Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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55 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
French Impressionism, a cultural explanation, 7 Aug 2008
If I were offering "France: culture, politics and society 1800-1900" as my specialist subject on Mastermind, before getting into the black chair what main source would I depend on? Well you could do worse than read Robert Gildea's book but I would not make it my sole choice.
The book is in two parts, 1799 to 1870 then the Franco-Prussian war up to 1914. The chapters are pithy with a lot of detail. They read as self contained essays, or perhaps lectures. The long - apparently never ending - story of centrifugal and centripetal politics, Paris as the root of all division or the source of national unity is told. And the divided French left, an enduring legacy where the game seems more than the consequences. For me it was well written but, frustratingly, only as far as it went. Such a wide-ranging book is of necessity impressionistic. Adding little cameos, and employing literature to reinforce analysis added momentum.
The main limitation was that only political challenges and social change within France were dealt with but these were paralleled in other countries, or states forming nations. Although Professor Gildea does make some passing comparative reference, I was constantly wondering how Germany, or Britain, or Italy compared in many areas. What was specific, or special to France? Europe was changing massively, and was changing the world. France was part of this, not isolated, so comparisons beyond her borders are essential and relevant.
With this broad brush, he deals with themes, the ever-present challenge for the French - finding accommodation with themselves, how to employ the revolutionary ideals and live up to them, modernisation, industrialisation, class, religion, feminism, literature, coping with a superior culture that the world does not quite appreciate. The imposition of the French language and the invention of a French national identity, both occurring very late in the 20th century, were sketched. This is not a political or economic history, it is not a social history, it is an amalgam equating to a cultural explanation.
This is a book you can appreciate more than enjoy. It is for the curious, possibly the curious undergraduate, for those wanting orientation leading to specific political, social, diplomatic histories. It would have been helpful to have had a short bibliography. Having read Graham Robb's anthropology "The Discovery of France" and Rod Kedward's political history "La Vie En Bleu: France and the French Since 1900" Gildea's book fits well. Then there is Robert and Isabelle Tombs - "That Sweet Enemy." I would not sit in the Mastermind chair without having read all four.
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4 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Breathless, powerful overview of the long 19th century in France, 20 Sep 2008
This is a major work of French history that follows on from the author's piecing anatomisation of the dynamics of the Occupation between 1940 and 1945. The subject matter here is considerably more substantial, the legacy of the French Revolution in the `long' nineteenth century, from the rise of Napoleon to the close of the `belle époque' Political overviews open both sections of the book, and are taken at the gallop. There is, it goes without saying, enough material between the covers for a dozen books, and it is to Gildea's credit that his singular command of detail saves the breathless overviews of complex political orientations. He (just) carries the uninformed reader through.
What a subject...it spans the collapse of France's Napoleonic dreams of European domination, and nothing less than the nation's wrestling with competing imperatives of revolution, democracy, monarchism, and the power of the Church. Understandably, certain sections stand out. The discussion of the changing position of women in French society was tantalising, as are the full implications and pervasive and caustic impact of the Dreyfus affair on every level of society. I could easily have read more on the confrontation with Britain over Fashoda in the upper Nile that so nearly led to war; and the chapter which showed how France viewed itself via comparison with other European powers particularly compelling. It's tempting to suggests that perhaps following a single family through the period might have humanised a mass of data a little more.
But Gildea is loyal to his aims, and communicates the huge cultural power of the belle époque period, the society that was the crucible of modernism, where Picasso painted, which invented the detective story and the comic strip; the image of the young Sartre running to buy his weekly comic as a schoolboy was particularly vivid. Gildea is unequivocal - maybe subtly ironic? - in his belief that the blood sacrifice of 1914-1918 (which eclipsed the British and Empire death toll by many millions), acted as the final test of a France which had struggled so intensely to achieve national self-realisation.
This is a breathless, at times intimidating compilation, a starting point for many years of reading, and wholly necessary in order to reach beyond the holiday home clichés to the resonant history of a major Western power.
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0 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Impressive, well-presented study of 19th-century France, 27 May 2009
This is a very impressive study of 19th-century France that succeeds because it organises its material in a coherent and effective manner. Gildea's underlying theme - that France in the course of the 19th century only gradually healed the enormous political, social, religious and cultural divisions caused by the 1789 Revolution - is certainly not new. It is the correct approach, nonetheless. The revolutions of 1830 and 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871, as well as dramatic episodes such as Napoleon III's coup d'état in 1851 and the fin de siècle Dreyfus Affair, do not make much sense unless viewed through the prism of 1789 and its aftermath.
Gildea's book would be ideal for anyone studying this period of French history at university. Theodore Zeldin's "France 1848-1945" was first published in 1979 and looks rather quirky and dated now. Roger Magraw's "France 1814-1815: The Bourgeois Century" is pretty heavy going.
Gildea's narrative chapters do a good job of communicating the important facts, and the thematic chapters are strong, too - especially those on French regionalism, the divide between Paris and the provinces, and the making of modern French identity. If one were to quibble, one would say Gildea might have made a greater effort not to rely on such well-worn sources such as Madame de Staël, Chateaubriand, Balzac, the Goncourt diaries and so on.
It is misguided to suggest, as does one reviewer, that Gildea should have devoted more space to comparing France with other European countries. In fact, Gildea provides a helpful chapter on how the 19th-century French viewed other nations. Together with other features of the book, that gives a perfectly good idea of where France stood in relation to her peers and rivals. Anything more, and you would have a history of Europe on your hands, not a history of France. And after all, Gildea's book forms part of the New Penguin History of France.
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