France and the Origins of the First World War (original) (raw)
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France and the Origins of the Second World War
The Journal of Military History, 1997
This senes of specially eommissioned titles Joeuses attention on signifieant and oflen eontroversial euents and thernes of world history in the present eentury. Eaeh book provides szifficient narrative and explanation Jor the newcomer to the subjeet while offering, Jor more advaneed study, detailed souree-riferenees and bibliographies, together with interpretation and reassessment in the light of reeent seholarship.
France and Its Empire at War Syllabus (Graduate Readings Seminar, 2011)
This course examines the history of metropolitan France and its colonial empire during the First World War. The infamous trenches of the Western Front are central to any understanding of the Great War in general and of France's role in particular. Most of this front was located, after all, in France, and the war was both won and lost in this most decisive of theaters. Thus, we will pay close attention to the war in the metropole, both on the battlefield and on the home front. Nevertheless, a full accounting of the history of this industrialized and global conflict must extend far beyond the trenches of northeastern France. Waging total war required the mobilization of "La plus grande France" (or "Greater France," as the combined entity of the nation and its overseas possessions was known). Accordingly, we will also examine both the ways the war affected France's colonies-reaching into the lives and spaces of empire in profound ways-and the contributions of the colonies to the war effort-providing men and other resources to help France prosecute the war on the Western Front and beyond. The huge extent of the French colonial empire, then the world's second largest and stretching from North and West Africa, to Madagascar, Indochina, the Pacific, and the Caribbean, helped ensure that the war was truly global. Requirements and Grading Grades will be based upon the satisfactory completion of all of the following requirements: • Attendance and active participation in seminar discussions (40%) • One short class presentation (10%) • One 2-3 page paper proposal (10%) • One 20-25 page final essay (40%)
'France, Europe and the World', SSFH conference programme
The history of France has been profoundly shaped by its European and global entanglements. Whether through its diplomatic and military engagements, colonial encounters, cultural and intellectual exchanges, or the interconnections of trade and commerce, the porous and fluid nature of France’s borders have brought a complex range of influences upon France’s history. As the role and status of France within Europe and the wider world changed, so did perceptions and representations of France. This conference seeks to explore French history from international, transnational and global perspectives and invites speakers to reconsider the significance and relevance of the nation state. We invite participants to interpret the conference theme in its broadest terms.
History Compass, 2006
This article surveys the evolution of the historical literature on France and the origins of the Second World War. It links history writing about French institutions and policy-making to wider trends in French politics and society as well as to various approaches to understanding the history and culture of France. It argues that for many years the historiography was dominated by narratives of decline within France which were rooted in long-standing traditions of interpreting the French past in terms of decline, fall, and renewal. These were exacerbated by wartime and postwar political score-settling and by the increasing political dominance of Gaullism during the 1960s and 1970s. It also identifies a tendency among American and especially British historians to view French history and politics as terminally in a state of crisis as well as a Cold War tendency towards the militarization of historical interpretations of the inter-war period. It then traces the emergence of a fully fledged revisionist view linked, at least in part, to the growing prominence attributed to financial and industrial issues by the international historians of the 1960s and 1970s. It ends with a plea to move towards methodologies that focus on the interrelationship between cultural and material factors as the most promising means of taking the study of this important subject forward.
Introduction: France, 1940-1944: The Ambiguous Legacy
Contemporary French Civilization, 2007
In his last work of non-fiction The Drowned and the Saved, Holocaust survivor and renowned autobiographer Primo Levi devotes an entire chapter to what he refers to as "the gray zone." Drawing a parallel with power structures in Nazi extermination camps-where some detainees were forced to work for their captors-Levi describes the hierarchies inside collaborating governments during World War II, where individuals from defeated countries worked in the service of German aggressors. Levi writes that those collaborating individuals and administrations inhabit that "gray zone," which is "where the two camps of masters and servants both diverge and converge" (42).
Was the Great War a watershed ? The economics of World War One in France
This paper presents a broad, quantitatively documented, overview of the French economy during World War One, trying to answer the question of whether the war was a turning point in French economic history. It first describes the various shocks the war imposed to the economy, from invasion to labour and capital mobilisation. It then studies macroeconomic policies, especially the finance of both the budget and the balance of payments deficits. It then turn to government interventions in the economy, suggesting they were less important than frequently asserted, and showing thanks to two quantitative tests that the economy probably adapted to the war more spontaneously than usually believed. It ends with some remarks on the effects of the war on future growth, arguing that the main problem for France resulting from the war was the change in the international political and monetary environment.