Welcome to another edition of Historians Under the Spotlight — an occasional interview series that offers a snapshot from academics’ lives: their passions, interests, and advice. You can catch up with previous posts here.
This month, our spotlight is on Helen M. Davies (University of Melbourne), whose book Herminie and Fanny Pereire: Elite Jewish women in nineteenth-century France has just been published in paperback in MUP’s Studies in Modern French and Francophone History. It forms the companion volume to Emile and Isaac Pereire: Bankers, Socialists, and Sephardic Jews in nineteenth-century France, also published with MUP. You can find out more about Helen’s books here.
What is your latest book about?
My book explores the lives of two women in nineteenth-century France: Herminie Pereire (née Rodrigues), born in 1805, and Fanny Pereire, born twenty year later. Herminie married Emile Pereire, and Fanny married his brother Isaac: two of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the nation. My subjects were both sisters-in-law, and mother and daughter. Remarkable Sephardic Jewish women, they provided the Pereire brothers with a firm family foundation and played a key role in their business and public success across the century. This was a period not only of rapidly shifting political regimes but also of evolving and increasingly bitter antisemitic attack, which they contested valiantly. My book uses some fascinating family archives to construct the intimate as well as public lives of these two related women, who were at the apex of wealth and at the heart of a distinctive Jewish culture at a time of fractious relations of class and faith.
How did you first become interested in the Pereire family?
My path to the Pereire family was circuitous and didn’t spring from an academic environment to any large degree. It’s a longue histoire, so bear with me.
After finishing a BA (Hons) and MA in history at University of Melbourne, I launched on a career outside academia which took in both the private and public sectors. During my final years I worked as a senior executive with the State Government of Victoria.
Two things emerged from this. Working on business development and large infrastructure projects, I became interested in the role of the entrepreneur. For a time, I also had responsibility for Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building, reputed to be one of the only purpose-built exhibition spaces of the nineteenth century still home to its original purpose. Engagement with this exhibition centre led my interests to coalesce around the entrepreneurial activity of that century. On retirement, I became determined to carve out a thesis topic that might explore these possibilities.
It was through a programme hosted by the Centre International d’Education Pédagogique at Sèvres, and conducted by University of Melbourne academic staff, that I first encountered the frères Pereire through a focus on Walter Benjamin’s “Paris: Capital of the nineteenth century”. At the same time, an exhibition at the Musée Carnavalet on the development of the great Parisian hotels of the nineteenth century drew on the history of the great exhibitions of the period, and Emile and Isaac Pereire featured prominently. So, it was here that I discovered two entrepreneurial men whose genius helped formulate advanced policy and infrastructure ideas, and who were also great implementers. My interest quickened.
A PhD at Melbourne, which I submitted in 2005, evolved from this mélange. I was fortunate since teaching and research in French History were very strong there. Alison Patrick had laid the foundations, and her students Peter McPhee and David Garrioch, who later went on to Monash University, were joined by Charles Sowerwine to form a terrific faculty. I need to spotlight Peter McPhee who was a superb supervisor of my thesis. Melbourne University was generous to a mature student with an unusual background, and my doctoral colleagues were very congenial. I should also mention the George Rudé Society, which, through its biennial seminar and other events, has maintained the focus on French history research in the Southern Hemisphere.
Ultimately, the great exhibitions assumed less importance as the thesis developed, although Emile Pereire had been directly involved in organising the Paris Exhibition of 1855. And this development led also to the Pereire family through the family archive which I eventually discovered and was able to gain access to. It was such a bonus, and contributed enormously to my PhD thesis and to the book which emerged: Emile and Isaac Pereire: Bankers, Socialists, and Sephardic Jews in nineteenth-century France (MUP, 2015).
This first book owed so much to the personal testimony of the Pereire women that once I had finished with it, it was very clear that there was another one waiting to happen. This time I was able to honour Herminie and Fanny Pereire for the equal part they played in the extraordinary story of the frères Pereire.
Tell us about the highlights — and low lights — of your research for this book.
The research process itself was a highlight. Probably because my previous working life had been tied to the requirements of whoever my employer happened to be at the time, either a public company or a government service, it was a joy to be let loose on my own project.
Although the Pereires feature prominently in the public record, in public archives, newspapers, and through their own considerable writings, locating the family archives was definitely a highlight. It was thrilling. I was fortunate too that the members of the Pereire family whom I met as a result were generous with their time and support of me without imposing any editorial constraints.
At the same time, the period before I came to the archives was difficult because I felt strongly that I needed the personal testimony of these exceptional individuals. So that was a low light, and it went on for quite a while. But Charles Sowerwine, whose network among French historians, archives and libraries in Paris, is prodigious, eventually cut through on my behalf. I am profoundly grateful to him.
What advice would you give to authors writing historical biographies?
I fear that any advice I might offer has been canvassed many times before. But since you ask…
First, it helps to have access to a personal archive. Eminent historians have written biographies without one, but in my experience letters, journals, and other personal memorabilia contribute so much more. The public record tells of the event, but the letter tells us about the emotion infusing the event and the attitudes of the key players. The letter can also give us information that will not appear anywhere else, but which is significant to the subject. That one of Fanny Pereire’s children was profoundly disabled, physically and intellectually, only became clear through letters written by members of the extended family. And the effects of Emile Pereire’s chronic asthma, which were so onerous for the whole family, only emerged in letters.
A thorough grounding in the historiography is essential, to situate the individual life or lives within the broader historical context in a way that draws out their significance.
Obviously, immersion in the historical context is also crucial. When writing a piece on some letters written during the revolutionary period by members of the Pereires’ immediate family, for instance, I found the letters to be replete with loving sentiments that I might have interpreted as homoerotic. But then, as I dug further, I found that this affectionate language was an accepted form of communication between men of the same family and male friends. It made a difference to my interpretation of their relationships.
I benefited too from the generosity of friends and colleagues who put me in touch with sources I would otherwise have missed. This included some really significant primary sources. It helps to put the word around about your interests, give papers, go to conferences, write articles on progress with your biography.
What are you working on now?
I have two projects.
The first is an article on Nanci Rodrigues, a member of the extended family that included all the Pereires. A Sephardic Jewish woman, she is already the subject of historical interest for her work in 1822 in founding a primary school for the education of poor Jewish girls in Paris. There are some intriguing letters in the Pereire archive and in the fonds d’Eichthal (BnF) written by her, letters that are surprisingly modern in tone. So, I want to explore Nanci Rodrigues’ story further.
The second is another article, this time on Henri Castro, who, in 1844 founded a French colony in Texas. He has been the subject of inquiry by US historians who, understandably, concentrate on the colony he founded. I want to understand the man, a recently emancipated Jewish citizen of France with a considerable background in the Sephardic community of Bayonne, and how that propelled him to undertake such a challenging project in the New World.
Quick-fire questions
Which French place would you most like to visit right now?
Notre Dame de Paris. My husband and I worshipped there the day before the fire, as we had done for several months prior. The fire, so devastating for everyone, was devastating for us in many personal ways. It would be wonderful to see the restoration.
Favourite archive or library?
All the French archives are great. I’m rather fond of the Archives nationales du monde du travail in Roubaix. Those in small provincial towns have a special place for me, though. Maybe because I come from so far away, staff are invariably attentive and prepared to go the extra mile.
Favourite century?
The nineteenth.. I’m also taken with the Sephardic community in France’s southwest before the Revolution and emancipation. So, the eighteenth century has some appeal too.
Éclair or saucisson?
Saucisson, definitely.
