The Routledge Handbook of French History

Aimed firmly at the student reader, this handbook offers an overview of the full range of the history of France, from the origins of the concept of post-Roman "Francia," through the emergence of a consolidated French monarchy and the development of both nation-state and global empire into the modern era, forward to the current complexities of a modern republic integrated into the European Union and struggling with the global legacies of its past. Short, incisive contributions by a wide range of expert scholars offer both a spine of chronological overviews and a diverse spectrum of up-to-date insights into areas of key interest to historians today. From the ravages of the Vikings to the role of gastronomy in the definition of French culture, from Caribbean slavery to the place of Algerians in present-day France, from the role of French queens in medieval diplomacy to the youth-culture explosion of the 1960s and the explosions of France’s nuclear weapons program, this handbook provides accessible summaries and selected further reading to explore any and all of these issues further, in the classroom and beyond.

Table of Contents:
1. Overview: From Regnum Francorum to Regnum Franciae: Early Medieval France from the Fifth to the Twelfth Centuries 2. Gaul, Francia, and the Wider Early Medieval World 3. The Vikings and Francia, 799–936 4. Regional Magnates and the Last Carolingians 5. The World of the Early Capetian Court: 987–1180 6. The Queens’ Reflection: French Consorts as a Mirror of French History 7. History and the Shaping of French Identity in the Later Middle Ages 8. Nationhood and Nationalism in French History Writing 9. Overview: Valois France, 1328–1498 10. France and the Crusades in the Later Middle Ages 11. Prince and Principality in the Breton War of Succession 12. Performing Discontent: Politics and Society in the French Satirical Theater of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries 13. Overview: France in the Sixteenth Century: Monarchy, Renaissance and Reformation, 1494–1610 14. Conduit of the Divine: Theocratic Themes in Political Theory in Renaissance and Reformation France 15. Royal Women and the Habsburg-Valois Wars (1494–1559) 16. Festival Cultures in Early Modern France: Elite and Popular Celebrations, c. 1560–c. 1640 17. Overview: Absolutist France to 1715 18. Bureaucracy and Royal Administration in the Seventeenth Century – French Absolutism and the State 19. A Century of Saints? The Catholic Reformation in Seventeenth-Century France 20. The Royal Manufactories of Absolutist France: Luxury Production and the Politics and Culture of Mercantilism 21. Making History in Old Regime France 22. Overview: France 1715 to 1815: A Century of Dubious Greatness 23. The French Caribbean in the Era of Slavery 24. The Development of the French Dimension of the Atlantic Slavery System 25. French India in the Eighteenth Century 26. Exploration and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France 27. Enlightenment and the Supernatural: Popular Religious Practice in the Eighteenth Century 28. The "Masterpiece of the National Assembly": Criminal Justice and the Revolution 29. Performance in Paris, 1789–1815: Setting the Stage for Regime Change and Cultural Revision 30. Fugitives from France: Huguenot Refugees, Revolutionary Émigrés, and the Origins of Modern Exile 31. The French Campaign in Egypt (1798–1801) 32. Monarchy, Memory, and the Chapelle Expiatoire 33. Overview: 1815–1905: An Era of Tumult and Change 34. Memory of Lost Empire 35. France and Algeria, 1830–1870 36. Environment and Technology in Global France, 1763–1914 37. The French Periodical Press, 1815–1905 38. From Dictator to Democrat? The "Black Legend" of Louis-Napoleon and Subsequent Historical Revisionism 39. Socialism Up to the First World War 40. French Empire In the Asia-Pacific Region, c. 1800–1914 41. Imperial Variation: Administration and Citizenship in France’s Colonies 42. Overview: Two Frances at War and Peace: The Stories of a Nation and Its People, 1905–1958 43. Overview: Between Gaullism and Globalization: Opening Up the Fifth Republic, 1958–2020 44. History and Historiography of French Imperialism from 1914 45. French Feminisms: Patriarchy, Populationism, and Progress, 1870–1950 46. Queering France Since the Belle Époque: Between Emancipation and Repression 47. Reconstructing French Relations in the South Pacific after World War I 48. The Popular Front and France’s Twentieth Century 49. The Brazzaville Conference and the Future of French Colonialism in Africa 50. The Atomic Republic: Nuclear France Since 1958 51. Young People and Youth Culture, 1958–1968 52. Sustaining the Nation: A Gastronomic Reading of Contemporary France 53. The Year of the Events: 1968 54. The Algerian Diaspora in France 55. French Museums in the Fifth Republic 56. Erasing Race in France: Social Consequences of Political Idealism 57. The Memory Politics of the First World War at Its Centenary 58. French Historical Writing in the Wake of Decolonization

About the Author :
David Andress is Professor of Modern History at the University of Portsmouth, UK. His published research on the era of the French Revolution includes The Terror (2004), Beating Napoleon (2012), and The French Revolution: A Peasants’ Revolt (2019).