Contenu du sommaire : Vingtième Siècle à l'épreuve du présent

In the Aftermath of November 13th
This article suggests that, for a relatively short period of time, the aftermath of the 13 November 2015 attacks in Paris allowed for the emergence of a ‟culture of war” in France, aspects of which were quite similar to the political climate that had reigned in 1914-1918. Some of these similarities included: the formation of a ‟Union sacrée” centred around the President of the French Republic, the intense mobilisation of national symbols, the transformation of victims, rescue workers and law enforcement agents into heroes, and the violent stigmatization of the barbarian ‟enemy”. Finally, this article examines different possible interpretations of this phenomenon, moving from the mobilization of historical references, the powerful expression of defensive patriotism and a reprise of the ‟myth of unity”.

When Current Events and Research Collide
This paper illustrates a number of echoes between the current events that unfolded after the 2015 and 2016 terrorist attacks in France, including the ensuing policy measures and debates that these prompted (the law on the state of emergency, house arrest for high-risk individuals, administrative detention measures, etc.), and a personal research project devoted to the history of German denazification post-1945, in particular the internment of high-ranking Nazi officials as decreed by the occupying powers. Strictly speaking, this article does not seek to compare these two situations, but instead highlights several echoes and analogies, taking a small detour through the Algerian War, still a raw subject when it comes to discussing internment in France. Based on a triangular structure (recent news, the Algerian War, and the French Liberation), this article examines the inevitable effects of the present on historical research projects.

Terrorism in Italy and France
Since the beginning of the 2000s, studies on terrorism have often formulated comparisons between the most recent attacks and terrorism in Italy during the ‟Years of Lead”. Drawing on new developments in the historical research on political violence in Italy during the 1960s and 70s, this article raises four questions which may shed light on the incidents of jihadist terrorism that have plagued France and other European countries in recent years: how should we describe what is happening? Is it possible to compare terrorist attacks? What is the social history of terrorism? Which policies should the State adopt to fight against the terrorist threat?

Two Authors Look at the Muslim World in Crisis
The events of 13 November had a major impact on my work as a historian of the Maghreb. Since that day, I have been called upon to talk about Islam not from the perspective of jihad culture, which runs through the societal history of the Muslim world, but with regard to the regime of temporality that governs present-day Muslims. I have draw upon two novels written at the end of the 20th century, which are The Book of Illuminations by the Egyptian Gamal el Ghitany, and Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade by the Algerian Assia Djebar. Thanks to these two works, two different attitudes towards the passage of time emerge: time must either be understood as an achronic reality, where past and present merge in an eschatological perspective (Gamal el Ghitany), or the flow of time must be restored in order to act on the present moment (Assia Djebar).

A Shaky Start: The First Years of the National School for Public Administration (1945-1958)Though it had long been envisioned, every attempt at reforming the recruitment and training of high-ranking civil servants had run aground, with the Popular Front (Front populaire) failing to create a national school for public administration. But in 1945, in the context of an overall reform of public service, the provisional government succeeded in founding such an institution, which became one of the Liberation's most ambitious projects. However, the institution's dual nature meant that it incurred both long-standing resistance from the administrations it came to disturb, as well as, during the 1950s, the hostility of right-wing parliamentarians who challenged its pedagogy, through measures that aimed to both bully and streamline. The École nationale d'administration (National School for Public Administration) would thus have to wait until the beginning of the Fifth Republic to overcome a number of major obstacles.

Early and Intense Anti-Colonialist Action by Besançon Students
The Association générale des étudiants de Besançon (AGEB, Besançon Students' Association) took an anti-colonial stance as early as 1953. The AGEB was led by young Catholic students, who fought against colonization alongside their overseas and Communist brethren. These anti-colonialist students were supported by the majority of their peers as well as some teachers. They were the driving force behind the inter-union fight against the war in Algeria. Their positions were more radical than those of the minority leadership of the Union nationale des étudiants de France (UNEF, French National Students' Union). In 1957, a young student named Francine Rapiné was the first French person to be arrested for helping the National Liberation Front. Besançon therefore provides a specific illustration of student involvement in the fight for Algerian independence prior to 1962.

Young Catholics of the Young Christian Workers Association and the “Sexual Revolution” in 1970s FranceThis article analyses the complex positioning of the members of the Youth Christian Workers (YCW) association regarding issues raised by the sexual revolution in France during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Using the movement's publications as well as other documents stored in the Hauts-de-Seine departmental archives, this article describes the gradual shift away from a faith-based movement with a strong militant and ideological legacy, and towards a form of bioethical and moral modernity on issues of sex education, contraception and the right to abortion. This transformation did not lead to the movement's deconfessionalisation. In fact, this new positioning, which was not in conformity with Catholic institutional norms, also created tension with more secular standards.

Young Militant Revolutionaries Confronted with an “Apolitical” Student Movement
At first sight, the openly ‟apolitical” protest led by students against the Devaquet reform bill, which included a limited number of demands formulated from a defensive stance, may have appeared like a ‟revolution without revolutionaries”. Yet there were indeed groups of far-left activists involved in this movement, which was unprecedented in terms of its total number of participants. In places such as the University of Rennes II, young Trotskyist activists belonging to the Jeunesses communistes révolutionnaires (JCR, Revolutionary Communist Youth) played a part that was inversely proportional to their actual political weight within the university body.

The Americanisation of French Retail at the Start of the 1960s
Hypermarkets, invented in France in 1963, were part and parcel of the drastic transformations of retail trade structures. This article examines the process of Americanization behind those changes, and more specifically the role of the Modern Marketing Methods seminars, organized by the National Cash Register and led by Bernardo Trujillo between 1957 and the end of the 1960s. These courses were offered to retail professionals in the United-States and touted, among other things, the advantages of consumer self-service; despite being US-based, these seminars had a strong impact on French business. However, as these seminars are not well known by historians, this article seeks to document their functioning and to examine their influence, in particular by comparing them to the productivity missions of the 1950s.

Citizen Legislators
In the United States, direct democracy experienced a major renewal in the 1970s. In California in particular, popular initiatives began to be used by citizens' groups to mainstream already adopted federal measures to ‟clean up” politics at the state level. Two different visions of popular initiatives co-existed, advocated by very different citizens' organizations, which made strange bedfellows in their alliance to promote the Political Reform Act of 1974: a progressive vision according to which popular initiatives must be used in case of a legislative impasse, and a populist vision which inherently promoted the use of popular initiatives, as elected officials were deemed unable to respond to citizens' demands.