Seventeenth Douglas Johnson Memorial Lecture in French History
The Society for the Study of French History
and
The Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France
Present:
The Annual Douglas Johnson Memorial Lecture,
Monday 11th January 2027.
Pleading for anarchy? Lawyers and prosecutors in anarchist trials (1880s-90s)
Professor Constance Bantman (University of Surrey)
The 2027 Annual Douglas Johnson Memorial Lecture will be the 17th in this series, organised by the Society for the Study of French History and the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France. It will be held at the the Institut français, South Kensington, London.
We are delighted to welcome Professor Constance Bantman (University of Surrey) to give a paper entitled ‘Pleading for anarchy? Lawyers and prosecutors in anarchist trials (1880s-90s).’
Abstract:
As a distinctive and self-identified anarchist movement emerged globally and was met with fierce repression from the early 1880s, trials of anarchists were heavily contested mediatic displays, and often became landmarks in histories of anarchist resistance to state oppression. As such, they occupy a central place in activist memories, with a focus on the use of the stand as a political platform by anarchists and the stoical acceptance of sentences as a form of political martyrdom.
This lecture centres on the infamous ‘Procès des trente’ of August 1894, a fiasco for the French authorities, which saw almost all defendants acquitted. It revisits the history of these show trials by shifting the focus away from anarchists, to those who defended and prosecuted them, moving from narratives of martyrdom to a more nuanced and practical understanding of the ideological and legal landscape of the repression of anarchism – and resistance to it, within and beyond the anarchist movement.
Previous Lectures:
The First Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Julian Jackson (Queen Mary University of London), ‘The Century of Charles de Gaulle’ (November 2010).
[details and video/podcast of event]
The Second Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Richard Thomson (Edinburgh University), ‘New Wine in Old Bottles: Adapting and Abusing Tradition in French Visual Culture, 1880-1910’ (January 2012).
[details and podcast of event]
The Third Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Ruth Harris, (New College, Oxford), ‘Rolland, Gandhi and Madeleine Slade: Spiritual Politics, France and the Wider World’ (January 2013).
[details and podcast of event]
The Fourth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Andrew Knapp, (University of Reading), ‘Bombing and Memory: Britain and France, 1940-1945’ (January 2014).
[details and podcast of event]
The Fifth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor John Horne, (Trinity College Dublin), ‘Myth or Model? The French Revolution in the Great War’ (January 2015).
[details and podcast of event]
The Sixth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Siân Reynolds, (University of Stirling), ‘Children of the Revolutionaries’ (January 2016).
[details of event]
The Seventh Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Colin Jones (Queen Mary), ‘Rethinking Robespierre and the French Revolutionary Terror’ (January 2017).
[details of event]
The Eighth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Malcolm Crook (Keele), ‘How the British and French Learned to Vote’ (January 2018).
[details of event]
The Ninth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Máire Cross (Newcastle University), ‘Too Hot to Handle? Flora Tristan (1803-1844) Campaigner for Gender Equlality’ (January 2019).
[details of event]
The Tenth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Debra Kelly (University of Westminster), ‘Free French Food: Dining Out With the Free French in Wartime London’ (January 2020).
[details of event]
The Eleventh Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Michael Boers (University of Oxford), ‘Napoleon as a European: A Certain Vision of France & Europe’ (January 2021).
[details and recording of event]
The Twelfth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Penny Roberts (University of Warwick), ‘The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacres 450 years on’ (January 2022).
[details and recording of event]
The Thirteenth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Chris Tinker (Heriot-Watt University), ‘À la vie, à la mort: Media Representations of Posthumous Celebrity in France and the UK’ (January 2023).
[details and recording of event]
The Fourteenth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Amy Livingstone (University of Lincoln), ‘Adventures in the French Archives: Finding Countess Ermengarde of Brittany, c.1070-1147’ (January 2024).
[details and recording of event]
The Fifteenth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Hanna Diamond (University of Cardiff), ‘Uncovering Josephine Baker’s War: A Historian’s Journey’
(January 2025).
[details and recording of event]
The Sixteenth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
Professor Renaud Morieux (University of Cambridge), ‘Dislocated Families: Women, War, and Migrations in French India during the Age of Revolutions’
(January 2026).