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.
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
Biography
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).
