Contenu du sommaire : Varia

Transatlantic Perspectives on Nineteenth Century France: Chronicle of the Disobedient Generation
In 1958, David Pinkney advised young American historians studying nineteenth century France to differentiate themselves from their French colleagues by limiting their doctoral research to a monograph focusing on a crucial or controversial aspect of this tumultuous century, before moving on to more synthetic works. However, beginning in the late 1960s, young American historians ignored the ‘Pinkney Law' and started to study periods and subjects that the French had neglected, by asking original questions and even by taking greater advantage than the French of the works of Michel Foucault and Philippe Ariès. These new American research works touched a large audience in France, not only by triggering a visible change in the approach of French historians, but also by emphasising the plasticity and power of memory in social and political life. The article gives two examples of this approach applied to the study of 1877.

Strange Bedfellows: Literary and Popular Culture in 1870s France
The Third Republic's triumph was not only the result of the language and practices of the bourgeoisie, but also those of ordinary people, who fought conservatism with the weapons of Rabelaisian popular culture – laughter, jokes, obscene gestures, tricks, scatology and deliberately vulgar language. This trend was particularly visible during the 16 May 1877 crisis. When President MacMahon pushed the republican government of Jules Simon to resign, then decided to appoint a minority government of monarchists and Bonapartistes and to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies, he and his partisans came up against an energetic movement of popular resistance, which used humour and mockery to oppose this grab for power. Most striking is the fact that a majority of French writers of the 1870s, often described as indifferent to politics, echoed the language and watchwords of this popular resistance to the ‘Bayard of modern times' (as MacMahon was known to those who viewed him favourably). The convergences between literary culture and popular culture thus sketched an unexpected camaraderie between these two worlds.

The Walls that Talk: Political Graffiti in 1877Graffiti was one of the most visible forms of popular resistance to President MacMahon's revocation of Jules Simon's republican government on 16 May 1877, to the naming of a prime minister from the minority monarchist party, and to the dismissal of the Chamber of Deputies. For the five months of this foundational political crisis and ensuing election campaign, presidential posters and those of official candidates were crossed out, torn down, soiled or written on with ironic expressions. Messages of mockery, conveying humour of a scatological or pornographic bent, were engraved with knife blades or drawn on the walls of many cities in France, especially Paris. Through this form of protest, which was iconoclastic in its content and sometimes in its style, a democratic political culture is unveiled that was profoundly anchored in the working class, in Paris and elsewhere, both geographically and sociologically.

A Strange Year: Victor Hugo and the Coup of 16 May 1877When the 16 May 1877 crisis broke out, Victor Hugo was at the peak of his fame. This article shows how he mobilised every facet of his personal glory to fight MacMahon and his partisans' assault on the republicans. Hugo, at age 76, took on multiple roles, one after the other or simultaneously: the white-bearded old man, the grandfather proud of his two grandchildren, the senator benefiting from political immunity, the survivor of the last authentic coup d'État, the historian and poet of the Republic. He spoke in the Senate against the dismissal of the Chamber of Deputies, campaigned with left-wing parties during the election campaign, took notes in his notebooks, and most importantly, published History of a Crime less than two weeks before the first round of the elections, drawing a parallel between 2 December 1851 and 16 May 1877. He was a model for some opposition members who tried to imitate his style or hoped that he would be appointed as a minister. However, no matter how important Hugo's voice was, during this crisis, it was echoed by the voices of thousands of anonymous individuals who spontaneously shared the same historical and political references and chose the same angles of attack.

A Marginal Affair. Building Anthropometry ‘Data' Based on Army Recruitment Boards, France–Germany, 1880-1900In 1891, the German Otto Ammon contacted his colleague René Collignon, an army doctor based in Cherbourg, and the two men began an intense correspondence, eventually forming a network of several anthropometric specialists in Europe and the US. Measuring army recruits during the medical exams of recruitment boards was the focus of their scientific preoccupations. These exchanges led both to methodological questions and to a form of transnational sociability, far removed from academic structures, helping build the legitimacy of racism based on ‘large numbers', supposedly objective. This period of crisis in anthropometrics, which pushed the researchers to the sidelines, was nevertheless a resource that is visible in a transnational perspective.

Native Soldiers in the Horn of Africa (1916-1966): Deconstructing the Myth of the Warrior
This article analyses the social profile of the French army recruits in East Africa during the colonial period. The analysis uses a sample of over 1 311 individual records of soldiers who had all voluntarily enlisted, unlike soldiers in other parts of the French Empire. The statistical study was supplemented with a field investigation in order to reconstruct individual life courses. A cross study of the statistical and personal data shows the regional migrations and the reasons for these voluntary enlistments. Voluntary service illustrates not only the social actor's agency, but also the weight of ecological, social and political hazards in this part of Africa, as well as the role of identity factors.

Using Radio Archive Sources in Social History. An Empirical Approach Applied to the Case of Radio Lorraine Cœur d'Acier (Longwy, 1979-1980)Radio archives are not used extensively as an historical source, notably due to their rarity. This is even truer for pirate radios (or free radios), which were mostly illegal. From this standpoint, Radio Lorraine Cœur d'Acier, which was born in the wake of two different movements – the free radios that developed in France beginning in 1977, and especially the mobilisation underway to oppose the dismantling of iron mines in northern and eastern France – is unique because a large portion of its broadcasts were recorded and preserved.Based on this experience in Longwy, Lorraine, this article endeavours to assess why radio archives constitute a decisive contribution to a social history of the working class that goes beyond the organisations that claim to represent this class or the mobilisations carried out in its name, to focus on the men and women that actually comprise the working class. After presenting the sound archive used for research and the analytical method applied to it, the article indicates why radio archives are affected by considerable limitations in terms of popular expression, while nevertheless enabling an analysis within a micro-history approach.