Contenu du sommaire : Varia

Louis Pasteur: Pure science serving industry
Louis Pasteur's career shows the tight, intrinsic, and essential link between scientific and industrial interests. Through a study of his manuscript correspondence (not the published correspondence, deliberately truncated by his heirs), we show that the aims of science overlapped industrial objectives. Moreover, every time science was claimed as pure, it promoted a social transaction between economic and political services exchanged for social and financial rewards – the whole process laying the foundation for Pasteur to claim autonomy. The article ends with an analysis of the construction of the Pasteur mythology.

Pharmaceutical specialities in the 19th century: status and foundations for pharmaceutical innovation
In France, the 19th century saw the rise in pharmaceutical specialities: Aubergier's opium syrup, Sinapisme Rigollot (a decongestant), Adrian's vacuum extracts, etc. Specialists were in most cases pharmacists and they presented their creations as being innovations, the products of lengthy laboratory research. Yet in reality, these products were therapies going back to Antiquity, with slight innovations in terms of dosage and composition. However, they responded to growing demand from 19th century medicine, which continued to appreciate these ancient methods. Pharmaceutical inventions were initially based on perfecting technical processes that enabled specialities to be produced in large quantities. This change in scale resulted in the creation of companies, bringing in external capital. Inventions of new machines coincided with, and sometimes even preceded, pharmaceutical inventions, although production was still a largely manual process. The motives for developing these new products were more commercial than therapeutic, with fierce competition among manufacturers for control of these specialities.

Coeducation and mixing the sexes: The debate over age-based classes in public schools in the first three decades of the 20th century. The “fundamental laws” of the 1880s maintained gender segregation in public schools in France. However, in the early 20th century, the authorities encouraged rural single-class schools to organise classes by age. Moreover, in 1905, the Congrès des Amicales d'Instituteurs et d'Institutrices (an association for schoolteachers) called for an aggressive coeducation policy. Some Catholic groups deliberately confused the two projects, speaking out against an educational policy that they considered to be both illegal and immoral. They decried a reform allegedly inspired by “Free Masonry” and intended to rob young girls of their modesty and thus take them away from the Church. Relying on bishops' recommendations, this debate became a battle horse for the Union des Associations Catholiques de Chefs de Famille (a Catholic association for traditional families) and sparked tensions locally. Although divergences eventually arose among Catholics, the Law of 1933 did not put an end to these debates. And yet, the purpose of this reform was to improve the pedagogical efficiency of rural schools, not to challenge gender relations.

Defending secondary education to save Latin: The lost wager of the Franco-Ancienne teachers' association (1946-1978)Specialist associations and teachers' unions are usually studied separately, a fact that tends to lend credence to the assertion that these categories of groups have separate functions. The history of the Franco-Ancienne, an association of teachers of French and classical letters, from its reconstitution in 1946, until it became the “Association des Professeurs de Lettres” in 1978, reveals intricate and overlapping functions, reflecting the leading role of “multi-positional” stakeholders, as well as the strategy used to protect and promote classical studies. By claiming that humanities and traditional secondary education were inseparable, the Franco-Ancienne's leaders effectively defended the teaching of Latin for a long time. However, after being one of the Franco-Ancienne's strengths, this stance became a weakness after educational reforms and changes in the teaching corps meant that this traditional conception of secondary education was a minority viewpoint.

Activists in suit and tie: A socio-historical look at the commitment of the student directors of the MNEF (1973-1986)This article focuses on a socio-historical analysis of the activism of the student leaders of the MNEF, a French student association in charge of social security for students. Based on archival documents, it aims to understand what kind of socialisation these leaders acquired. Firstly, the article describes the activist environment that these young leaders belonged to. To understand their activist commitment, we must grasp the changing relations between the MNEF and other student organisations and political parties in the 1970s. These student activists were involved in two interconnected areas of socialisation. On the one hand, they were socialised as “militants”, due to their involvement in broader militant movements (unions and political parties). On the other hand, they were socialised as “managers”, which was specific to the MNEF given their unique status as young company directors. By focusing on how expertise was acquired and representations were internalised, this article ultimately covers a form of “capital accumulation” as activists, a factor that helps us understand why several of these young leaders later entered politics.

‘Strikingly French' : Labor Unrest, Metropolitan Politics, and Martinique at the Turn of the CenturyIn February of 1900, the colony of Martinique experienced its first general strike, which was in turn mobilized in Paris by those on the left and right as they struggled for control of the French Chamber of Deputies. Socialists sought leverage in their struggle to oust “bourgeois” elements from the government; moderates and reformists used the strike to highlight issues of administrative misconduct within the metropole; and the right took the occasion to question the social ideals of the Republic and discredit the Waldeck-Rousseau coalition government. Growing civil unrest at the hands of a failing sugar economy on the distant island of Martinique was nearly sufficient to topple the government at home, as debates readily turned toward labor unrest within the metropole. As this paper demonstrates, the old colony of Martinique and its social concerns participated in and helped shape a fin-de-siècle France riddled with parliamentary infighting and rising demands for social equality.