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From the cry to the patrol. Public order in the Italian communes (1250-1350)
In the towns of communal Italy, the “hue and cry” ensured law and order from 12th to the middle of 13th c. When the citizens heard the cry “help me!”, they had to run, help the victims and capture the criminals. But the “hue and cry” (“accorruomo”, in Italian) could cause fights and riots, which is the reason why, by the end of the Duecento, communal governments created police forces which were made available to the podestà and some other urban officers. These forces could be composed by some hundred men in major towns. The “policemen” could patrol the streets to prevent crimes: this was a major change in public order. But no commune had enough forces to patrol the whole town and the countryside. Therefore, the “accorruomo” survived and supported the actions of the podestà's men until the 15th c.

Lyon and saint Bonaventure (15th-18th centuries)
Bonaventure died in the franciscan Convent in Lyon in 1274. Two centuries later, following his canonization in 1482, his mortal remains were referred to in several political as well as religious speeches and uses aimed at legitimating parallel powers.
First, at the turn of the 16th century, the monarchy confiscated the relics with a view to enforcing its power in Lyon. Next, the town council used it to implementing a new civic and moral order that was harmonious and coherent, especially in the 17th century. Finally, the Franciscans strove to retrieve the relics so as to boost up their unity that had been impaired by a century long internal feuding.
Thus, Saint Banaventure's relics are a telling example of how relics were made both political and social use of in modern urban France, thus helping to establish union, reconciliation and territorialisation in urban areas.

Between science and philanthropy: a social history of the African Association and her explorers (1788-1831)
The purpose of this article is to offer a study specifically dedicated to the history of the African Association in French, the first one to be published in this language. The African Association was founded in London in 1788 by a small group of English gentlemen who were willing to promote a geographical exploration of Africa. English-speaking historians have been interested in the African Association for a long time and a lot of research was done on the topic. This article introduces and questions the benefits of this historiography in relation to the Association's archives and the travels writing books that were published under its supervision. Three main questions are broached upon: the choice of the “associative form” to support the exploration of Africa, the influence of the abolitionist discourse on the scientific programme of the Association and the relations members and travellers had. To answer these questions, the author adopted a micro-historical approach taking into account the positions the actors held in the social sphere of their time. As it breaks from a positivist approach focusing on abstract macro-historical explanations, this article aims at understanding the novelty of a project that marked the history of Euro-African relations. It also emphasizes the importance of doing research on the social history of explorers and explorations in 19th century.

The law of May 19th, 1874, regulating the child and minor girls labor, an “intermediate” law?
The law of May 19th, 1874, regulating the children and minor girls labor, is classically presented as an “intermediate” law in history of law. A traditional contempt is attached to this qualifier, giving to think that this law hardly counted and that if it is replaced by that of November 2nd, 1892 it is the reason that it hardly showed a big efficiency. Yet, the analysis of the archives of a district gives to think of the opposite. The study of the implementation of the law, within the framework of the third district of inspection, reveals on the contrary that this standard was determining in the evolution of the mentalities. Much more than by the work of the legislator, the condition of the children in industrial environment was improved by the central role of the inspectors, created by the law of 1874. Certainly, the law presents gaps, its scope quickly shows itself too much limited, but this law represents a crucial piece for the evolution of the working conditions of the children in factory. This work also allows to measure the importance of the appeal to the archival sources, which give an exact idea of the implementation of a law, an essential complement to the legislative text.

Moscow – Kazan – Ufa: Jean-Richard Bloch in 1941-1942
A French communist writer, Jean-Richard Bloch was possibly the only French intellectual who had sought political asylum in the USSR during WWII. His unique experience of Soviet exile can be partially reconstructed through his and his wife's notes, kept in the Manuscript Department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The current article reconstructs Bloch's initial arrival and stay in Moscow (April-October 1941), his evacuation eastwards to Kazan under the auspices of the Soviet Writers' Union (October-December 1941), and his life and work in Ufa as a member of the Comintern (December 1941-December 1942). Having examined the development of Bloch's pre-war relations with the Soviet Union under the new conditions, including the changes in his status, we shall focus on the way Bloch and his wife were expected to operate by the Comintern. The reconstruction of the ‘Comintern family''s living and working conditions will add to the scarce literature (Ceretti, Thorez-Vermeersch, Wieviorka) on the Ufa period, and will shed some light on Bloch's new functions and interaction with the Comintern leadership.

Americans Students in Paris. A different sight on cultural relationship between France and the United States (late 1940's – late 1950's)
After the Second World War, American artists flocked to Paris. Most of them were students taking advantage of a generous GI Bill to come and study in a city that was still considered as the “Mecqua of the arts”, an obvious destination for any young artist seeking to complete his or her education. The flow of American artists to Paris after the war offers a complex image of a period long held as seeing the rise of American Art – a rise that would ultimately lead to its “triumph”. More than one million GI Bill students would actually come to Paris, many would-be painters or writers, seeking fame in the city that had welcomed the Lost Generation – a model for many of the young students of the 1940s. Their testimonies shed light on the persistent attractivity of the city and its dynamic art life in the late 1940s and early 1950s. These new comers revived a tradition that was based on an unequal relationship between the United States – a young country that had no proper avant-garde of its own to boast on the international scene – and Europe, more particularly France – regarded as the craddle of modern art.
But the GI Bill also represented a challenge to such a traditional view. The emancipation of the American students from the Paris masters they had come to study with seemed to announce the future independence of the American arts; the privileges they enjoyed as American citizens abroad and as grantees of the US government supported their sense of freedom. The way the US magazines reported on these “new expatriates” further comforted the idea that the Paris reign had come to an end, also marking the end of a tradition of American expatriation in the city.

Prehistory in the programs of primary and secondary education in France in the late 1940s to 2010
Prehistory is a time known and recognized by science since the 1850s. It is, moreover, for France, a topic of choice: a way to exalt the genius of French Prehistorians and the massive presence of remains on our territory. What place has school curricula given to it? From the 1940s to 1960s, it was school, more than cinema, television, or even literature, that made it known to the French. However we should not exaggerate its importance. While textbooks were the main source of knowledge about prehistory, its place remained thin: slightly more than 3 % of the contents. From the 1970s, it was even worse, prehistory had a very marginal role, close to nonexistence, mainly taught in History classes (and no more in natural sciences classes) during 6thgrade. School memory of prehistory was in a process of deletion. The content of the teaching was reduced so much and so well that in the last programs of the 20th century, those of 1995, Paleolithic disappeared from school and the study of prehistory was reduced only to the Neolithic. The final stage of this evolution and logical conclusion was that in 2008 programs removed the Neolithic: prehistory no longer existed in middle school. This loss, however, was not final. Indeed, 2015 programs announced the return of Cro-Magnon in 6thgrade. This return was, in addition, global from the beginnings of humanity up to the birth of writing through the Neolithic revolution. Why this return? Programs not only resumed to the contents of thirty years ago, they showed a true originality. But we may reasonably wonder if the return of the teaching of prehistory in 2015 was not at the cost of a real political instrumentation and anchoring in the great debates waving our society today.
Why such a disinterest of school curricula for Prehistory? We have outlined a few cautious answers: the lack of commitment of the Prehistorians themselves, the common fate shared with archaeology in general. But the main reason seems to be much more prosaic. Teachers are uncomfortable with prehistoric civilizations they poorly know. The support from the media, especially television, since the 1970s was then experienced as a kind of relief, school being able to pass the baton to others who were eager to take it.