La Maison Française
d’Oxford – Monday 24 January 2011.
This research colloquium brings together historians of nineteenth
and and twentieth-century France to explore the issue of ‘political
legacies’. It is one that overshadows, of course, the history
of a country that has lived with the profound and ambiguous legacy
of its revolution. That was a political movement devoted to liberty,
although what that liberty actually and was and how it would be
realized, were open questions then and thereafter. As historians,
we often talk about the ‘burden’ of the past –
and it was often the case that a political legacy served to constrain
the way that people thought about the present, seeing it through
the hopes and fears that had been experienced by previous generations.
But political legacies often had a more positive impact that that
suggests. They served to shape the way in which contemporaries
sought to harness the opportunities of the present, and orient
the expectations of the future. In short, we shall focus on the
dynamic and ambiguous nature of political legacies as one of the
ways in which the past inevitably shapes the political space of
the present. The colloquium will be an occasion to examine the
role of political legacies in a comparative light, and to explore
what other disciplines (notably political science) have to tell
us about political legacies. It will also be a moment for British
historians to honour the contribution of Professor Malcolm Crook
to the discipline of French History, notably through his many
years as editor of French History.
Programme:
10.45 : Coffee
11.00 : Welcome from the Directeur de la Maison Française
(M. Luc Borot)
11.10 : First Session : Political Legacies and the French Revolution
- Michel Biard [Rouen], ‘« Machine jacobine »
et « centralisation jacobine », deux fantasmes historiographiques
revisités à l'aune d'un exemple local : la Société
populaire de Honfleur’.
- Alan Forrest (York), `A Military Legacy: The Army and Politics
in Nineteenth-Century France'.
Chair and Discussant: Julian Swann
12.45: Lunch-break
14.00: Second Session: The Weight of Political Legacies in Nineteenth
and early Twentieth-Century France
- Julian Wright [Durham] Between the present and the future? the
uncertain reformist legacy of French socialism'
- Christophe Prochasson [Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales,
Paris]: 'François Furet, la revolution et le futur passe
de la gauche'.
Chair and Discussant: Colin Heywood [Nottingham]
15.30: Tea and Pause
16.00: Third Session: The Legacies of the Recent Past
- Robert Gildea [Worcester College, Oxford], The Legacy of the
Resistance in the oral testimony of 1968 activists
- Sudhir Hazareesingh [Balliol College, Oxford], The Myth of Charles
De Gaulle
- Jean-Pascal Daloz [Directeur de Recherche au CNRS], Political
Representation in France and the enduring tension between Republican
ideals and court style
Chair and Discussant: Julian Jackson [Queen Mary, University
of London]
18.00: Concluding Remarks by Professor William Doyle, University
of Bristol.
REGISTRATION:
A registration form for participation in the workshop can be downloaded
here.
Convenors:
Julian Wright (University of Durham) j.wright@durham.ac.uk
Mark Greengrass (University of Sheffield) m.greengrass@sheffield.ac.uk
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