A close-up look at everyday life in Nazi-occupied France draws in firsthand interviews, previously unseen archives, diaries, and eyewitness accounts to shed light on such topics as forced labor, the role of the Catholic Church, romantic relationships between French women and German soldiers, and the ambivalent attitudes of ordinary people toward the Resistance. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

A close-up look at everyday life in Nazi-occupied France draws in firshand interviews, previously unseen archives, diaries, and eyewitness accounts to shed light on such topics as forced labor, the role of the Catholic Church, romantic relationships between French women and German soldiers, and the ambivalent attitudes of ordinary people toward the Resistance. 20,000 first printing.

This is a comprehensive survey of European history from the coup d'etat of Napoleon Boneparte in France to the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo, which led to the First World War. It concentrates on the twin themes of revolution and nationalism, which often combined in the early part of the century but which increasingly became rival creeds. Going beyond traditional political and diplomatic history, the book incorporates the results of recent research on population movements, the expansion of markets, the accumulation of capital, social mobility, education, changing patterns of leisure, religious practices, and intellectual and artistic developments. The work falls into three chronoligical sections. the first, starting in 1800 (rather than the more usual 1815) follows the build-up of the revolutionary currents which were eventually going to erupt in the `Year of Revolutions' 1848. The second, from 1850 to 1880, deals with the golden age of capitalism, the successful culmination of struggles for national unification, and the threat of anarchism. This book is intended for students of nineteenth-century European history (1st, 2nd, and 3rd year undergraduate). (view table of contents)

(view table of contents)

(view table of contents)

Product Description: The period 1870 - 1914 in France saw the consolidation of republican government and the recovery of national self-confidence. Though political crises such as the Dreyfus Affair threatened to tear it apart, the Republic established firm parliamentary rule, built up an Empire and an army which was to see it through the Great War...read more

The past has a profound presence in French consciousness, perhaps more than that of any other nation. In this book, Robert Gildea explores France's relationship with its own history and investigates some of the persistent themes in French political culture. It is essentially a book about "remembering", about the ways in which the French remember potent national figures such as Joan of Arc and Napoleon. The book begins with an historiographical survey of the broad schools of French historical writing, and then looks at the underlying themes which recur throughout the story of the French past. Gildea investigates such topics as revolution and counter-revolution, church and state, regionalism and centralism, nationalism and political identity, and demonstrates the way in which different versions of the past have been manufactured by competing political interests to further their cause.