Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques

The effort to compare and connect different French colonies in North America encounters some treacherous roadblocks, including the powerful impact of Canadian and United States nation building on the treatment of French colonial regions and the widely divergent approaches taken by scholars of New France and French Louisiana. This essay attempts to explain why these obstacles appeared in the first place and to suggest how they might be overcome in the future. At a time when historians of early America are vigorously seeking new analytical frameworks and meaningful historical narratives, intraimperial research on complex relationships and comparative issues in French North America constitutes an essential area of study. Whether examining the role of Canadian families in the founding of Louisiana, the influence of Acadian settlers on south Louisiana culture, or the character of Indian relations in French colonies—among other issues—a shared history of early Canada and Louisiana will significantly improve our understanding of North American peoples and places.

This article examines the political pedagogy of the French Revolution and, with that, the revolutionaries' engagement with issues of political community and communication. It proposes that while the distinction between éducation and instruction, or between the development of moral and civic character, on the one hand, and the cultivation of particular skills, on the other, was prominent in eighteenth-century pedagogy and has been influential in our understanding of the Revolution, that same distinction has obscured essential elements of the revolutionaries' pedagogical and political agendas. Attention to the proposals and practices of revolutionary pedagogy, including the revolutionary festivals, reveals that what the revolutionaries called “public instruction” was a dynamic synthesis of civic and technical training, a synthesis that was intended not to foster unquestioning obedience or the obliteration of differences among citizens, but to promote civic communication in ways that would make a participatory politics possible.

Modernity has typically been considered a process consisting of “modernizing” initiatives concerned with nation-building, industrial economic development, and new social and political practices associated with democratization. This article engages ongoing debates regarding the import and meaning of modernity for historians and argues in favor of an historically situated understanding of the modern based upon an examination of social power and identity in post-revolutionary France. In particular, it assesses the transformation of social and political relationships in the nineteenth century as France embraced mass democracy and overseas imperial expansion in North Africa, arguing that modernity became a convenient means of preserving elite primacy and identity in an age increasingly oriented toward egalitarianism, democratic participation, and the acquisition of global empires.

A number of histories of circumcision have recently been written and in them the case of A. E. Housman, along with a number of others, has acquired a certain prominence. This article reconsiders the existing evidence regarding Housman's circumcision and the various interpretations of it in the secondary literature before going on to examine a number of overlooked sources. While this writing around Housman's circumcision is not without positive results, it will be suggested via a consideration of Jacques Derrida's testimony regarding his own circumcision that the historian of sexuality needs also to contend with an inherent negativity and loss. The testimony provided by a recently uncovered poem on circumcision will prompt the suggestion that we should be wary of overemphasizing the individual example. In conclusion, the article argues that the problematic of Housman's particular case has pertinence because in regard to individual experience we can only ever write around the history of circumcision.

The trajectory of the writer and critic Camille Mauclair (1872–1945) was marked by two ruptures: having begun his career within the internationalized avant-gardes, oriented toward Symbolism and Anarchism, he moved away from these circles at the turn of the century. Indeed, the crisis that Symbolism and Anarchism underwent during these years led Mauclair toward Neo-Classicism. To his new esthetic vision was added, during the Great War, a nationalist positioning that led him to virulent xenophobia in the interwar period. Foreign artists were henceforth denounced by Mauclair as being the cause of France's so-called cultural decadence. The turnaround in Mauclair's esthetic and political vision reflects the “return to order” tendencies that grew stronger in French culture from the end of the nineteenth century, attaining their summit during World War II. The propagation of these tendencies was largely due to the influence that the esthetic and ideological reflections of Charles Maurras exerted in intellectual circles.

French La trajectoire de l'écrivain et critique Camille Mauclair (1872–1945) fut marquée par deux ruptures: ayant commencé sa carrière au sein des avant-gardes internationalisées, orientées vers le symbolisme et l'anarchis me, il s'éloigna de ces milieux au tournant du siècle. En eff et, la crise subie par le symbolisme et l'anarchisme durant ces années amena Mauclair vers le néo-classicisme. À cette nouvelle vision esthétique s'ajouta, durant la Grande Guerre, un positionnement nationaliste qui déboucha, dans l'entre-deux-guerres, sur une xénophobie virulente. Dès lors, les artistes étrangers furent étiquetés par Mauclair comme les responsables d'une prétendue décadence culturelle de la France. Le revirement esthétique et politique de Mauclair reflète les tendances de “retour à l'ordre,” qui se renforçaient dans la culture française depuis la fin du dix-neuvième siècle et atteignirent leur sommet durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. La propagation de ces tendances était due, en grande partie, à l'influence que la réflexion esthétique et idéologique de Charles Maurras exerçait dans les milieux intellectuels.

Cet article revient sur le parcours d'un personnage politique important de l'entre-deux-guerres en France qui oscilla entre la gauche et la droite et finit serviteur du régime de Vichy. Après avoir recensé les principaux travaux portant sur Gaston Bergery, ce texte insiste sur son ambiguïté et sa complexité. Bourgeois, élu de gauche, directeur d'un journal, avocat d'un courant politique opposant le communisme et le fascisme tout en aimant la vie mondaine, Bergery perturbe les cadres classiques du politique. Pour tenter de le saisir, plusieurs archives sont revisitées: ses dossiers d'officier et d'ambassadeur, les documents de son procès. Les différents portraits qu'ont tracés de lui des contemporains sont aussi rappelés. Une enquête pour retrouver des témoins est menée. Toutes les informations recueillies soulignent les paradoxes et les contradictions d'un individu. Le cas Gaston Bergery s'avère être une entrée passionnante qui permet de relire une époque et un milieu.

This article retraces the career of an important political figure from the interwar period in France who oscillated between Left and Right and ended up as a lackey to the Vichy regime. After reviewing the principal work pertaining to Bergery, this article emphasizes his ambiguity and complexity. A bourgeois, a left-wing elected official, the director of a newspaper, advocating a political current opposing communism and fascism even as he pursued an active life as a social butterfly, Bergery disrupts classical political categories. To try to get a grip on him, several archives are revisited: his officer's and ambassador's dossiers, the documents of his trial. A search for eyewitnesses is conducted. All the information gathered underlines the paradoxes and contradictions of an individual. Gaston Bergery's case proves to be a fascinating entry point by which to re-read an era and a milieu.