Burdens: Opportunities: Expectations: Political Legacies in Post-Revolutionary France:

An International Workshop in Honour of Professor Malcolm Crook.

La Maison Française d’Oxford – Monday 24 January 2011.

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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:

Welcome from the Directeur de la Maison Française (M. Luc Borot)

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’. [mp3]
Alan Forrest (York), `A Military Legacy: The Army and Politics in Nineteenth-Century France’. [mp3]
Chair and Discussant: Julian Swann. [mp3]

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’. [mp3]
Christophe Prochasson (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris): ‘François Furet, la revolution et le futur passe de la gauche’. [mp3]
Chair and Discussant: Colin Heywood (Nottingham) [mp3]

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. [mp3]
Sudhir Hazareesingh (Balliol College, Oxford), The Myth of Charles De Gaulle [mp3]
Jean-Pascal Daloz (Directeur de Recherche au CNRS), Political Representation in France and the enduring tension between Republican ideals and court style. [mp3]
Chair and Discussant: Julian Jackson (Queen Mary, University of London) [mp3]

Concluding Remarks by Professor William Doyle (University of Bristol).

Convenors:
Julian Wright (University of Durham) j.wright@durham.ac.uk
Mark Greengrass (University of Sheffield) m.greengrass@sheffield.ac.uk

International Workshop in Honour of Professor Malcolm Crook, Oxford January 2011.

International Workshop in Honour of Professor Malcolm Crook, Oxford January 2011.

International Workshop in Honour of Professor Malcolm Crook, Oxford January 2011.

International Workshop in Honour of Professor Malcolm Crook, Oxford January 2011.

International Workshop in Honour of Professor Malcolm Crook, Oxford January 2011.

International Workshop in Honour of Professor Malcolm Crook, Oxford January 2011.