history of nineteenth-century france,...

HISTORY OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE, 1770-1880

New York University IFS-GA 1610

Fall 2011 Prof. Stéphane Gerson

Tuesday, 9:30-12:00 19 University Place, #625 (998 8718)

15 Washington Mews [email protected]

Office hours: Thursday 1:00-3:00

COURSE DESCRIPTION “The nineteenth-century, an extremely restless model, so difficult to keep in place.” So wrote the novelist Balzac about a century that, by common agreement, began with a revolution and ended with a war, but lacked its own defining event or moment or figure. Gustave Flaubert and others hated the century‟s bourgeois stupidity, with good reason perhaps, but it is Balzac‟s restlessness that captures the attention. It is the perpetual flux and unnerving perception of flux; the marches towards democracy and reaction; the social changes that contemporaries embraced while seeking to escape them; the economic innovations that brought in the new without displacing the old; the technologies that altered experiences of time and space (though not for all, and not at the same time); the dialectical dance between forces of reason and belief, competing for religiosity and the sacred; the conflicting drives towards unity and individuation; the outward march of the colonial empire, bringing civilization without citizenship. The nineteenth century was nothing if not restive, unsure of its own destiny, and self-contradictory. Beginning with the waning Old Regime, we will seek to capture and understand a century that was anchored in tradition and inherently modern. By analyzing both primary and secondary sources, we will gain a triple introduction to French history, key historiographical debates, and historical method. Class time will be divided between lectures and discussions in which students engage critically with the sources and outline their own nineteenth century, alongside Balzac‟s and Flaubert‟s. COURSE REQUIREMENTS

1. Class Attendance and Participation. Attendance and punctuality are required. This class rests on your close and critical reading of diverse sources. Please be ready to discuss them in class every week (and always bring the course readings to class!). Make sure that your comments pertain to what has just been said and please respect every opinion—even if you disagree. Some weeks, I will ask you to email questions for discussion prior to class (20% of your grade).

2. In-Class Mid-Term Exam (two-and-a-half hours). Will include definitions of

concepts/events, analyses of primary sources, and essays (35%).

3. Final Exam (two-and-a-half hours): will cover material since the mid-term exam, using the same format as mid-term (45%).

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READINGS

The books below have been ordered at the NYU bookstore. The other readings may be downloaded from the course‟s Blackboard website.

Keith Baker, ed., The Old Regime and the French Revolution (Chicago, 1987)

David Garrioch, The Making of Revolutionary Paris (California, 2002)

Peter Jones, ed., The French Revolution in Social and Political Perspective (Arnold, 1996)

Lynn Hunt, ed., The French Revolution and Human Rights (Bedford, 1996)

Auguste Comte, Introduction to Positive Philosophy (Hackett, 1970)

Emile Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise (Oxford, 1998) — available in French and English.

Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (Penguin, 1999) — out of print: purchase online or read reserve copy.

Eugen Weber, Peasants Into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford, 1976)

Benjamin Brower, A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France’s Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844-1902 (Columbia, 2009)

Michael Burns, France and the Dreyfus Affair (Bedford, 1999)

Jeremy Popkin, A History of Modern France, third ed. (Prentice Hall, 2006) CLASS SCHEDULE

September 13 INTRODUCTION

September 20 THE OLD REGIME: STASIS AND CHANGE

Primary Charles Loyseau, A Treatise on Orders (1610), in Keith Baker, ed., The Old Regime and the French Revolution (1987), 13-31.

Secondary David Garrioch, The Making of Revolutionary Paris (2002), 1-44, 64-111, 142-206, and 226-92.

Jürgen Habermas, “The Public Sphere,” in S. Seidman, ed., Jürgen Habermas on Society and Politics (1989), 231-36.

Background: Popkin, History of Modern France, chs. 1-4.

September 27 1789 — AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS

Primary: Jean-Baptiste Sieyès, What is the Third Estate? (1789), in Baker, Old Regime, 154-mid 172 & 176-79.

Decrees of the National Assembly, in Baker, Old Regime, 226-31 and 237-42.

Secondary Albert Soboul, “The French Revolution in the History of the Contemporary World,” in G. Kates, ed., The French Revolution: Recent Debates and Controversies (1998), 23-43.

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Colin Lucas, “Nobles, Bourgeois, and the Origins of the French Revolution,” Past and Present 60 (1973): 84-126.

François Furet, “The French Revolution is Over” (1978), in Jones, French Revolution, 40-54.

Timothy Tackett, “Nobles and the Third Estate in the Revolutionary Dynamic of the National Assembly, 1789-1790” (1989), in Jones, French Revolution, 314-38.


October 4 RADICALIZATION AND TERROR

Primary Documents on the Jacobins, the Sans-Culottes, and the Terror, in Baker, Old Regime, 290-96, 330-40, and 368-78.

Secondary Peter McPhee, “The Experience of Terror, 1793-94,” in his Living the French Revolution, 1789-99 (2006), 132-62.

Albert Mathiez, “A Realistic Necessity” (1933), in F. Kafker and J. Laux, eds., The French Revolution: Conflicting Interpretations (1968), 187-92.

Richard Cobb, “The Rise and Fall of a Provincial Terrorist” (1972), in Jones, French Revolution, 465-79.

François Furet, “Terror” (1989), in Jones, French Revolution, 450-65.

Background: Popkin, History of Modern France, ch. 8.

October 11 NO CLASS (Columbus Day)

October 18 WHO IS A CITIZEN?

Primary Documents in Lynn Hunt, The French Revolution and Human Rights (1996), pp. 60-63, 81, 86-89, 93-101, 119-23, and 129-39.

The October Days (1789) and Olympe de Gouges, Declaration of the Rights of Women (1791), in Baker, Old Regime, 232-35 and 261-68.

Decree Regulating Divorce (1792).

Henri Grégoire, “An Essay on the Physical, Moral and Political Reformation of the Jews” (1788), selection.

Secondary Lynn Hunt, “The Many Bodies of Marie-Antoinette” (1991), in Jones, French Revolution, 268-84.

Olwen Hufton, “Counter-Revolutionary Women” (1992), in Jones, French Revolution, 285-307.

Suzanne Desan, “„Wars Between Sisters‟: Egalitarian Inheritance and Gender Politics,” from her Family on Trial in Revolutionary France (2004), 141-77.

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October 25 STABILITY AND AUTHORITY

Primary Documents in Hunt, The French Revolution and Human Rights (1996), pp. 101-18.

Selection from the Civil Code (1804).

Auguste Comte, Introduction to Positive Philosophy (1830-42), 1-33.

Secondary Sean Quinlan, “Physical and Moral Regeneration after the Terror: Medical Culture, Sensibility, and Family Politics in France, 1794-1804,” Social History 29 (2004): 139-64.

Allysa Goldstein Sepinwal, “The Specter of Saint-Domingue: American and French Reactions to the Haitian Revolution,” in D. Geggus and N. Fierings, eds., The World of the Haitian Revolution (2009), 317-38.

Michael Broers, “Cultural Imperialism in a European Context? Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Napoleonic Italy,” Past and Present 170 (2001): 152-80.


November 1 IN-CLASS MIDTERM EXAM

November 8 CLASS RELATIONS

Primary Autobiography of Norbert Truquin, in Mark Traugott, ed.,

The French Worker (1993), 250-308.

Secondary Michelle Perrot, A History of Private Life IV (1990), selection.

William H. Sewell, Jr., “Artisans, Factory Workers, and the Formation of the French Working Class, 1789-1848,” in I. Katnelson and A. Zolberg, eds., Working-Class Formation (1986), 45-70.

Sarah Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie (2003), ch. 6.

Background: Popkin, History of Modern France, pp. 93-95 and 105-24.

November 15 PARIS, CAPITAL OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Primary Emile Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise (Au bonheur des dames) [1883].

Background: History of Modern France, chs. 15-16.

November 22 WHAT IS A NATION?

Primary Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation?” (1882), in Stuart Woolf, ed., Nationalism in Europe: 1815 to the Present (1996), 48-60.

Emile Durkheim, “Elementary Forms of Religious Life” (1912), in R. Bellah, ed., Emile Durkheim: On Morality and Society (1973), 187-203.

Charles Péguy, account of the 1899 inauguration of the Place de la Nation monument (1900).

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Secondary Avner Ben-Amos, Funerals, Politics, and Memory in Modern France, 1789-1996 (2000), 110-62.


November 29 WHAT IS A FRENCHMAN?

Secondary Eugen Weber, Peasants to Frenchmen (1976), introduction and chs. 1-2, 4, 6-7, 12-13, 15-18, 24, and 27-29.

December 6 SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND THE SUPERNATURAL

Primary Renan, The Life of Jesus (1863), 13th preface and ch. 15.

François Fournel, What One Sees in the Streets of Paris (1867), selection.

“Nostradamus the Astrologer,” Every Saturday (23 May 1874).

Secondary Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (1999), xiii-xviii, 3-44, 72-84, 110-11, 157-200, 210-87, and 300-66.

Lynn Sharp, “Fighting for the Afterlife: Spiritists, Catholics, and Popular Religion in Nineteenth-Century France,” Journal of Religious History 23 (1999): 282-95.

December 13 THE VIOLENCE OF EMPIRE

Arthur de Gobineau, Discourse on the Inequality of the Races and correspondence with Tocqueville (1853-57), in Gobineau: Selected Political Writings (1970).

Jules Ferry, Speech of 28 July 1883.

Benjamin Claude Brower, A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France’s Empire in the Algerian Saraha, 1844-1902 (2009), introduction and chs. 3-6, 8, and 10.

Fanny Colonna, “Educating Conformity in French Colonial Algeria” (1975), in F. Cooper and A. Stoler, eds., Tensions of Empire (1997), 346-70.

Friday Dec. 16 THE DREYFUS AFFAIR

Michael Burns, France and the Dreyfus Affair (1999), tba.

Steven Englund, “Antisemitism, Judeophobia, and the Republic,” in E. Berenson et al., eds., The French Republic (2011), 278-88.

Christopher E. Forth, The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood (2004), introduction and ch. 1.

Ruth Harris, Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century (2010), selection.

December 20 FINAL EXAM (class time)