Contenu du sommaire : Historiens français des Etats-Unis.

« Myths, Traditions and Historicity in American History. ». For the past few decades, American historians have been turning to the history of their own culture and discovering the roots of their own myths. By the way in which America has applied old European myths, by the subtle interplay between history and myth, by the very special place occupied by traditions, the United States, if they are not unique, nonetheless stand apart from old European cultures. Only newly-forged nations can be compared to the American model, in which traditions both derive from myths and generate them.

« The Beginnings of American History in France. ». Why was American history so late in coming to French universities ? It was only in 1917 that a lectureship in « American literature and civilisation » was instituted at the Sorbonne ; only in 1925 did the École Pratique des Hautes Études open a post of director of studies for Désiré Pasquet in American history. After the Second World War, circumstances seemed ideal for a « take-off » of American history in France, but it did not occur : among the most obvious explanations, one can cite both the absence of the bilateral links that a strong French immigration would have established and the incompatibility between two sets of intellectual, academic and linguistic traditions. The field was revived by the Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris thanks to J. B. Duroselle's work and teaching.

« French Views of the United States : From Observation to History. ». There exists an old tradition of French observers commenting on American society. But, for a long time, because the United States seemed to have produced a « modern », experimental society, it was mostly seen as an object of immediate observation, a blueprint for the future of European industrial societies, not a field for historical investigation. Today there is a renewal of interest in American history among French historians, who, as they explore this field, should attempt to clarify concepts commonly used in American history and to develop new approaches.

« The Europeanization of the United States as Seen by the French (1870-1914). Since the Second World War, the Americanization of Europe has become a commonplace theme : it was already present at the end of the nineteenth century as an expression of a sort of fear. But after the Spanish-American War of 1898, the reverse theme appeared in Europe : the United States were no longer a model of agrarian democracy ; they were on the road to Europeanization. For the French, the United States were becoming Germanized. Moreover, for socialists and conservative Catholics alike, imperialism and the working-class agitation of the 1980's drew the United States closer to Europe, and so to France. For the socialist, the same logic of capitalism was at work in both America and France ; for the could do was to follow. The theme of the Europeanization of the United States had repercussions on the other side of the Atlantic, in anti-imperialist circles. It is therefore a concept that helps to reveal perceptions on both sides of the Atlantic during the « Gilded Age. »

« The United States and the 'New History'. » The « New History » has kept away from the New World. There are many reasons for the absence of America from the work of the Annales historians. Their intellectual curiosity focused first on the European past, whose density and singularity they reconstructed. The United States had too short a history, which economics nearly alone sufficed to explain ; moreover, the Americans themselves refused to shoulder the burden of their past. Marxism, which led so many French intelectuals to the pursuit of history, deterred them from the United States. The discovery by the Americans themselves of the complexity and tragedy of history, the cultural exchanges centered, for example, on the work of Philippe Aries — all these factors have helped to put the United States back into the « historian's territory. »

« Emigration, Faith and the Making of Americans : The Example of the Middle Colonies in the Eighteenth Century. » In their flight from Europe, the immigrants turned to America for salvation. The Great Awakening was seen as the promise of remedy against the moral disease that affected colonial Americans. The itinerant preaching of George Whitfield acted as a catalyst as early as 1739, but it was the « Americans », in their particular social and cultural setting, who played the leading role. The Awakening marked a radical departure from traditional parish structures : preachers took their message to other communities, regardless of their church or ethnic origins.

« The Child and the Family in American Social History since Philippe Ariès. » This article examines one of the rare cases of a specific cultural influence of French historiography on American historiography : the impact in the United States of the work of Philippe Ariès. The studies by John Demos, Kenneth Lockridge and Philip Greven owe their conceptual approach no less to the richness of Aries's ideas than to the discovery of historical demography. The work of Ariès has deeply influenced the way Americans perceive their own colonial past.

« General Simon Bernard, military engineer in the United States (1816-1831). » In 1816, the French General Simon Bernard, after having served as aide-de-camp to Napoleon, left for the United States, where, for fifteen years, as assistant to the chief engineer of the Corps of Engineers, he planned the defense system of the maritime borders and then took part in the development of a wide network of internal communications such as the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal and the national road from Washington to New Orleans.