France

Description

This study of France examines the nation-building process of continual re-creation and re-invention over more than two hundred years. It explores the complex task of creating unity while reconciling diversity, be it regional, religious or cultural, in a nation profoundly divided since the Revolution. Divided into three sections covering the invention of French history, experience and identity, it seeks to integrate more conventional political history with an examination of nation-building from the margins and through manifold images and representations of the nation. Themes such as social conflict, civil war and revolution, identity and difference, gender, colonialism and decolonization, religion, material and popular culture, and the devastation of war are examined in light of the evolution and continual reinvention of France.

Timothy Baycroft is Senior Lecturer in French History at the University of Sheffield, UK.

"A variable volume in an important new series edited by Keith Robbins, this effective book considers the way in which constructions of French identity have interacted with political contention. The result is a valuable reading of French history from the Revolutionary period on." Jeremy Black, The Historical Association