Nineteenth Century France and Its Empire

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NINETEENTH CENTURY FRANCE AND ITS EMPIRE

New YorkUniversity IFS-GA 1610

Fall 2013Prof. Stéphane Gerson

15 Washington Mews19 University Place, #625 (998 8718)

Office hours: Mondays 3:30-5:00

or by appointment

COURSE DESCRIPTION

“The nineteenth-century, an extremely restless model, so difficult to keep in place.” So wrote the novelist Balzac about a century thatbegan 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).

1. In-Class Mid-Term Exam (two-and-a-half hours). Will include definitions of concepts/events, analyses of primary sources, and essays (35%).

1. Final Exam (two-and-a-half hours): will cover material since the mid-term exam, using the same format as mid-term (45%).

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.9/10Introduction

Sept. 16/17Towards Revolution

SecondaryDavid 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.

BackgroundPopkin, History of Modern France, chs. 2-6.

Sept. 23/24Rights, Citizens, Terror

PrimaryDecrees 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.

SecondaryAlbert 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.

BackgroundPopkin, History of Modern France, chs. 6-8.

Sept. 30/Oct. 1Who Is a Citizen?

PrimaryDocuments in L. Hunt, ed., The French Revolution and Human Rights (1996),
pp. 60-63, 81, 119-23, and 129-39.

Decree Regulating Divorce (1792).

SecondaryLynn 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. 7/8Stability and Authority Under Napoleon

PrimarySelection from the Civil Code (1804).

Henri Grégoire, “An Essay on the Physical, Moral and Political Reformation of the Jews” (1788), selection.

SecondarySean 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.

BackgroundPopkin, History of Modern France, chs. 9-10.

Oct. 14/15No Class — Fall Break

Oct. 21/22Monter à Paris

PrimaryHonoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions (Les illusions perdues) [1843].

BackgroundPopkin, History of Modern France, chs. 11-12.

Oct. 28/29In-Class Midterm Exam

Nov. 4/5Class and Migration

PrimaryAutobiography of Norbert Truquin, inMark Traugott, ed.,
The French Worker (1993), 250-308.

SecondaryJennifer Sessions, By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria (2011),
ch. 6.

Ian Coller, “Arab France: Mobility and Community in Early Nineteenth-Century Paris and Marseille,” French Historical Studies 29 (2006): 433-56.

BackgroundPopkin, History of Modern France,chs. 13-14.

Nov. 11/12Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century

PrimaryEmile Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise (Au bonheur des dames) [1883].

BackgroundHistory of Modern France, chs. 15-16.

Nov. 18/19Fashioning a Republic

PrimaryE. 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.

BackgroundPopkin, History of Modern France, chs. 17-18.

Nov. 25/26What is a Frenchman?

SecondaryEugen Weber, Peasants to Frenchmen (1976), introduction and chs. 1-2, 4,
6-7, 12-13, 15-18, 24, and 27-29.

Dec. 2/3Science, Religion, and the Supernatural

PrimaryErnest Renan, The Life of Jesus (1863), 13th preface and ch. 15.

SecondaryRuth 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.

Dec. 9/10Making a Colonial Empire

SecondaryFanny 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.

Dec. 16Final Exam (9:30-12:00)