Mise au point sur l'idée du Grand Louvre

Les ‘grands projets’ d'architecture réalisés par François Mitterrand représentent sa volonté de marquer son époque avec une empreinte culturelle et de s'inscrire personnellement dans l'Histoire française de façon permanente, traduisant par ce biais une forte présidentialisation du domaine de la culture. Malgré sa préférence personnelle très marquée parmi les nombreux projets pour celui du Grand Louvre, décelée à travers son suivi très attentif de sa réalisation, Mitterrand s'est curieusement défendu en public, d'en avoir eu l'idée initiale. La paternité de ce projet est ainsi devenue un sujet de controverse dans le milieu culturel parisien, qui semble finalement avoir tranché en faveur du ministre de la Culture, Jack Lang, qui lui aurait soufflé l'idée. Vingt ans après l'inauguration de la nouvelle aile Richelieu par le président en novembre 1993, cet article cherche à élucider cette controverse, en s'appuyant sur des archives présidentielles et ministérielles ainsi que sur de nombreux entretiens d'acteurs de l'époque. L'analyse qui en résulte révèle à quel point la transparence peut se perdre dans les complexités du processus décisionnel en politique, surtout en ce qui concerne François Mitterrand, qui cultivait l'ambigüité dans ses propos afin de mieux gérer son entourage et son héritage politiques.     

Boserup revisited: Population and technology in tropical African agriculture, 1900–1940

The Oriental Renaissance: Europe's Rediscovery of India and the East 1680–1880 by R. Schwab, translated by G. Patterson‐Black and V. Reinking with a Foreword by E.W. Said. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. Pp.xxiv + 542. $22.50 paperback.

Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth Century Bengal by T. Raychaudhuri. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988. Pp.xvii + 369, £12.00.

Colonial Dutch Studies. An Interdisciplinary Approach edited by Eric Nooter and Patricia U. Bonomi. New York and London: New York University Press, 1988. Pp.xii + 141. $30.00.

The Economy of Colonial America by Edwin J. Perkins. Second edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Pp.xii + 251. $30.00 ($13.00 paper).

Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience edited by Nathan O. Hatch and Harry S. Stout. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Pp.viii + 298. £22.50.

The British Navy and the Use of Naval Power in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Jeremy Black and Philip Woodfine. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988. Pp.xiv + 273; maps. £27.50.

The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom by Nicholas B. Dirks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp.xxiv + 458. £35.00.

Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire by C.A. Bayly, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp.xii + 230; maps, glossary and illus. £17.50.

Perfecting the World: The Life and Times of Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, 1798–1866 by Amalie M. Kass and Edward H. Kass. Boston: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988. Pp.xxx + 642; genealogy and illus. £24.50.

The Life of Charles Ledger (1818–1905): Alpacas and Quinine by Gabriele Gramiccia. London: Macmillan, 1988. Pp.xiv + 222. £30.00.

Benevolent Neutrality: Indian Government Policy and Labour Migration to British Guiana, 1854–1884 by Basdeo Mangru. London: Hansib Publishing, 1987. Pp.267; maps and illus. £12.95.

Sir Robert Falconer: A Biography by James G. Greenlee. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1988. Pp.407. £26.50; $43.00 (hardback).

Francophone Sub‐Saharan Africa, 1880–1985 by Patrick Manning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp.199; maps + figures, bibliographical essay. £25.00 (hardback); £8.95 (paperback).

Essays on African History: From the Slave Trade to Neocolonialism by Jean Suret Canale. Translated by C. Hurst. Preface by B. Davidson. Bibliography of works by Jean Suret Canale concerning Africa. London: C. Hurst and Co., 1988. Pp.232; index and bibliography. £25.00.

The Boer War and Military Reforms by Jay Stone and Erwin A. Schmidl. Lanham: University Press of America, 1988. Pp.xi + 345, maps. $22.75.

Rider Haggard and the Fiction of Empire: A Critical Study of British Imperial Fiction by Wendy R. Katz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp.ix + 171. £22.50.

The Commonwealth Armies: Manpower and Organisation in Two World Wars by F.W. Perry. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988. Pp.vi + 250. £27.50.

Imperial Rearguard: Wars of Empire 1919–85 by Lawrence James. London: Brasseys, 1988. Pp. + 242, maps and illus. £19.95.

Colonial Development. Die Grundlegung moderner Entwicklungspolitik durch Grossbritannien, 1919–1949 by Herward Sieberg. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner Verlag, 1985. Pp.736. DM 78.

Appeasement and Germany's Last Bid for Colonies by A.J. Crazier. London: Macmillan in association with King's College, London, 1988. Pp.x + 349, maps. £33.00.

Australians, 1938 edited by Bill Gammage and Peter Spearritt, the fourth volume of Australians: A National Library, edited by Alan D. Gilbert and K.S. Inglis. Sydney: Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates, 1987. Pp.xviii + 474. £350 (the set of 11 vols.).

Australians from 1939 edited by Ann Curthoys, A.W. Martin and Tim Rowse. Sydney: Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates, 1987. Pp.xvii and 474, maps, tables and illus.

The Politics of Persuasion by Desmond Dinan. Lanham: University Press of America, 1988. Pp.xii + 307.

King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan by Mary C. Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp.xxii + 289; maps and photographs. £25.00.

Collusion Across the Jordan by Avi Shlaim. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Pp.x + 676; maps. £35.00.

The Commonwealth Armies and the Korean War: An Alliance Study by Jeffrey Grey. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988. Pp.xii + 244; maps and illus. £29.95.

The Oxford Book of Canadian Political Anecdotes edited by Jack McLeod. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Pp.xiii + 273. £17.50.

Mastering Australian History by Ronald W. Laidlaw. Melbourne: Macmillan, 1988. Pp.vi + 477; illus. £5.95 (paperback).

British Review of New Zealand Studies edited by Ged Martin and Guy M. Robinson. No. I, July 1988.     

Cultura y vulgaridad en La Habana para un infante difunto

This essay examines Italo Calvino's novel If on a Winter's Night a Traveler as the author's experiment with the conventions of the classic detective fiction formula. Calvino launches two parallel investigations: the epistemological one carried out by his protagonist, the Reader, and the ontological one carried out by us, the readers. The two investigations, the essay argues, come together at the moment of the novel's denouement, but where in traditional detective fiction this occurs at the end of the narrative, in Calvino's it is hidden in the center. Numerous clues interspersed throughout the novel (as are many red herrings as well) lead to some of the keys to Calvino's game of cloak and dagger, the most significant being in the names of the protagonists. Chief among these is that of Ermes Marana, whose connection to a homonymous writer of the seventeenth-century brings to light issues of authenticity and authorship.     

The 2011 Indignés/Occupy Movements in France and Ireland: An Analysis of the Causes of Weak Mobilisations

This article examines the extent to which employment, particularly manufacturing employment, has been 'hollowed out' as a result of internationalisation strategies of leading French multinationals. It finds evidence of a shift to overseas employment, but notes the complexity of globalising trends which make it difficult to interpret them solely in terms of competition for lower labour costs. However, globalisation has shifted power decisively towards business and away from labour and the state. As a result, the state has found it difficult to steer betw een protection of labour and the promotion of flexibility in a relatively strictly regulated economy. State interventionism in social policy has been both a response to and an instrument of economic restructuring.     

Baffles and Stockades: Entryway Construction at Southern Plains Fortifications,A.D. 1500–1850

Southern Plains archaeologists have for years reported piecemeal data suggesting that ancestors of the Wichita Indians periodically built fortifications. Since 2003, we have conducted archaeological and geophysical investigations at multiple Late Prehistoric and European contact era fortified Wichita sites occupied between about a.d. 1500 and a.d. 1811. We seek to better understand the areal extent, timing, and structural changes associated with facilities that appear to have functioned as redoubts (Drass, Perkins, and Vehik 2018). In this article, we focus on how the Wichita constructed and secured fortification entryways. Given the inherent vulnerability of entryways, architects across the globe have designed a variety of defensive configurations to confound attackers. For the Wichita, the introduction of horses and guns beginning in the 1600s magnified these challenges. Our findings indicate that baffled gates, often paired with fenced extended entryways, facilitated quick entry by defenders and dependents while serving as impediments to hostile intruders.