The Past in French History

This text considers the nature of French history and the awareness of its influence, surveying the ways that various political communities in France during the past two centuries have used different versions of the past in order to define their identities and legitimize their goals.

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The past has a profound presence in French consciousness, perhaps more than that of any other nation. In this book, Robert Gildea explores France's relationship with its own history and investigates some of the persistent themes in French political culture. It is essentially a book about "remembering", about the ways in which the French remember potent national figures such as Joan of Arc and Napoleon. The book begins with an historiographical survey of the broad schools of French historical writing, and then looks at the underlying themes which recur throughout the story of the French past. Gildea investigates such topics as revolution and counter-revolution, church and state, regionalism and centralism, nationalism and political identity, and demonstrates the way in which different versions of the past have been manufactured by competing political interests to further their cause.