ideological baggage
that they just can’t sustain. The concepts of ‘Noble
obligation’ and ‘political imagination’ are elastic, and the latter is never closely defined. There is
also a danger of modern scholars reading too much subtlety into
statements that were, and were meant to be, taken at face value.
Nevertheless, this is an impressive piece that engages with big,
well-studied themes but succeeds in establishing its own distinctive
viewpoint. Publication in some form should not be ruled out.' [download
file]
2009 Joint Runners-up:
Melanie Pocock (Bristol): ‘The
French Pantheon 1791. Re-defining the dynamics of power in public
art’. [download
file]
Joanna Warson (LSE): ‘Britain, France and
the Nigerian Civil War, 1967-1970'. [download
file]
The Chair of the Panel would also like to make honourable
mention of the following thesis: Michael Surman (Durham), "‘A
Holy Nation, a peculiar people":
Religion, region and nation in medieval Brittany’. [download
file]
_______________________________
2008 Joint Winners: David
Henry Doyle (Trinity College Dublin): “What role did
Public Opinion play in the formation of French foreign policy from
June 1791 to January 1792”.
Panel citation: “The dissertation sought to examine a problem
in the early years of the Constituent Assembly to which no satisfactory
answer
has yet been forthcoming from historians of the Revolution: to
what extent were the Assembly deputies duped into declaring war
in 1792 by a small clique from within, and to what extent were
they responding to public opinion from without? The dissertation
uses a very broad range of primary and secondary sources in order
to demonstrate that there were important tensions between the Assembly
and the public over attitudes to foreign authorities, and their
peoples; even more impressively, however, it highlights the ‘interactive
mechanisms’ between deputies within and opinion without,
which ensured that foreign policy issues were not discussed in
a vacuum. By combining a keen sense of political evolution over
the narrow time-frame chosen for analysis with an evaluation of
the evidence from the records of the Assembly itself, the dissertation
shows how opinion could be mobilised by deputies on the basis of
reports (notably from deputies from frontier constituencies) from
the provinces.” [download file]
2008 Joint Winners: Julia Gilham
(Bristol): “Memory, discrimination and integration:
a study of the 17 October 1961 massacre of Algerians in Paris”.
Panel citation: “The dissertation examined the contested
evidence and subsequent history of the notorious demonstration
of c.20,000
Algerians
of
17 October 1961 in Paris, and its repression by the authorities.
It did so in the context of a sophisticated awareness of the historiography
of memory and the related issues of institutional discrimination
and attitudes towards the integration of immigrants and minorities
in contemporary France. The panel were impressed with the careful
handling of the necessarily incomplete and contested evidence regarding
the events of that day, especially the evaluation of contemporary
newspaper testimony balanced against later witness evidence. The
dissertation is notable for tracing the evolution of ‘memory
disputes’, for the sophisticated handling of limited photographic
evidence to expose the discriminatory nature of the massacre, and
for the analysis of decisions by local communities to erect commemorative
plaques in memory of the victims of that day.” [download
file]
2008 Runner up:
Hannah Yadi (Durham): “Les Oubliés de l'Histoire
- Les Harkis. A history Distorted by official narratives”.
Panel citation: “This dissertation examines the 'neglect'
of Harki history through the prism of a 'triple silence'; the reluctance
of the
official authorities in both Algeria and France to come to terms
with a group whose role had been deeply problematic and embarrassing
to both sides, albeit for different reasons, coupled with the reluctance
of Harki participants themselves to acknowledge their own role.
The Panel found it commendable in the way in which it integrated
selected oral testimonies into a discriminating use of the available
and growing secondary literature on the subject.” [download
file]
_______________________________
2007 Winner: Katie Alloway (Durham): The Limits of Dechristianisation:
Religion and Revolution in the District of Montpellier, 1789-99.
[download
file]
2007 Runners-up:
Joe Philp (Cambridge): The Idea of an International Order in
the Political Thought of the Abbé de Mably. [download
file]
James Salmon (Durham): Surveillée,
Encadrée, Canalisée: Institutionalisation
and suppression of festivals by the religious and secular authorities
in Bordeaux, 1600-1789. [download
file]
Andrew Smith (St Andrews): The Midi, the Métropole
and the Marshall Plan. A Study of the Midi vignerons in the French
Fourth
Republic [download
file]
_______________________________
2006 Joint Winners:
Charlotte Wink (Durham)
Bryony Palmer (Oxford)
2006 Runners-up:
2006 - Rachel Leow (Warwick)
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