Abstract: Richard Lionheart's historical reputation is primarily that of a warrior kingrex iWle bellicosus in one English chronicler's words-yet recent scholarship has sought to place the English ruler in the context of "administrative kingship."' Previous tests of Richard's personal involvement in governing his domains have concentrated on his kingdom of England, neglecting his Continental domains (with the exception of Normandy to some extent). The survival of masses of administrative records from medieval England makes it easier to evaluate the Lionheart's personal role in government there than in his Continental domains, which generated far fewer records, and historians have failed to extend their evaluation of Richard as an administrative monarch to his father's patrimony in the Loire River valley or to his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine's inheritance farther south. Indeed, no administrative records earlier than the Capetian take-

Abstract: Until recently, the moral history of Old Regime political economy has tended to be regarded as consisting almost exclusively of an inexorable acceptance of the legitimacy of greed and self-interest as the basis of market life. Even those classical liberals who did not follow Friedrich Hayek all the way to a denial of the legitimacy of the concept of "social justice" were likely to accept something like the economists' neoclassical model of rational agency, with its emphasis on the maximization of personal outputs of gratification.' As Michael L. Rothschild has observed, the prevailing metaphor in economics has been the hydraulic, mechanistic notion of equilibrium, with its implicit assumption of the moral inertness of economic agents.2 And Marxists, whether "vulgar" or otherwise, have been inclined to follow their master in viewing political economy as the inevitable system of justification for the property institutions of emergent capitalism. From whatever source, the result has been a tendency to detect premonitions of pragmatism at the expense of underlying moral continuities in the intellectual history of capitalism. Even the most careful and persuasive commentators on early modern economic discourse have been disposed to view that discourse mainly from the standpoint of what it was able to contribute to the

Abstract: Roger Chartier is one of the most theoretically aware of historians. His prodigious scholarly output, whether empirical studies of print culture and reading practices in the early modern world or interpretive, synthetic, or polemical essays, has always been marked by a wide range of theoretical reference and a close attention to conceptual issues. On the Edge of the Cliff. History, Language, and Practice makes these theoretical concerns particularly clear. In the essays composing this book, Chartier reflects on the works of seven figures who have powerfully influenced the practice of cultural history: Hayden White, Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, D. F. McKenzie, Louis Marin, Norbert Elias, and Philippe Aries. Although all practiced historical scholarship, none was a professional historian pure and simple. McKenzie is a bibliographer; Foucault and Marin were polymath philosophers, Elias a sociologist, Aries an astoundingly talented amateur; de Certeau was a historian but also a professor of comparative literature, a theologian, and a Jesuit priest; and White is a historian who has spent the past quarter century housed in interdisciplinary humanities programs. This book provides a splendid point of entry into the works of all these authors. The essays on Elias, McKenzie, and Aries, which were written as forewords to recent editions of their works, are specifically intended as introductory essays. On the Edge gives us the privilege of listening in while Chartier interrogates some of the most original thinkers in the human sciences about the theoretical presuppositions of contemporary cultural history. And in this forum in French Historical Studies we have the added privilege of interrogating the interrogator.

Abstract: On the morning of 14 December 1790, an angry crowd surrounded the royal prison in Aix-en-Provence and forced the release of the marquis de la Roquette and the avocat au parlement Jean Joseph Pascalis. Led by militant members of the Club des anti-politiques, a radical club in Aix composed largely of artisans, the crowd escorted the two men through the streets of Aix to the elegant Cours Mirabeau, where each was hanged by a rope from a street lantern. Later that day the same fate befell Andre-Raymond Guiramand, an elderly chevalier of St. Louis who in recent days had ardently and vocally defended the royalist cause from the steps of the cafe Guion. Thus abruptly ended the brief existence of the Club des amis de la paix in Aix, whose gala opening had been scheduled to occur two days earlier.' This violent episode in the revolutionary history of Aix is but an extreme case among numerous confrontations between radical revolutionaries and the leaders of monarchist clubs that occurred throughout provincial France from December 1790 through late 1791. The appearance of these clubs in provincial towns roughly coincided with the formation of the Club monarchique in Paris and with the publication of

Abstract: In a trenchant analysis of postrevolutionary religious conflict, Claude Langlois argues that the sectarian violence associated with the sixteenth-century Wars of Religion, the revolt of the Camisards, and the French Revolution largely disappeared in France during the nineteenth century. He attributes this decline both to the civil peace inaugurated by the Concordat and to the gradual displacement of religious violence by political and social violence. As the articles in this forum attest, religious violence did change in important respects, but I would argue less for its disappearance than for its fundamental transformation. This transformation can be fully appreciated only by situating it in a longer history of religious violence, from the Wars of Religion to the Third Republic, and by assessing that violence not only in terms of its frequency but also in terms of its changing forms of expression. In recent years historians have devoted a tremendous amount of attention to the subject of sixteenth-century religious "rites of violence." 1 There has, however, been a profound lack of consensus among

Abstract: In this essay we propose neither to challenge the legitimacy nor to denigrate the quality of any of the excellent historical studies discussed by Mack P. Holt in his review article "Putting Religion Back into the Wars of Religion." Rather, we aim to confront some of the larger historiographical issues raised by the exchange between Holt and Henry Heller that followed the appearance of Holt's review.' In this context our purpose is twofold: to expose the methodological limitations of the Durkheimian definition of religion apparently agreed on by both authors and, with this critique in mind, to explore what we consider to be the positive consequences for our discipline of encouraging research informed by other approaches to the study of religion. It should be noted at the outset that we are committed to methodological ecumenicism and that we accept as axiomatic the claim that ongoing selfcriticism is essential to the intellectual health of any discipline. The extent to which both authors share Durkheimian assumptions becomes clear in Holt's final rejoinder to Heller, where he responds to Heller's claim that he has been inconsistent in his allegiance to Durkheim. Here Holt argues that "Heller has turned my main argument on its head: 'Holt's assumption [is] . . . that the religious cannot be reduced to the social.' . . . I argued exactly the opposite of what

Abstract: shift in this direction, but the end result of a complex series of negotiations over the details of administering the kingdom in the

Abstract: Monseigneur Felix Fournier, bishop of Nantes, spoke words of consolation: "In your anguish you will ask me if there is no refuge against this tempest of divine anger.... There is one. We have just shown it to you, and we beseech you to close yourself within it." The opening of the war of 1870 brought the abrupt collapse of the Second Empire and weeks of unrelenting news of military defeat. The people of Nantes, like people throughout France, felt shock, dismay, and fear. Fournier's refuge was the Sacred Heart ofJesus, and he called on the faithful to retreat to its "mysterious recesses." ' Soon he made this invocation official by solemnly dedicating the diocese of Nantes to the Sacred Heart, an act imitated in dioceses across France.2 Fournier's Sacred Heart had a maternal quality which contrasted sharply with its aggressively masculine invocation a few weeks later. Early in December soldiers known as the Volunteers of the West, many of them from the diocese of Nantes and environs, cried out, "Vive le Sacre-Coeur!" as they launched a suicidal charge against German troops. Behind a banner that bore the name and image of the Sacred

Abstract: French cinema's "first wave" washed over the colonies as well as the metropole, and filmmakers were soon carting their cameras off to remote corners of the empire to record exotic habitats and peoples for display to audiences at home. Colonial staffs and film crews cooperated in making the documentaries, gravitating toward each other as cobearers of the civilizing mission. Narrative fictional film shot on location in the colonies, cinema's other first wave, arrived in 1921 with LAtlantide. Its million-dollar budget, surreal plot, hypnotic Saharan scenery, and intrepid Foreign Legion heroes caused a sensation at its Paris premiere. Filming on location became de rigueur, and the visionary proconsul of Morocco, Marechal Louis-Hubert Lyautey, who founded the protectorate in 1912, put its resources at the disposal of French directors. By providing them with logistical support and schooling them in the realities of Moroccan society and culture, he supported a trend in French film toward authenticity and verisimilitude that gave it an advantage over Hollywood back-lot productions. Quick to see film's potential for capturing the public imagination and promoting his agenda, he sponsored films that encouraged mutual respect between cultures. Lyautey's star waned after he failed to anticipate or cope with the Rif uprising of 1925-26, and cinetma colonial found new sponsors in settler-dominated

Abstract: A lire la presse catholique du mois de juin 1903, mois des processions de la Fete-Dieu, il semblerait qu'une sorte de guerre de religion larvee ait eclate en France. Sur un ton dramatique et en de multiples colonnes a la une, les lecteurs decouvrent les multiples episodes d'une guerilla urbaine inusitee: processions assaillies par des groupes de revolutionnaires, invectives anticlericales contre cantiques brailles a pleine poitrine, pugilats et coups de canne autour du Saint Sacrement, debandades de communiantes apeurees, gendarmes debordes. Ce violent acces de fievre intervient 'a peu pres a mi-chemin entre la victoire electorale des Gauches, liee a l'affaire Dreyfus, et la separation de l'Eglise et de l'Etat. II convient d'abord de restituer le dossier des evenements eux-memes pour discerner, au-dela des apparences repetitives, les specificites locales: 1"histoire bataille," c'est le cas de le dire ici, est un prealable indispensable pour prendre une premiere mesure du phenomene. Celui-ci est justiciable, dans un second temps, d'une analyse approfondie, attentive tant au jeu des symboles qu'aux realites du droit public, 'a la sociabilite religieuse traditionnelle comme aux transformations du cadre urbain. Le probleme est en effet de rendre compte de l'irruption brutale de la violence, a ce degre exceptionnel, a ce moment precis et en certains lieux.

Abstract: Over the past twenty years, Roger Chartier has helped set the terms within which European historians in several fields have worked. In part, this influence has reflected the range of his interests and the remarkable learning that he has devoted to them. His numerous books (different accounting systems produce different estimates of his extraordinary productivity) include substantial studies of early modern French politics, the French Revolution, and early modern society.' But his most important contributions have come in the field of cultural history, where he has taught historians to look closely at the processes by which ordinary people use the cultural artifacts produced for them. In a series of case studies, he has shown the richness of this interaction between users and producers of culture, the surprising freedoms that individuals enjoy when they encounter books, pictures, and ideas. Chartier's new collection of essays, On the Edge of the Cliff explores some of the broad assumptions that have underlain the author's practice as a historian.2 It offers overviews and critical evaluations of some of the field's most influential theorists: Hayden White, Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, Louis Marin, Philippe Aries, Norbert Elias, and others. Each essay includes a striking range of specific insights and explications, but Chartier also returns repeatedly to a series of large

Abstract: I1 est toujours malaise de s'interroger sur ce qui n'est plus et sur les raisons de ce qui a change sans bruit. Ainsi de la violence religieuse en France: comment en effet s'expliquer qu'apres les guerres de Religion, apres la revolte des Camisards, apres la dechristianisation revolutionnaire, on entre au 19e siecle dans une ere pacifique, que l'on ne tue plus maintenant parce que l'adversaire est catholique ou protestant, ou parce qu'il refuse d'etre catholique ou protestant? A dire vrai il faut quelque peu se forcer pour poser une telle question: en effet soudain une certaine paix religieuse fait en quelque sorte partie du paysage, et pourtant cette pacification ne va pas de soi: elle merite une explication qui aille au dela d'un constat cynique et desabuse. La Revocation de l'Edit de Nantes a ete efficace: elle n'a pas detruit le protestantisme en France, mais l'a assez affaibli pour qu'il ne porte plus ombrage a la religion dominante; et de meme la Revolution: le catholicisme en sort suffisamment touche pour lui oter toute envie d'un nouvel affrontement avec le pouvoir. Toutefois cette maniere de voir les choses, qui ne manque pas d'une certaine justesse, laisse trop d'elements ulterieurs dans l'ombre pour qu'on s'y tienne. Dans bien d'autres pays d'Europe, en Espagne, en Irlande, pour ne rien dire de l'ex-Yougoslavie, la paix civile, un instant etablie, n'a point dure. I1 faut donc aller chercher plus loin les raisons d'une pacification durable. Nous avancerons pour notre part deux hypotheses, liees toutes deux a la capacite francaise a tirer des benefices pacifiques des drames de son histoire, y compris de la Revolution: d'abord l'etablissement d'une durable paix concordataire; ensuite le deplacement, sur le plan politique, d'une conflictualite qui

Abstract: Chartier, Roger is currently Directeur d'Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) as well as Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. Since 1969, he has been lecturing and publishing on the relationship between the material history of institutions and the embodied practices which both animate and survive these institutions: in particular, early modern techniques of reading, disseminating and collecting printed information. The course of Roger Chartier's work indicates the multiple avenues of critical inquiry available to cultural historians; R. Chartier has been in large part responsible for defining what this elusive discipline — "cultural history" — might be. His “On the Edge of the Cliff “ (1997) stages encounters with thinkers as diverse as Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, Norbert Elias, Hayden White, Louis Marin, Philippe Aries. In the wake of this volume, "French Historical Studies" published a forum entitled "Critical pragmatism, language, and cultural history".

Abstract: For those who study church-state relations in France during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the years that coincide with the papacy of Leo XIII (1878-1903) are particularly exciting ones. The opening years of this papacy witnessed a spurt of Republican anticlericalism that resulted in the removal of crucifixes from courthouses, the laicization of hospitals and cemeteries, the prohibition of prayer at public functions, the elimination of chaplains in the army and navy, the legalization of divorce, and, above all, the removal of religious instruction from the public schools.1 The so-called Ferry Laws of the early 1880s expanded and secularized public education throughout France.2 French Catholics, many of whom remained as unreconciled to the early Third Republic as they had been to the First Republic, were alienated further from their government. During the campaign for the election of 1889, for example, Catholics who dreamed of a royalist revival supported the enigmatic and popular general Georges Boulanger, the former war minister who had generated considerable controversy by threatening to put an end to German hegemony along the eastern border and by posing a challenge to the authority of the Third Republic. Papal documents hint that Catholics were encouraged to support Boulanger until his flight from Paris and suicide in Brussels. With the fall of Boulangism in 1889

Abstract: In an autobiographical memoir written late in life (1980), the historian Philippe Aries (1914-84) evokes his discovery of the writings of the Annales historians during the dark days of Vichy France, when Paris was under the occupation of the German army. Conscripted immediately at the outset of the war in September 1939 and as precipitously demobilized after the armistice of June 1940, he returned to Paris, his life disrupted and his plans for the future uncertain. Still hoping to pass his agregation, the qualifying examination for an appointment to the university faculty, he turned once more to his studies in history. Since classes at the Sorbonne were few, he spent his days beneath the high, vaulted ceilings of the beautiful reading room at the Bibliotheque nationale. "I lived at the Bibliotheque nationale as if it were a monastery," he reminisced years later.1 There he first read the works of Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, who during the 1930s had pioneered a new kind of social history not yet appreciated within the university, and of Maurice Halbwachs, a sociologist of the Durkheim school whose investigations of social structures were poignantly ignored in the intellectual circles of the extreme right in which he moved. These readings fired Aries's imagination as a historian, just as the legends of Capetian kings and their courtiers had first kindled his interest in his nation's past when he had been a child. They set him on his course toward becoming one of the most original pioneers of the history of mentalities during the 1960s.

Abstract: Historians have always disagreed about the causes and consequences of past events, but Gerard Noiriel argues in his important recent book that they now differ even more profoundly in their views of the social and intellectual objectives of their professional lives.' Although many historians might welcome these increasingly diverse social identities and research methodologies as signs of professional vitality, Noiriel worries that fragmentation and theoretical critiques are threatening both the social and the intellectual coherence of the contemporary historical profession. His book describes this historical "crisis" and also proposes a new "pragmatic" conception of historical work that could sustain the unified professional identity that he thinks is needed in an era of stagnating financial support and postmodern epistemological skepticism. Noiriel's descriptions of the crisis as well as his desire for pragmatic solutions resemble comparable professional commentaries among American historians, and one of the striking features of his book emerges in his use of American examples to explain current dangers and his use of American philosophical traditions to construct a new professional paradigm. Sur la ?rise" de l'histoire is mostly about France, but the cross-cultural themes suggest that the "crisis" among historians and the possible responses to it grow out of an international culture of historians and historical work. Like many historians in Europe and America, Noiriel wants to reconstruct a unifying professional paradigm while acknowledging the force of criticisms that have undermined powerful earlier beliefs in scientific history. He thus rec-

Abstract: For the past three decades the history of education in France has captured wide interest among historians. Sociologists' criticisms of educational systems, together with the rise of social history in the late 1960s, redirected educational history from Whiggish panegyrics of schools and legislative progress.1 Educational history began to consider schooling as an evolving, autonomous, albeit male-controlled, social institution often quite removed from public controversies or conceptions about it. More recently, historians have considered individuals within that institution and their adaptations to it. In the latter context the history of girls' education and women teachers has been especially innovative. Boys' schooling received more attention than girls' until this decade. In 1980 I noted promising research in the history of girls' education but still judged it a field "too long ignored." Among a score of books on education Linda L. Clark could discuss only three concerning women in 1987. Although both Marie-Madeleine Compere and Franvcoise Mayeur still bemoan scholarly neglect of girls' schooling, each has noticed a recent tendency to evaluate girls' schools on their own merits. Compere remains troubled by "an ideological and militant tradition in France, treating schooling as an aspect of political history and 'France' as an indivisible entity." Criticizing the continued emphasis on theories rather than institutional structure and the tendency to treat girls' schooling merely in the context of developments

Abstract: First of all, I would like to thank very warmly Bonnie G. Smith,Jonathan Dewald, and William H. Sewell Jr. for the attention they paid to my book On the Edge of the Cliff and for their astute comments and criticisms, which oblige me to clarify some of my historiographical positions or propositions. 1. I agree with Smith's ironic and critical comment about the contradiction between the claim for a universal knowledge made by historians and the specificity and particularity of each practitioner's own social place or professional locus. I do not think that historians can avoid the risk of mythical reconstructions of the past. "Identitarian" mythological and fanciful histories are not linked with specific (and often dominated) identities. Like others, professional historians are capable of projecting the desires and needs of the present onto the past, possibly writing a history of their discipline according to a heroic and idealistic narrative that ignores the exclusions that have sustained the process of professionalization itself. It seems to me, nonetheless, that we have to distinguish firmly between the social description of the inequalities that have inhabited and still inhabit the historical discipline and the epistemological characterization of the operations and controls that govern the production of a "scientific" discourse -especially if the term "scientific" is understood, following Michel de Certeau, as "the possibility of conceiving an ensemble of rules allowing control of operations adapted to the pro-