NINETEENTH CENTURY FRANCE AND ITS EMPIRE
New York University IFS-GA 1610
Fall 2013
15 Washington Mews
Office hours: Mondays 3:30-5:00
or by appointment
Prof. Stéphane Gerson
19 University Place, #625 (998 8718)
stephane.gerson@nyu.edu
COURSE DESCRIPTION
“The nineteenth-century, an extremely restless model, so difficult to keep in place.” So wrote the
novelist Balzac about a century that began in revolution and ended with war, but lacked its own
defining event, moment, or figure. Gustave Flaubert and others hated its bourgeois stupidity, but it
is Balzac’s restlessness that captures the attention, the flux and the unnerving perception of flux, the
routes of mobility and circulation and also the weight of immobility. To delve into this century is to
encounter marches towards democracy and reaction; social changes that contemporaries embraced
while seeking to escape them; economic innovations that brought in the new without displacing the
old; technologies that altered experiences of time and space (though not for all, and not at the same
time); a dialectical dance between forces of reason and belief; and the outward march of the colonial
empire, bringing “civilization” without citizenship. The nineteenth century was nothing if not
restive, unsure of its own destiny, self-contradictory, and yet a birthplace of modernity.
By analyzing 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, you will be asked to submit a response to readings or questions for
discussion (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%).
2
READINGS
The books below have been ordered at the NYU bookstore. The other readings may be
downloaded from the course’s Classes website.
Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions (Vintage, 2001).
David Garrioch, The Making of Revolutionary Paris (California, 2002).
Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (Penguin, 1999).
Lynn Hunt and Suzanne Desan, eds., The French Revolution in Global Perspective (Cornell, 2013).
Jeremy Popkin, A History of Modern France, fourth ed. (Prentice Hall, 2012).
Eugen Weber, Peasants Into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford,
1976).
Emile Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise (Oxford, 1998).
CLASS SCHEDULE
Sept. 9/10
INTRODUCTION
Sept. 16/17
TOWARDS REVOLUTION
Secondary
David Garrioch, The Making of Revolutionary Paris (2002), 1-44, 64-111,
142-206, and 226-92.
Michael Kwass, “The Global Underground: Smuggling, Rebellion, and the
Origins of the French Revolution,” in L. Hunt and S. Desan, eds., The French
Revolution in Global Perspective (2013), 15-31.
Background
Popkin, History of Modern France, chs. 2-6.
Sept. 23/24
RIGHTS, CITIZENS, TERROR
Primary
Decrees of the National Assembly, in Keith Baker ed., The Old Regime
and the French Revolution (1987), 226-31 and 237-42.
Maximilien Robespierre, “Report on the Principles of Political Morality”
(1794), in Baker, 368-78.
Secondary
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 P. Jones,
ed., The French Revolution in Social and Political Perspective (1996), 465-79.
François Furet, “Terror” (1989), in Jones, French Revolution, 450-65.
Background
Popkin, History of Modern France, chs. 6-8.
3
Sept. 30/Oct. 1 WHO IS A CITIZEN?
Primary
Documents in L. Hunt, ed., The French Revolution and Human Rights (1996),
pp. 60-63, 81, 119-23, and 129-39.
Decree Regulating Divorce (1792).
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.
Laurent Dubois and Julius S. Scott, “An African Revolutionary in the Atlantic
World,” in T. Bender et al., eds., Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn (2011),
139-57.
Miranda Spieler, “Abolition and Reenslavement in the Caribbean: The
Revolution in French Guiana,” in Hunt and Desan, French Revolution in Global
Perspective, 132-47.
Oct. 7/8
STABILITY AND AUTHORITY UNDER NAPOLEON
Primary
Selection from the Civil Code (1804).
Henri Grégoire, “An Essay on the Physical, Moral and Political Reformation of
the Jews” (1788), selection.
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.
Ian Coller, “Egypt in the French Revolution,” in Hunt and Desan, French
Revolution in Global Perspective, 115-31.
Background
Popkin, History of Modern France, chs. 9-10.
Oct. 14/15
NO CLASS — FALL BREAK
Oct. 21/22
MONTER À PARIS
Primary
Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions (Les illusions perdues) [1843].
Background
Popkin, History of Modern France, chs. 11-12.
Oct. 28/29
IN-CLASS MIDTERM EXAM
4
Nov. 4/5
CLASS AND MIGRATION
Primary
Autobiography of Norbert Truquin, in Mark Traugott, ed.,
The French Worker (1993), 250-308.
Secondary
Jennifer Sessions, By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria (2011),
ch. 6.
Ian Coller, “Arab France: Mobility and Community in Early NineteenthCentury Paris and Marseille,” French Historical Studies 29 (2006): 433-56.
Background
Popkin, History of Modern France, chs. 13-14.
Nov. 11/12
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.
Nov. 18/19
FASHIONING A REPUBLIC
Primary
E. Bertol-Graivil, Voyage de M. Carnot Président de la République dans
les départements de la Drôme, de Vaucluse, etc. (1890), excerpts
Emile Durkheim, “Elementary Forms of Religious Life” (1912), in R. Bellah,
ed., Emile Durkheim: On Morality and Society (1973), 187-203.
Maurice Barrès, Les déracinés (1897), excerpts.
Background
Popkin, History of Modern France, chs. 17-18.
Nov. 25/26
Secondary
Dec. 2/3
WHAT IS A FRENCHMAN?
Eugen Weber, Peasants to Frenchmen (1976), introduction and chs. 1-2, 4,
6-7, 12-13, 15-18, 24, and 27-29.
SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND THE SUPERNATURAL
Primary
Ernest Renan, The Life of Jesus (1863), 13th preface and ch. 15.
Secondary
Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (1999), xiii-xviii,
3-44, 72-84, 110-11, 169-76, 210-87, and 331-66.
Stéphane Gerson, Nostradamus: How an Obscure Renaissance Astrologer Became
the Modern Prophet of Doom (2012), chs. 9 and 10.
5
Dec. 9/10
Secondary
Dec. 16
MAKING A COLONIAL EMPIRE
Fanny Colonna, “Educating Conformity in French Colonial Algeria” (1975),
in F. Cooper and A. Stoler, eds., Tensions of Empire (1997), 346-70.
J. P. Daughton, “Silent Sisters in the South Seas,” An Empire Divided: Religion,
Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914 (2008), ch. 4.
Owen White, “Conquest and Cohabitation: French Men’s Relations with West
African Women in the 1890s and 1900s,” in M. Thomas, ed., The French
Colonial Mind (2012), vol. 2: 177-201.
Eric Jennings, Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology, and French Colonial
Spas (2006), chs. 5 and 7.
FINAL EXAM (9:30-12:00)