Contenu du sommaire

A Gender History of Women's Suffrage Movements
Adopting a gender perspective, this article traces the evolution of the women's suffrage movement within the broader landscape of French feminist movements from the late 19th century to the 1930s. By focusing on gender relations within activist groups, it demonstrates that the issue of women's political rights gave rise to the first demands for female autonomy in mixed-gender feminist groups at the end of the 19th century. Likewise, women's growing role in the struggle for their own emancipation helped to disseminate suffragist demands throughout feminist movements during the early 20th century.

Labour and Gender Assignments at the End of the War
In 1945, at the end of the war, the French department of Moselle was experiencing grave difficulties. Its economy was faltering and a number of social reforms that were favourable to employees had to be implemented. Historical records illustrate the ambiguity of this period, in particular with regard to women's employment. This article thus seeks to understand the social construct of women's work in this local context. The governmental and press archives consulted to this end reveal the preservation of gender borders through employment, where traditional social roles were maintained. These also explicitly reveal disparities with regard to situations and treatments, which remained unfavourable to women.

Parisian Students during the Popular Front
In the mid-1930s, the far Right continued to dominate the Latin Quarter with a number of spectacular stunts that exploited latent xenophobia to effectively influence French legislation and undermine the Paris University system. With the banning of the far-right Leagues and the triumph of the Popular Front, the most serious disruptions came to an end. In the Latin Quarter, however, none of this general enthusiasm managed to penetrate, despite a reconfigured political scene among students. Contrary to expectations, left-wing movements rapidly lost power as a new force emerged in the form of student support for Colonel François de La Rocque.

Revolutionary Activism in Hiding
In a bid to restore public order after ten days at a national standstill, General de Gaulle imposed by decree the dissolution of eleven far-left organizations. Contrary to all the other now illegal revolutionary organizations, the PCMLF (the French Leninist-Marxist Communist Party) chose to keep using the PCMLF acronym. From then on, the Leninist-Marxist organization and its activists were forced to go underground to maintain the organization illegally. Its activists were therefore obliged to conceal part, if not all, of their regular political activities in order to protect themselves from State repression.

The Birth of Theatre in Paris' Red Belt and the Paradox of Municipal Communism
A major faultline appeared in the cultural policy of the French Communist Party during the 1960s. Analyzing the creation of the Théâtre 71 in 1971 in Malakoff, a Communist municipality since 1925, this article examines how the evolution in cultural policies, considered in the context of various interwar concerns, was embodied in a number of municipal practices. The town's collaboration with Guy Kayat, the theatrical activist at the head of the new venue, constituted a valuable learning experience. The difficulties faced by local Communist officials attest to the vast scope of the changes unfolding during the 1960s and 1970s within the Red Belt suburbs, whose urban and social fabric was consequently deeply altered.

Elected Yes-Men?
The presidentialisation of Western democracies is a significant trend of post-war political history, notably in France. But although the strengthening of executive power has narrowed the reach of the legislative branch, it has not eliminated it completely. By studying the genesis of the 1981-1982 French Nationalisation Law championed by the French Socialist government, this article challenges the cliché of Socialist “yes-men” entirely submissive to François Mitterrand's “imperial presidency”. Their ideological defeat dispels the illusion of an institutional practice during the Fifth Republic that was unique to the Left. From an economic perspective, it also foreshadowed the marginalisation of those faithful to a “strong state”, a concept that had been supported by most elected Socialists, in the name of the “Changer la vie” platform during the previous decade.

French Intellectuals to Meet the Duce and the Fuhrer
In the course of their travels throughout Fascist and Nazi Europe, French intellectuals produced diverse narratives that explored confrontations with political otherness. Embodying the new regimes, the figure of the dictator gradually became an indispensable component of these travel narratives. Meeting this figure in the flesh, understanding the reasons for his success as well as the follies of mystical nationalism, determining the regime's intentions towards France by dialoguing with its mastermind, manifesting one's admiration, touting one's expertise, becoming an author and an authority figure on account of having met the dictator in person: such were the various objectives of the French intellectuals who met with the Fascist and Nazi dictators.

The Nanjing Dilemma
Whether or not to recognize the pro-Japanese collaborationist government established in China in March 1940 presented a dilemma for Western diplomacy. Western nations hesitated to make a decision, in the process revealing divergences among the democratic countries whose colonial interests in the region were threatened by the Japanese invasion, as well as those within the fascist camp, where tensions stemming from the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact were exacerbated by the China problem. Based on the diplomatic sources of the different parties involved, this article measures the impact of this little-known episode of World War II that weakened alliances in Europe and aggravated US-Japan relations on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack.

Memory: A Bad Subject for Historians?
This article argues for a new vision of the relationship between history and memory within the historical discipline. It first describes the limits of earlier historical paradigms that identified these two notions as contradictory, especially in the context of the debates around historical memory laws which led to the establishment of the association Liberté pour l'histoire [Freedom for History] in late 2005. This article then explores the social and academic circumstances which, in the late 1970s, produced the history/memory dichotomy. Finally, this article shows how going beyond the old paradigm has borne fruit in contemporary historical research, giving historians many new ways to explore memory as a scientific subject in its own right.

Historical Research, History Education Research and History Teacher Training
The issue of the professionalisation of high school history teachers through training, recently discussed in an article published in Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire, benefits from being considered from the angle of history education research. By connecting students' representations with the logic behind the historical knowledge to be imparted, and by comparing the relationships between historical texts and research and writing practices among historians and in the classroom, we can illustrate the conditions of teacher training with epistemological and historiographical stakes that are adapted in their implementation in a high school context.