Revolution and the Jews

Taking the public demonstrations in France after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo as its starting point, the essay considers the active role Jews played in shaping the relationship between religion and politics in modern Europe to argue that this history can allow us to think more expansively about the position of Islam in current discussions of theo-politics in France and Europe more broadly.     

Politicians,Merchants, and Colonial Maritime War: The Political and Economic Background of the American Act of 1708

During the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13), there were attempts to support colonial maritime war by legislation, and the American Act of 1708 can be seen as their culmination. Historians who study privateering or colonial history have referred to this act in several contexts, such as reform in prize administration, naval impressment in American colonies, and Spanish‐American trade. However, the political and economic interests behind this act have not been fully investigated. By examining the process of the enactment of the American Act together with antecedent attempts to promote colonial maritime war in parliament, this article reveals the political and vested interests involved in the act, the relations between them, and the influence they had on the content of the act. This analysis will show the complex interaction between politics, trade, and colonial maritime war in the early‐18th‐century American colonies.     

The importance of Old French chronicles as historical sources of the Fourth Crusade and the early Latin Empire of Constantinople

Michael Angold has shown that the collapse of Greek resistance to the crusading army has not yet been fully explained by historians (Journal of Medieval History, 25, 3 (1999) 257–78). The chronicles of Villehardouin and Clari are an additional, important source, written by eyewitnesses. They provide first-hand evidence of the morale of the army, its sense of mission and the problems which it faced. Henri de Valenciennes provides a similar, first-hand account of the start of the reign of Henry of Hainaut as Latin Emperor. Close study of these texts helps to explain the victory of the westerners. They are even more important as historical sources than as examples of early French prose.     

曲折中艰难前行——辛亥后社会长期动乱的困惑与思考

辛亥革命以后中国社会长期军阀割据、国家分裂、战争频仍、社会动乱的现实。让人们对革命的成果和意义感到困惑。然而纵观英、法、关、日诸国政治近代化的进程,元一例外都经历过曲折与反复。中国的政治近代化进程亦然。政治近代化是一个不断进步、发展、完善的过程。不可能一蹴而就;它必须有一个起点、开端,然后才有可能继续前进。中国的民主革命,从辛亥算起,到1949年真正意义上的近代民主革命任务的完成,为时近40年,这较之荚、法、美、目政治近代化所经历的反复与曲折、所经历的时间,并不为过。辛亥革命是中国政治近代化过程的起点和开端,没有辛玄革命,就没有中国政治近代化的进程。     

Notes from a French perspective

This article uses John Kingdon's “multiple streams” model of the policy process to explore the role of French public intellectuals in processes of cultural and educational policy formation. The relative autonomy attributed by Kingdon to the “primeval soup” of ideas constituted by the policy stream (as distinct from the “problems” and “politics” streams posited by his model) provides the basis for this exploration. However, Kingdon's model is not developed with any reference to France, public intellectuals or cultural policy. The corresponding adjustments required are themselves enlightening. Public intellectuals must thus be distinguished from policy experts. They are characterised by their public visibility, the broad frame of reference that they bring to bear on the issues of the moment, certain limitations in technical expertise, and a capacity not simply to work through policy alternatives, but also to project their own counter‐agendas. These issues are explored particularly in relation to a selection of policy reports produced by public intellectuals.     

Alphonse Aulard Revisited

Alphonse Aulard (1849–1928) institutionalised and professionalised the practice of history. Beyond this undisputed contribution, however, Aulard's place in historiography remains contested. Scholars' perceptions that anti-clerical and radical-republican commitments skewed his research findings, and that he chose narrowly to study history as a series of constitutional, institutional and political developments in stark contrast with his student Albert Mathiez, have divided opinion regarding the beliefs and significance of Aulard. Yet Aulard's work and the cultural and political contribution it made have become a source of inspiration for a generation of scholars now studying revolutionary and European history. Based for the first time on an examination of his private papers, professional activities and oeuvre in tandem, this article revisits Aulard, and, using a post-analytic hermeneutics, re-reads his work in order to show how in his age Aulard advanced a demonstrably original contribution to historical research. He likewise left behind him a neo-Jacobin legacy more attentive to raison d'état than party division and championing international, liberal democracy and human rights. Multifaceted commitments therefore both explain the content of Aulard's oeuvre and help to understand contemporary developments, and suggest future directions, in historical enquiry.     

Concepts of citizenship in France during the long eighteenth century

François Furet famously described the French Revolution as ’the first experiment with democracy’, and modern French citizenship is often seen as having emerged during this period. Universal male suffrage was practised for the first time in 1792 and the Revolution also witnessed debate over such issues as: the rights of citizens; the extension of the franchise to poorer inhabitants and black slaves; and even whether women should be given political rights. Yet, the modern idea of citizenship did not emerge from nowhere in 1789. Rather it was the product of more than a century of debate. This article examines the different understandings of citizenship that were competing for dominance in France during the long eighteenth century: the ancient conception; the Bodinian understanding and the rights-based approach. Not only does it demonstrate the contribution of these approaches (and in particular the last) to revolutionary understandings of citizenship, but it also highlights how the tensions of the eighteenth-century debates, and the ambiguities inherent in the rights-based conception, sparked some of the key controversies of the Revolution.     

1936年法国防范德国重占莱茵非军事区的决策

1936年初,大量有关德国即将重占莱茵非军事区的情报促使法国政府着手研究防范对策,其结果是法国内阁在2月27日做出了“不单独行动”的决定。该决定是日后法国政府应对危机的基本出发点,也是其最终妥协退让的前兆。法国政府的这一决策源于英国的不合作、法国军方的消极畏战以及萨罗政府自身的软弱等因素,是20世纪30年代法国日趋没落的现实在政府决策层面的集中反映。     

The Icarians and Their Neighbors

This chapter examines the relationships between the mostly French Icarian communists of Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa, and the Midwest communities among which they settled. It gives a thumbnail sketch of the Icarian history in America and then focuses on how the French-speaking, communist Icarians interacted with the English-speaking individualist societies around them in their different localities.     

Creole Architecture: A Comparative Analysis of Upper and Lower Louisiana and Saint Domingue

What factors accounted for variations in architectural traditions in the French colonial settlements of the New World? This paper tests several of the propositions of culture theory against what is known of the process of tradition-formation in the French vernacular architecture of the Illinois Country, Lower Louisiana, and the Caribbean colony of Saint Domingue. It explores the extent to which generalized cultural processes such as preadaptation, founder’s effect, and cultural syncretism account for changes in the forms of typical settler’s houses.