Aimed firmly at the student reader, this handbook offers an overview of the full range of the history of France, from the origins of the concept of post-Roman « Francia, » through the emergence of a consolidated French monarchy and the development of both nation-state and global empire into the modern era, forward to the current complexities of a modern republic integrated into the European Union and struggling with the global legacies of its past.

Short, incisive contributions by a wide range of expert scholars offer both a spine of chronological overviews and a diverse spectrum of up-to-date insights into areas of key interest to historians today. From the ravages of the Vikings to the role of gastronomy in the definition of French culture, from Caribbean slavery to the place of Algerians in present-day France, from the role of French queens in medieval diplomacy to the youth-culture explosion of the 1960s and the explosions of France’s nuclear weapons program, this handbook provides accessible summaries and selected further reading to explore any and all of these issues further, in the classroom and beyond.

David Andress is Professor of Modern History at the University of Portsmouth, UK. His published research on the era of the French Revolution includes The Terror (2004), Beating Napoleon (2012), and The French Revolution: A Peasants’ Revolt (2019).

Table des matières :

1. Overview: From Regnum Francorum to Regnum Franciae: Early Medieval France from the Fifth to the Twelfth centuries
Clément de Vasselot de Régné

2. Gaul, Francia, and the Wider Early Medieval World
James Palmer

3. The Vikings and Francia 799–936
Matthew Firth

4. Regional Magnates and the Last Carolingians
Fraser McNair

5. The World of the Early Capetian Court 987–1180
Talia Zajac

6. The Queens’ Reflection: French Consorts as a Mirror of French History
Derek R. Whaley

7. History and the Shaping of French Identity in the Middle Ages
Chris Jones

8. Nationhood and Nationalism in French History Writing: Franks, Gallo-Romans, and the Shaping of the Roman National

Camille Creyghton and Matthew D’Auria

9. Overview: Valois France,  1328–1498
Tracy Adams

10. France and the Crusades in the Later Middle Ages
Tania M. Colwell

11. Prince and Principality in the Breton War of Succession
Erika Graham-Goering

12. Performing Discontent: Politics and Society in the French Satirical Theater of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
Francesca Canadé Sautman

13. Overview: France in the Sixteenth Century: Monarchy, Renaissance and Reformation, 1494–1610
Elizabeth C. Tingle

14. Conduit of the Divine: Theocratic Themes in Political Theory in Renaissance and Reformation France
Aglaia Maretta Venters

15. Royal Women and the Habsburg-Valois Wars (1494–1559)
Susan Broomhall

16. Festival Cultures in Early Modern France: Elite and Popular Celebrations, c. 1560–c. 1640
Bram van Leuveren

17. Overview: Absolutist France to 1715
Darryl Dee

18. Bureaucracy and Royal Administration in the Seventeenth Century – French Absolutism and the State
Robert J. Fulton Jr.

19. A Century of Saints? The Catholic Reformation in Seventeenth-Century France
Alison Forrestal

20. The Royal Manufactories of Absolutist France: Luxury Production and the Politics and Culture of Mercantilism
Florian Knothe

21. Making History in Old Regime France
Robert Wellington

22. Overview: France, 1715 to 1815: A Century of Dubious Greatness
David Andress

23. The French Caribbean in the Era of Slavery
Erica Johnson Edwards

24. The Development of the French Dimension of the Atlantic Slavery System
Sylvie Kandé

25. French India in the Eighteenth Century
Gregory Mole

26. Exploration and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France
Eric F. Johnson

27. Enlightenment and the Supernatural: Popular Religious Practice in the Eighteenth Century
Angela C. Haas

28. The « Masterpiece of the National Assembly »: Criminal Justice and the Revolution
Julie P. Johnson

29. Performance in Paris, 1789–1815: Setting the Stage for Regime Change and Cultural Revision
Dane Stalcup

30. Fugitives from France: Huguenot Refugees, Revolutionary Émigrés, and the Origins of Modern Exile
Kelly Summers

31. The French Campaign in Egypt (1798–1801)
Evgeniya Prusskaya

32. Monarchy, Memory, and the Chapelle Expiatoire
Gemma Betros

33. Overview: 1815–1905: An Era of Tumult and Change
Venita Datta

34. Memory of Lost Empire
Annette Chapman-Adisho

35. France and Algeria, 1830–1870
Gavin Murray-Miller

36. Environment and Technology in Global France, 1763–1914
Andrew Denning

37. The French Periodical Press, 1815–1905
Ross F. Collins

38. From Dictator to Democrat? The ‘Black Legend’ of Louis-Napoleon and Subsequent Historical Revisionism
W. Jack Rhoden

39. Socialism Up to the First World War
Eric Brandom

40. French Empire in the Asia-Pacific Region, c. 1800–1914
Véronique Dorbe-Larcade

41. Imperial Variation: Administration and Citizenship in France’s Colonies
Megan Brown

42. Overview: Two Frances at War and Peace: The Stories of a Nation and Its People, 1905–1958
Jessica Wardhaugh

43. Overview: Between Gaullism and Globalization: Opening Up the Fifth Republic, 1958–2020
Andrew WM Smith

44. History and Historiography of French Imperialism from 1914
Sibylle Duhautois

45. French Feminisms: Patriarchy, Populationism, and Progress, 1870–1950
Nimisha Barton

46. Queering France Since the Belle Époque: Between Emancipation and Repression
Tamara Chaplin

47. Reconstructing French Relations in the South Pacific after World War I
Alistair Watts and Kirsty Carpenter 

48. The Popular Front and France’s Twentieth Century
Mattie Fitch

49. The Brazzaville Conference and the Future of French Colonialism in Africa
Danielle Porter Sanchez

50. The Atomic Republic: Nuclear France Since 1958
Roxanne Panchasi

51. Young People and Youth Culture, 1958-1968
Susan B. Whitney

52. Sustaining the Nation: A Gastronomic Reading of Contemporary France
Jennifer L. Holm

53. The Year of the Events: 1968
Ben Mercer

54. The Algerian Diaspora in France
Álvaro Luna-Dubois

55. French Museums in the Fifth Republic
Déborah Dubald

56. Erasing Race in France: Social Consequences of Political Idealism
Daniel N. Maroun

57. The Memory Politics of the First World War at Its Centenary
Elizabeth Benjamin

58. French Historical Writing in the Wake of Decolonization
Timothy Scott Johnson

Informations pratiques :

The Routledge Handbook of French History, éd. David Andress, Londres, Routledge, 2024 ; 1 vol., 672 p. (Routledge Handbooks). ISBN : 978-0-36740-682-0. Prix : GBP 205,00

Source : Routledge