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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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