One of the major concentrations of historians who study twentieth-century France—between Third Republic in the 1930s and the formation of the Fifth Republic in the 1960s—has been to uncover continuities in period of supposed rupture. Both Robert Paxton and Philip Nord take up this paradigm of continuity. Robert Paxton’s work uncovers continuity in what seems to be a historical break. To view Vichy France as something special, as something forced upon the French is to remove it from the minds of the French—from the history of France. Paxton traces the roots of Vichy in the Third Republic and exposes Vichy in the Liberation. Philip Nord works within this paradigm to further trace the origins of the modern French welfare state in an era of supposed discontinuity and confusion. Paxton provides the tool of continuity and Nord expands its gaze.
The issue of continuity is central to Robert Paxton’s thesis. Paxton’s Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944 shattered several myths of rupture. Prior to the publishing of Paxton’s monumental work, the common view among both the general public and historians was that Vichy acted in the interests of the French nation. Keeping with this line of reasoning, Vichy France was, therefore, an unfortunate stepping stone to a defeated Germany. Thus, it was believed that the National Revolution was “imported on German tanks” at the request of Adolf Hitler.1 Accordingly, Vichy France was a Nazi diktat where the Germans had huge influence on the actions of the government.2 Another myth of Vichy deals with a so-called “Shield,” or the idea that Vichy was essential for the protection of France. Vichy therefore spared France of the perils of Nazi rule; Vichy was the best of two evils.3 Lastly, i...
... middle of paper ...
... line of continuity to trace the picture further into the picture. Nord seeks to understand how the modern French welfare state was born out of a period of supposed rupture. As a student of Paxton, Nord seems to be exploring the conclusions of Paxton’s thesis. Both view continuity as a tool for understanding the past, and seem to refuse to buy arguments based on historical epochs. In the end the reader is convinced that things actions are not born out of noting—that actions have roots and so does history.
Works Cited
Nord, Philip. France's New Deal: From the Thirties to the Postwar Era. paperback ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Paxton, Robert. Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972.
Tocqueville, Alexis de and Stuart Gilbert. The Old Régime and the French Revolution. Garden City, N.Y.,: Doubleday, 1955.
Brooke L. Blower, Becoming Americans in Paris: Transatlantic Politics and Culture between the World Wars. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
the French Revolution. Hunt, Lynn & Censer, Jack. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press (2001)
Cobban, Alfred . "Historians and the Causes of the French Revolution." Aspects of the French Revolution. New York: George Braziller, 1968.
Andress, David. The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005
Beginning in mid-1789, and lasting until late-1799, the French Revolution vastly changed the nation of France throughout its ten years. From the storming of the Bastille, the ousting of the royal family, the Reign of Terror, and all the way to the Napoleonic period, France changed vastly during this time. But, for the better part of the last 200 years, the effects that the French Revolution had on the nation, have been vigorously debated by historian and other experts. Aspects of debate have focused around how much change the revolution really caused, and the type of change, as well as whether the changes that it brought about should be looked at as positive or negative. Furthermore, many debate whether the Revolutions excesses and shortcomings can be justified by the gains that the revolution brought throughout the country. Over time, historians’ views on these questions have changed continually, leading many to question the different interpretations and theories behind the Revolutions effectiveness at shaping France and the rest of the world.
2. Durant, Will and Ariel “Rousseau and Revolution” The Story of Civilization. Simon and Schuster: New York, NY 1967
Madelin, Louis. The French revolution by Louis Madelin. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Of Michigan Library, 1916. Print.
Baker, Charles A. “Review: Two Views of Vichy France, ” The French Review, Vol.51, No. 5, American Association of Teachers of French, (April 1978), pp. 763-764
Field, Frank. British and French Operations of the First World War. Cambridge (England); New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
The 1950s was not a particularly good decade for France. The Fourth Republic, which had been established in the aftermath of the Second World War, remained unstable and lurched from crisis to crisis. Between 1946 and 1954, there had been a war in French Indo-China, between a nationalist force under Ho Chi Minh and the French. The war was long and bitter and towards the end, the French suffered the ignominy of losing the major fortress of Dien Bien Phu to the guerrillas on 7 May 1954. An armistice was sought with Ho Chi Minh, and the nations of North and South Vietnam emerged from the ashes of the colony. It is entirely likely that the success of the guerrillas influenced the Algerian insurrectionists, the National Liberation Front(FLN), in tactics and in the idea that the time was ripe to strike. It is clear that the FLN employed similar methods to those developed by the nationalists under Ho Chi Minh.1
[7] Hunt, Lynn. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. Berkeley: U of California, 1984. Print.
Jackson, Julian. The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
The decision to enter into war is usually a great struggle involving many factors. Some countries, however, such as France in 1940, do not have much choice in the matter. France’s leaders struggled with the feelings of autonomy and responsibility. France's struggle entering into World War II was in the difficulty in fulfilling its dual responsibility to the people of France and to the rest of the world whom both maintained conflicting beliefs about the approaching war. The French people desired peace, while the other countries required France to go to war to defend itself against
To summarize the book into a few paragraphs doesn't due it the justice it deserves. The beginning details of the French and Ind...
Fremont-Barnes, Gregory. The Encyclopedia of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: A Political, Social, and Military History. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006. Print.