This research colloquium brings together historians of nineteenth and and twentieth-century France to explore the issue of 'political legacies'. It is one that overshadows, of course, the history of a country that has lived with the profound and ambiguous legacy of its revolution. That was a political movement devoted to liberty, although what that liberty actually and was and how it would be realized, were open questions then and thereafter. As historians, we often talk about the 'burden' of the past - and it was often the case that a political legacy served to constrain the way that people thought about the present, seeing it through the hopes and fears that had been experienced by previous generations. But political legacies often had a more positive impact that that suggests. They served to shape the way in which contemporaries sought to harness the opportunities of the present, and orient the expectations of the future. In short, we shall focus on the dynamic and ambiguous nature of political legacies as one of the ways in which the past inevitably shapes the political space of the present. The colloquium will be an occasion to examine the role of political legacies in a comparative light, and to explore what other disciplines (notably political science) have to tell us about political legacies. It will also be a moment for British historians to honour the contribution of Professor Malcolm Crook to the discipline of French History, notably through his many years as editor of French History.

Programme détaillé.

Venue : Maison française d'Oxford.