This post is cross-posted at my dissertation site.

I spent the day researching grants and reading about how to properly put together a proposal. I also spent a bit of time plotting out my todo list for this semester, creating a checklist of tasks and when they are due. I made the list in my Google Calendar, so it’s not available to be embedded on this site. I’ll have to work on finding a replacement or something.

One of the places I’ll be applying to for a research grant is the Social Science Research Council (http://www.ssrc.org). They happen to have a short paper on how to best write a proposal for their competitions, and being no dummy, I know I can apply these tips to all the proposals I write. So here are some tips from their paper, “On the Art of Writing Proposals.”

Purpose of Proposals is to Persuade

The main thing to realize when writing a proposal, is that you are trying to persuade the approval committee that your project is better than all the others. The trick is to do it in as short a space as possible—in the first paragraph, or at least the first page—while including all of the points the readers are looking for. In the end you want the readers to associate you with your project (Billy’s the guy researching blind Algerian water cave fish with telepathic properties), rather than other mundane tidbits (Jane is the gal from New York City, right?). It truly is an art.

What do they want?!

All scholarly projects require three basic merits: “conceptual innovation, methodological rigor, and rich, substantive content.” Additionally, the readers are going to be asking three questions that the proposal needs to answer:

• What are we going to learn?
• Why do we need to know?
• How do you prove it?

And this all needs to be done initially very clearly, succinctly, and as forcefully as possible in the shortest amount of text.

Let me be clear about this…

It’s important to keep in mind that the individuals in the approval committee come from varying disciplines. Therefore, the proposal needs to be clear, free of the jargon typical of your discipline, all the while explaining the boundary pushing or unique way your project approaches your field. Keep the focus of the proposal on the ideas and leave the technical aspects to an appendix. Make the first page explain as clearly as possible what the topic is about, and what the readers—essentially, what the granting committee—is going to learn from this.

So What!

This is the crux of the whole matter. Why in the world does anybody need to know about this? What’s the point? Who cares? Why?! This is sometimes the hardest part to figure out. I know it is for me. I continually mull this point over. Do I really have a convincing and compelling reason. It seems for the time being, for me, that my biggest compelling reason, my “so what?” is because it hasn’t been researched before. While that may be a valid reason, be careful. Others may conclude that there is adequate justification for there to be no scholarship in the first place. There are other aspects that make a research topic important and valid. “Turning points, crucial breakthroughs, central personages, fundamental institutions, and similar appeals to significance of of the object of research are sometimes effective, if argued rather than merely asserted.

Apply the topic to current political, economic or social debates. How is your research not only timely but currently urgent, such that it provides a new way to view current issues, or turn the direction of current understanding?

Also try to be fresh and appealing in your approach. Promote the apparent contradictions, extrapolate on puzzles, and catch the readers off guard with surprises. Take the less traveled path. If current trends lean towards one area of research, but your topic can gyrate towards a new and fresh approach, take it!

Oh Yeah? Prove it!

It is important for the proposal committee to know the methodology of your approach. Do not just tell them what you will discover, but how you intend to discover it. What types of sources, what means of debate, what technology will be employed? But don’t just list out your tasks and how you’ll do them, argue why this is the best course of action to achieve the results you intend to acquire. Because some readers may be from interdisciplinary fields, take the time to explain “what parts of your methodology are standard, and which are innovative.” Some ideas to cover:

• Activities you plan to undertake to collect information
• Techniques you will use to analyze the data
• Tests of validity you will apply
• Specify the archives, sources, and respondents

Finally, proposals should describe the end product. Will the grant help to complete a dissertation chapter, a book, a digital project? Be specific as to what the proposed outcome of this supported project will be.

End with the Beginning in mind…

And begin with the ending in mind, of course. It takes a long time to write a decent proposal. Start early. Give yourself several weeks, or months if possible. Write a first draft and set it aside for a day. Then revise and set aside again. Ask others to take a look at it. Revise it again. Make sure your opening paragraph is succinct, to the point, and effective.

The closing of your proposal should reference the beginning. If you mentioned a story or a specific and compelling reason for the research, reference it again. The effect is to try and tie it all up in a neat little package.

Now, get back to work!

Well, that all sounds really good. Now if I can just apply it to my proposals!

I have now achieved a major milestone in my academic career. I passed the oral exam in October, and the dissertation prospectus and presentation in December. With that I am now advanced to candidacy, meaning all that I have left to do is the dissertation research and writing! To go along with this announcement is the launching of the website that I will be doing in connection with my dissertation.

On the first day of this year (2011), I was visiting some museums in D.C. when I noticed the piece of the Berlin Wall in the Reagan Building with some very appropriate graffiti for me!

This is an essay I wrote for a Directed Readings course in Fall 2009, with Marion Deshmukh.

The Sonderweg of German History

Before 1940s there was a positive Sonderweg thesis that promoted favorably the differences of Germany from other Western nations.[1] This is similar to what every nation does, showing their best side, why they are better or, in a good sense, different than other nations.  These are typical self-promotion tactics that help one feel good with ones’ self, and to help others see the virtues they would like them to see.  This thesis is more appropriately termed the “German divergence from the West” in English.  Sonderweg was mainly a derogatory term used by its critics.

After 1940, the positive Sonderweg was no longer developed or used.  A critical Sonderweg took the place of the positive reflection of German history, with the new one attempting to answer one prominent question; How did Germany produce a society and political atmosphere where National Socialism could come to power?  Proponents of this Sonderweg thesis have been Ernst Fraenkel, Hans Rosenberg, George Mosse, Fritz Stern, Karl-Dietrich Bracher, Gerhard A.  Ritter, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Heinrich August Winkler, Helmut Plessner, Leonard Krieger, Kurt Sontheimer, John Maynard Keynes, Fritz Fischer, Wolfgang Mommsen.[2]

Those who argued for a critical Sonderweg put forth the following points for seeing Germany’s special path to National Socialism.

• Sonderweg proponents were cautious about asserting a “necessary relationship between long-term developments in German History and the triumph of National Socialism,” but in the end were specifically looking for peculiarities in German politics that hindered a liberal democracy from developing.[3]
• Germany had a relatively late attempt at creating a nation state.  France and the United States of America formed, or attempted to form, a nation in the late eighteenth century.  It was nearly one hundred years, finally in 1871, that Germany was able to form a federal government.
• Sonderweg proponents hearken back to the Kaiserreich government’s oppressive practices that limited parliament and caused what parties that did form to be rigid and fragmented.
• German defeat in World War I is seen as an important part of the German Sonderweg.  The devastating defeat in the First World War left German confidence in tatters.  Coupled with the limiting and demeaning restrictions of the Versailles Treaty, Germany seemed anxious to prove to themselves and Europeans that they were a nation of worth.  The defeat also led Germany into a new phase of government different, full parliamentary constitution with no monarchy or empire.
• Germany’s political culture tended to be conservative.  This made it difficult for liberal parties to be effective.
• The “Junkers-the large agrarian landowners east of the Elbe River” (similar to the English gentry) retained much of their power.  Whereas other nations had developed a parliament with representative leaders, much of Germany’s power still lay with landed aristocrats.
• Bismarck’s forming the nation-state with “Blut und Eisen”–”blood and iron” which put emphasis on the military, and left them unchecked by parliament.  This gave a militaristic approach to German government that lasted through the Weimar Republic and into National Socialism.
• The unbourgeois-ness of the bourgeoisie.  They never really revolted against the aristocratic society and political culture.  There was no middle class of people to rise up in rebellion as there were in other Western states.  As a result Germany was left without a tradition of successful revolutions and a history of top-down reforms.  Combined with pressure from the peasants, the middle classes were politically weak.
• Germany experienced a strange mixture of social and economic modernization and industrialization and capitalism on one hand, but maintained the old power relations, pre-industrial institutions, and cultures.  It was an odd combination of old powers, cultures and organizations in charge of new social and economic conditions and ways of production.
• All of these “long-term patterns” came to a head with the “short-term factors” of 1920s and 1930s, and help to explain the collapse of the Weimar Republic and rise of National Socialism.[4]

“In a nutshell, the critical Sonderweg thesis claimed to indentify long-term structures and processes that, under the influence of numerous other factors (from the consequences of defeat in World War I through the class conflicts of the 1920s to the peculiarities of Adolf Hitler’s personality), contributed to the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the triumph of National Socialism”.[5]

Historians opposed or critical of the Sonderweg have based their critiques partly on methodology.  Opponents to the Sonderweg thesis have been Thomas Nipperdey, David Blackbourn, Geoff Eley, Ernst Nolte, Jürgen Kocka, François Furet,Friedrich Meinecke.

Their opposition consists of the following points:

• There are several historical continuities to be seen in German history.  For example the Kaiserreich is also a prehistory of the Federal Republic of Germany.  This line of reasoning suggests that as National Socialism fades farther into the past, it becomes less of a clear case that the collapse of the Weimar Republic led to National Socialism.  Supporting a Sonderweg assumes there is a “normal path” that Germany could have taken.  To define what a “normal” path is, is much to subjective a “value judgment,” and the belief in the superiority of “the West”.[6]
• A research in Bielefeld has shown that the aristocratic influence (or dominance) over the middle class was no greater in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany than in other western European nations.  International comparisons have shown, contrary to Sonderweg hypothesis, that the educated German middle class was “strong and clearly contoured”.[7] It was a widespread European trait for the bourgeois to turn from liberalism in nineteenth century.
• The Kaiserreich did show signs of modernism.  It was “full of modern dynamism, for example in the areas of science and scholarship, art and culture”.[8]
• Intensive recent research seems to point to National Socialism as a modern phenomenon, rather than the results of past traditions.

Some core aspects of the Sonderweg have been supported, though, through recent research in three ways:

1.     Three of the basic developmental problems of modern societies showed themselves at the same time only in Germany.  1) Formation of the nation-state, 2) decision to have a constitution (parliament) or no, 3) issues with society brought by industrialization.  Other countries dealt with these individually, that is, with generations, or at least decades, of time in between to iron out difficulties.[9]

2.     While issues with the middle class, the bourgeoisie, cannot be discounted, they did have less of an effect on Germany society than in other European countries.[10]

3.     Germany had a “bureaucratic tradition” of a strong authoritarian state.  Such power in the hands of the state blocked parliament from functioning, provided effective services to the people, and weakened middle class liberalism.  When a democratic government finally did have power, after World War I in the form of the Weimar Republic, the inability of the leaders to provide a stable economy and society meant Germans were eager, or at least willing, to go back to a strong authoritarian state.  Important to realize, though, is that the rise of National Socialism should be seen separate from the fall of the Weimar Republic.  National Socialism was too new to have broken apart the Weimar Republic; it merely picked up the pieces.

With the Federal Republic the Sonderweg ended for West Germany.  It became a “normal” western nation.  East Germany, continued the Sonderweg, much altered of course, until its collapse in 1989-90.[11]

Sonderweg Bibliography

Proponents

Bracher, Karl Dietrich, ed. Deutscher Sonderweg, Mythos Oder Realität? München: R. Oldenbourg, 1982.

Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. 1st ed. New York: HarperPerennial, 1998.

Fischer, Fritz. Griff Nach Der Weltmacht: Die Kriegszielpolitik Des Kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914-18. 2nd ed. Düsseldorf: Droste, 1962.

Fritzsche, Peter. Germans into Nazis. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, 1996.

Kocka, Jurgen. “Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg.” History and Theory 38, no. 1 (February 1999): 40-50.

Krieger, Leonard. The German Idea of Freedom; History of a Political Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Pr, 1972.

Mommsen, Hans. Alternative Zu Hitler: Studien Zur Geschichte Des Deutschen Widerstandes. München: Beck, 2000.

Mommsen, Hans, ed. The Third Reich Between Vision and Reality: New Perspectives on German History, 1918-1945. German historical perspectives v.12. Oxford: Berg, 2001.

Mosse, George L. The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich. New York: Schocken Books, 1981.

Plessner, Helmuth. Die Verspätete Nation; Über Die Politische Verführbarkeit Bürgerlichen Geistes. 2nd ed. Stuttgart]: W. Kohlhammer, 1959.

Rosenberg, Hans. Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience, 1660-1815. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.

Sontheimer, Kurt. Antidemokratisches Denken in Der Weimarer Republik; Die Politischen Ideen Des Deutschen Nationalismus Zwischen 1918 Und 1933. München: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1962.

Stern, Fritz Richard. The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology. California library reprint series. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.

Wehler, Hans Ulrich. The German Empire, 1871-1918. Providence, RI: Berg Publishers, 1993.

Winkler, Heinrich August. Germany: The Long Road West. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Opponents

Blackbourn, David, and Geoff Eley. The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Furet, François. Unanswered Questions: Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews. 1st ed. New York: Schocken Books, 1989.

Kocka, Jurgen. “Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg.” History and Theory 38, no. 1 (February 1999): 40-50.

Meinecke, Friedrich. The German Catastrophe: Reflections and Recollections. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963.

Nolte, Ernst. Die Weimarer Republik: Demokratie Zwischen Lenin Und Hitler. München: Herbig, 2006.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 42.

[5] Ibid., 43.

[6] Ibid., 44.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid., 45.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid., 46.

[11] Ibid., 47.

There are also some good lecture notes here: http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/133c/133cPrevYears/133c06/133c06l04SpecialPath.htm

Whew! That was fun. Marion Deschmuk, Dina Copelman, and Sean Takats are great faculty to work with. And I would not have been able to do it without the mentoring of Steve Barnes this semester. Also, it wouldn’t be possible without the support of my wonderful wife Jessica, and the prayers and encouragement from family! Only two more hurdles to go, prospectus in December will put me at ABD (all but dissertation), and then the simple matter of research and writing a dissertation.

To finish off these posts about the orals, I’m posting some images of documents I made to help me conceptualize the books in their proper time periods. It’s basically back to the notecard system and arranging them chronologically. Each “card” has the title, a list of themes, a note about sources, and the main thesis of the book. This was extremely helpful in getting a grasp of the books. I created these in a Mac application called OmniGraffle. What would be even cooler, though, is if Zotero had a way to create this type of notecard type display with the ability to drag and drop the cards to organize in themes or chronologically.

Here’s the bibliography I have to draw from for the oral exam. My final preparation task is to make sure I know something about each book, it’s importance (historigraphically, methodologically and historically) and thesis. No biggie, right?

1. William Sheridan Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1922-1945, Rev. ed. (New York: F. Watts, 1984).
2. Götz Aly, Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
3. Benedict R. O’G Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Rev. ed. (London: Verso, 2006).
4. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973).
5. Omer Bartov, Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
6. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945, Studies on the history of society and culture 42 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
7. Volker Rolf Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914, 2nd ed. (New York, N.Y: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).
8. Lenard R Berlanstein, ed., The Industrial Revolution and Work in Nineteenth-Century Europe (London, [England]: Routledge, 1992).
9. Richard Bessel, Germany After the First World War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).
10. David Blackbourn, Class, Religion, and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany: The Centre Party in Wurttemberg Before 1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980).
11. David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press, 1984).
12. Rita S Botwinick, A History of the Holocaust: From Ideology to Annihilation, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Education, 2004).
13. Christopher R Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, 1st ed. (New York: HarperPerennial, 1998).
14. Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914-1918, 2nd ed., New approaches to European history (Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
15. Alon Confino, Germany as a Culture of Remembrance: Promises and Limits of Writing History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
16. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
17. Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy, Studies on the history of society and culture 28 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
18. Caroline C Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France: Religion and Political Identity in Brittany (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1993).
19. Christopher E Forth, The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood, The Johns Hopkins University studies in historical and political science 121st ser., 2 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
20. Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
21. Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1st ed. (New York, NY: HarperPerennial, 1998).
22. Peter Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1998).
23. Peter Fritzsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008).
24. Mary Fulbrook, Twentieth-Century Germany: Politics, Culture and Society 1918-1990 (London: Arnold, 2001).
25. Mary Fulbrook, The People’s State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
26. Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975).
27. John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
28. Timothy Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of ’89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague, 1st ed. (New York: Random House, 1990).
29. Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001).
30. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, 1st ed. (New York: Knopf, 1996).
31. Sudhir Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen: The Second Empire and the Emergence of Modern French Democracy (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1998).
32. Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity After World War II, Inside technology (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1998).
33. Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
34. E. J Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution [Europe] 1789-1848 (New York: New American Library, 1962).
35. E. J Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 1875-1914, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987).
36. E. J Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875, 1st ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
37. Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 (New York: Viking Press, 1978).
38. Lynn Avery Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
39. Konrad Hugo Jarausch, The Rush to German Unity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
40. Konrad Hugo Jarausch and Michael Geyer, Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2003).
41. Eric Thomas Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics: Pétain’s National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940-1944 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2001).
42. Marion A Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, Studies in Jewish history (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
43. Michael H. Kater, Doctors Under Hitler (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989).
44. Padraic Kenney, A Carnival of Revolution–Central Europe 1989 (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2002).
45. George O Kent, Bismarck and His Times (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978).
46. Ian Kershaw, The “Hitler Myth”: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).
47. Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family , and Nazi Politics, 1st ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987).
48. Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 2003).
49. Rudy Koshar, Germany’s Transient Pasts: Preservation and National Memory in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).
50. Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
51. Maurice Larkin, France Since the Popular Front: Government and People, 1936- 1986 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
52. Kristie Macrakis, Surviving the Swastika: Scientific Research in Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
53. Kristie Macrakis, Seduced by Secrets: Inside the Stasi’s Spy-Tech World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
54. Peter Mandler, ed., Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
55. A. James McAdams, Judging the Past in Unified Germany (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
56. John McManners, Church and State in France, 1870-1914 (New York: Harper & Row, 1972).
57. Jan-Werner Müller, ed., Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
58. Philip G Nord, The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
59. Robert A Nye, Crime, Madness, & Politics in Modern France: The Medical concept of National Decline (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1984).
60. Robert O Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944, Columbia University Press Morningside ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).
61. Pamela M Pilbeam, The Constitutional Monarchy in France, 1814-48, Seminar studies in history (Harlow, England: Longman, 2000).
62. Koppel Shub Pinson, Modern Germany; Its History and Civilization, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1966).
63. Bernard Porter, The Lion’s Share: A Short History of British Imperialism, 1850-2004, 4th ed. (Harlow, Essex, England: Pearson/Longman, 2004).
64. David Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bône, 1870-1920 (Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
65. Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988).
66. Jean H Quataert, Reluctant Feminists in German Social Democracy, 1885-1917 (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1979).
67. Monika Renneberg and Mark Walker, Science, Technology, and National Socialism (New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
68. Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil, 1st ed. (New York: Random House, 1998).
69. Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France Since 1944 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1991).
70. Edward W Said, Orientalism, 1st ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).
71. Carl E Schorske, Fin-De-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture, 1st ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1981).
72. Robert R Shandley, ed., Unwilling Germans?: The Goldhagen Debate (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
73. James J Sheehan, German History, 1770-1866, Oxford history of modern Europe (Oxford [England]: Clarendon Press, 1989).
74. Helmut Walser Smith, The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race Across the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
75. Rebecca L Spang, The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000).
76. Jonathan Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1984).
77. Jonathan Sperber, Rhineland Radicals: The Democratic Movement and the Revolution of 1848-1849 (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1991).
78. W. B Stephens, Education in Britain, 1750-1914, Social history in perspective (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998).
79. Matthew Stibbe, Women in the Third Reich (London: Arnold, 2003).
80. Gale Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
81. Raymond G Stokes, Constructing Socialism: Technology and Change in East Germany 1945-1990 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).
82. E. P Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Pantheon Books, 1964).
83. Dorothy Thompson, The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984).
84. F. M. L Thompson, The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988).
85. Judith R Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London, Women in culture and society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
86. R. K Webb, Modern England; from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1968).
87. Eugen Joseph Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1977).
88. Eugen Weber, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s, 1st ed. (New York: Norton, 1994).
89. Hans Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire, 1871-1918 (Providence, RI: Berg Publishers, 1993).
90. Eric D Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2007).
91. Martin J Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850-1980, 1st ed. (Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
92. Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1979). 

[image from flickr Commons]

I will invariably get a few questions about how I would teach modern European history as a professor. To prepare for these types of questions I wrote down (actually, I typed them all in, no pencil or paper used ) the three nations I’m looking at and some themes, events, and books I would like to use in a course. I struggled with which people, if any to focus on.

A theoretical question I could be asked is: Say you have to teach a course on (Modern England, Modern France, Modern Germany, Modern Europe, World Wars in Europe, etc). What themes, events, people would you focus on and what books would you include? What would be the layout of the course?

I focus on individual countries below, and for a general European course, I would just draw from each of the countries. The books I pull from are only the ones on my Orals reading list. I would most likely supplement with other books after doing some research if I were really teaching a course.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that I probably would never just go chronologically through a time period to hit big events and “important” people. History is very subjective. We look back on events and information with a certain set of “filters” on. For example we view Germany with political filters, focusing on governments and politicians. Or we may focus on France with cultural filters, looking at food, society, entertainment and arts. It’s impossible to get a full picture or sense of the past. Just as it’s impossible to gain a full sense of the present. There’s just too many people, too many viewpoints, too many sides to the same story, and too many filters to encompass everything. What’s the point, then? The point is to do what we can. Find what interests you and study the past through that filter. There’s nothing wrong with learning about one slice of the pie, as long as we don’t think our slice represents the whole thing. With that said, then, I would probably pick a few themes and have the books, discussions and (unless totally unavoidable) lectures focus on those themes. See the very bottom of this post for a couple of teaching ideas.

Trafalgar Square, London, England. 1915

England

Themes:

Industrial Revolution (political and economic changes), gender issues, education and society (state vs individual), nationalism, modernization, imperialism

Events:

Industrial Revolution

Chartists

Imperialism (changes)

Boer Wars

WWI – inter war – WWII

post-WWII

People:

Books:

Thompson, E. P.: Read sections to show the idea that class was created through Industrialization. Shows argument about quality versus quantity, and averages dilute the results.

Berlanstein: shows importance of Industrial Revolution and the different ways historians view the past based on present circumstances. Shows how historical works are influenced by current situations.

Thompson, Dorothy: Shows the beginnings of political uprisings supported by the common people.

Davidoff & Hall: Shows the beginning of the Victorian ideals, the separation of men and women spheres, and the “traditional” gender roles. Gender and economy seen to influence each other (gender roles determined by occupation, work and public sphere influence gender roles).

Porter: A good look at imperialism/British colonialism, the change from economical to ideological. Shows colonialism as a European power struggle. Addresses the masculinity of imperialism and fears in rise in feminism (Boer Wars)

Mandler: Brings up issue of state control versus individual liberty and accountability.

Eiffel Tower, Paris, France. 1900

France

Themes:

Political revolutions, class changes, colonialism, gender, religion, memory, nationalism, antisemitism

Events:

French Revolution

Political changes through 1870 (republics, monarchies, and empires)

Third Republic

Colonialism

Dreyfus Affair

WWI – interwar – WWII

Fourth Republic

Algeria

Fifth Republic

People:

Napoleon, Dreyfus, de Gaulle, Petain,

Books:

Ford and Weber: compare different ways of looking at nationalism in France. Bottom-up and Top-down show many ways and nationalism was sculptured.

Hazareesingh: Argues that concepts of citizenship and a weaker state government were first established during Second Empire, rather than in Third Republic. Sources based on elite writings, so it shows what they wanted, not necessarily what happened, since there was much restriction of local governments and individual rights.

Nord: Unique way of looking at how Third Republic lasted so long, not how it could end in Vichy. Shows how Third Republic implemented political ideas that Hazareesingh shows the Second Empire wanted to use (decentralized govt., create sense of citizenship, etc). Shows building of “traditional” Victorian ideals about gender, public/private spheres, middle-class bourgeois life shaped by and influenced politics in France.

McManners: to show the decline in religion, the issues of church and state (infalibility of pope)

Forth (or other book on Dreyfus Affair): Discuss why Dreyfus Affair was so influential in France and elsewhere. The issues of antisemitism in places other than Germany, and the masculinity complex in France and Europe.

Prochaska: To show importance of colonies, especially Algeria, to France. Stresses that Algeria was France, so issues there were similar to issues in France. Perhaps also read with Horne about the Algerian wars and end of France occupation to show the story from occupied and occupiers.

Weber: Show the interwar years as decisive in France allowing Nazis so much influence in France.

Paxton and Rousso: Show the involvement of Vichy with Nazis, and the national conundrum that places on French narrative.

Hecht: To address the issue of France dealing with their national image and turning to technology and technocrats as the source of narrative building.

Marktplatz in old town Goslar Germany. 1882

Germany

Themes:

nationalism, colonialism, fascism, religion, memory, antisemitism,

Events:

Napoleon’s unification of Germany

1848 Revolutions

Unification

Imperial Germany

Wilhelmina Germany

WWI – interwar (Weimar, Nazi) – WWII

post-war (Ground zero)

East and West Germany

re-Unification

People:

Bismarck, Wilhelm II, Hitler,

Books:

Kent: Show the unification of Germany and the role Bismarck played in shaping German politics and culture in nineteenth century.

Chickering: Discuss the reasons for WWI and Germany.

Bessel and Gay: Bessel for a traditional account of Weimar, Gay for a look at the social impact.

Allen: Look at the rise of Nazis.

Kershaw: Look at the mythos and sensationalism surrounding Hitler

Koonz: Look at women and their roles in Nazi Germany.

Kaplan: Look at the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany. Unique look from the bottom up, from the woman and mother’s viewpoint.

Fullbrook: formation and existence of East Germany.

Jarausch & Geyer: How to deal with Germany’s past, and how best to interpret and write history. Also a good book to address methodology, how should historians write, there are too many ways to explain and recount history than just political. OR Koshar for the same reasons, but he focuses on buildings as monuments which provides a tangible reference to the discussion rather than the theoretical discussion by Jarausch & Geyer.

Europe

Themes and events to focus on for European history:

Nationalism is the biggest one. Look at political change, republics, democracies, socialism, and communism.

Decline in religion and the increased reliance in science. Modernization.

Economies of scale. Global markets and capitalism vs socialism vs communism. Role of Industrial Revolution and colonialism, class and gender.

Colonialism/imperialism as economic, political and cultural motivators.

Gender issues. Defining gender in Victorian period, creation of “traditional roles”, affect of industrial revolution and capitalism on changing role of occupations. Changes in legal rights for women and men.

Rise in class consciousness, workers unions, political movements. Failure or success of communist ideals.

Teaching in a classroom.

Teaching Ideas

History Filters

Study of history is always dependent upon the “filter” through which you want to look at it. It would be fun to divide the class into sections, and each group take a specific “filter” (gender, culture, politics, economy, class, race, etc). Each group either gets their own reading list or they have to pull the specific themes from a general list. Then each class period, each group takes a turn discussing history viewed through their filter. Have the other groups not presenting write one question before class and one question after for the presenting group to answer about their “filter.” (Questions could be done on a blog.)

Timelines

Have students make a timeline of the time period the class will be studying. Then in the first lecture share what my points are and argue them. Have the students keep their timeline throughout the semester. They will argue their points, especially if they change them, taking ideas from the texts. Final paper is a well argued timeline.

(PS. All images are from Flickr Commons.)

Wilhelm II, Kaiser of Germany during WWI

England, France and Germany saw war as a glorious engagement. The prevailing thought by those who joined the military was that they would be home by Christmas. Young men were bored with the good quality of life so were eager to prove themselves and their new sense of national identity. Because of advancements in technology (machine guns, tanks, large guns, airplane) and changes in fighting (trench warfare, volunteer army rather than conscripts) the war lasted much, much longer and was much more devastating than planned. As secularism replaced religion, war was the natural or scientific way to show nationalism and patriotism.

There is much contention, at least among German historians, about numerous points leading up to the First World War. For German historians, the issues stem around the internal or external focus of the Wilhelmine government, the relative versus the actual influence and power of the lower classes over the ruling elite, and when Germany first made a decision to go to war, and the contentions surrounding German preparations for war. Volker Berghahn provides an excellent discussion on the historiography of Germany leading up to World War I. Refuting any attempts at placing a Sonderweg to Nazi Germany, Berghahn argues that Germany did not face different paths than other European countries, they just made different choices. In other words, Germans faced the same choices, they just reacted differently than other countries. Berghahn shows how internal pressures from an “unstable” government (a rise in the Social Democratic party demanding more power in the Reichstag for the lower classes and an obdurate ruling elite unwilling to give up power)  and external pressures from countries who sought to keep Germany restrained, eventually left German leaders feeling they had no other alternative than to create what they hoped would be a small internal war that would unify and subdue German speaking areas politically, and provide breathing room for lack of ability to colonize off continent. German leaders felt they were not able to decide if a war would happen, so they chose to decide when it would happen.

The war that followed came as a shock to all participants. Everything came in greater and staggering numbers. Loss of life in a single battle was immense compared to previous wars. The war left a lasting and different impression on each nation. War afflicted nearly half of all men in France, and turned them into ultra pacifists. Their desire to refrain from all future conflict led directly to complicit attitudes towards the future Nazi party. Germans felt stabbed in the back and let resentment and unfair reparations requirements foster in their culture. Forced to employ a democratic government and divert a great percentage of their economy to their enemies, Germany plunged much deeper into economic depression and hyper inflation than other countries of the world that experience the Great Depression. Germans became more politically militant instead of democratic, and were left pining for the “Golden Days” before the war.

And the British… I haven’t read about them past 1914.

Take a look at the picture below, drawn by Harris Morgan and submitted to wikimedia.org. I think it sums up nicely the different factors that led to the First World War. Perhaps one of the logs should be labeled “German political discord”. All of these external factors, plus the internal pressure of political change, fanned by the euphoric ideals of nationalism and trying to beat someone else (the arms race), led to a very uncivil expression of emotion.

Causes of World War I, Harris Morgan - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WWI-Causes.jpg

Work Cited:

1. Volker Rolf Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914, 2nd ed. (New York, N.Y: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).
   

Modernization is the term used to describe the process of how a society was before, compared to how it is now. It most often encompasses development and use of mechanical technology, a change in gender roles, a real or perceived rise in standard of living, adjustments in social classes, and, often, political change. Modernization at times was seen in different ways including: a detriment to human society, a marvelous improvement to society, an effect of economic and political challenges, and, most recently, as an inevitable evolution of progress.

Steam Carriages as the vehicles of the future.

Modernism in England can be seen in all these ways in the nineteenth century. The Industrial Revolution, as pointed out by E. P. Thompson had a great impact on the social and economic status of the poor as whole industries turned to machines in factories and entire occupations (think weavers) were discontinued. Formation of factory unions lead to a politically emboldened populace. The Victorian period is known for the ideals of separate spheres for men (political, public, and occupational) and women (private, nurturing) that are still observed and discussed and contested to this day. As Robert Wohl writes, these Victorian ideals are what caused many young individuals (in England, France and Germany) during the turn of the century to question the role of authority and the place of such ideals. English technological modernism during the 19th century was hampered by the desire of the business classes to emulate the aristocracy. Martin Wiener writes that this English pastoralism affected the economy by not allowing it to grow as in other countries. Another form of modernist government was seen in England as Parliament enacted many laws that directly interfered with individuals. Laws governing the poor, woman’s rights, education, and voting abilities all showed, for better or worse, a government with more interest in their citizens.

Reconstructed Horton 2-29

If modernization is characterized primarily by use of technology, especially of an industrial revolution, then Germany got off to a late start comparatively. But following the unification and industrialization in late 19th Century, Germany showed great progress. Advances in aviation with Zeppelin, in art with the Bauhaus movement are just two of the many examples. Politically Germany changed from a group of loosely connected principalities to become a federated nation with, albeit very weak, parliamentary government. At the turn of the century, German youth were struggling with the sense of modernism and formed many youth groups to express concern with political and social issues. Germany showed a peculiar sense of modernization during the Third Reich. Whereas Nazi ideology extolled the life of the peasant, the simple life of the Volk, seemingly anti-modern, they still exhibited very modern practices. The building of the Autobahns, the development of the first ballistic missile, the successful flights of the first jet powered aircraft were all seemingly contradictory to basic Nazi ideology.

East German Trabant, 1963

During the bifurcation years, West Germany enjoyed the status of a technologically advanced and modern country. East Germany suffered the stigma of a backwards and inept Soviet satellite country, incapable of keeping up with modern technologies. Stokes shows, though, that East Germany maintained technical competence through the length of its existence (longer than the Third Reich, Weimar Republic and Imperialism, a testament to a successful country with successful technologies such as the Trabant, optics, and computers. What didn’t work in East Germany was the political desire to keep up with western technology, but the ineptness at maintaining a supportive economy, due in part to Soviet inability or unwillingness to support East German technologies. East Germany, in effect, sought to specialize in the fringe technologies of the west, but did not have the underlying infrastructure to support them.

French Nuclear Power Plant at Cattenom

Modernization in the political sense has been attributed to the French Revolution. Changes between monarchies (and empires) to republics throughout the early 19th century sparked the social and political movements in Europe towards self-governed people (something which the nobility and educated classes thought undesirable and potentially devastating). As the Second Empire moved into the Third Republic, self-government began in earnest, as national governments allowed local governments more control. National governments also became more interested in the individual citizens, much the same as in England, as they enacted laws restricting religion and regulating education. As always a factor, the Dreyfus Affair showed a nation struggling with the society and the ideals that came out of political change. Continual losses (Franco-Prussian, WWI and WWII) to Germany and colonial troubles led France to desperately look towards modern technology, such as nuclear power, to regain international standing, and create a positive national narrative.

Works Cited:

1. Raymond G Stokes, Constructing Socialism: Technology and Change in East Germany 1945-1990 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).
2. E. P Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Pantheon Books, 1964).
3. Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1979).
   

What is nationalism? I think it is the mindset and ideals that came after monarchy lost it’s status as the representation of a people in many European countries. With a king or queen, royalty was the embodiment of the subjects. They represented their country, they were their country. Before, they had a sense of Queen Elizabeth I from sixteenth century, that she is the heart of England. When the political tide turned to constitutional monarchies or republics the people felt the monarchies did not truly represent the new organization created. Nationalism is the idea that stepped in to fill the void. As Benedict Anderson writes, the concept of a nation is imagined because it is a community of members that will not know or meet all other members, it is limited because it has a definite if elastic boundary where other nations begin, it is sovereign because the people involved are what give it power and authority, and it is a community in that it assumes a “horizontal comradeship” despite actual inequalities. This new concept of organization of individuals into a community based on political determinism leads to followers willing to kill, but more importantly, willing to die for the ideal. It’s as if a country, because of the new political organization, became one big family, and instead of having subjects, they are all siblings and relatives. Nationalism also seemed to take on a role of the new religion. As people turned from their Christian roots and became more secular, nationalism provided a sense of unity and an ideal to strive for.

In France you see the issue of nationalism in play from the French Revolution. All throughout the nineteenth century the various Republics that arise are trying to create this unified “Frenchness” throughout the country. Weber, Ford and Nord write about it. The issues of the periphery versus the center that come to play in Weber and Ford are all about creating a unified language, culture, system of measurement, etc, in an effort to create what it means to be “French”. This is, in essence, what nationalism is. Defining what makes a group of people similar to each other, and what makes them different from the others. The Dreyfus Affair shows worries about how the “Frenchness” is turning out. Are they becoming to feminized and weak as Forth shows? Hecht shows the concern about the place of French nationalism after World War II in terms of nuclear technology. France feels they can regain their status as one of the major nations of the world by proving themselves capable of nuclear technology. France was/is very aware of the other nations, continuously in the late nineteenth century comparing population growth and manliness.

Through the nineteenth century, Britain showed signs of nationalism through interaction and comparison with their colonial contacts. Colonizing in the nineteenth century turned from a desire for free trade to a new form of imperialism, the British expanded because it was morally right to educate and enlighten other nations. In the Victorian period, the British were also focused internally. The forays of the upper-classes into the lower classes for philanthropic reasons, the desire of Parliament to enact laws to regulate education and to an extent family life, all show how the nation, or state, was considered to be the fatherly figure that knew best how to care for his children, the citizens.

German nationalism came considerably later than France and England. Unity in Germany did not come until 1870s with Prussia. Here we see a definite creation of a German nation. Whereas before there were many separate and distinct principalities, the unification under Bismark and Prussia literally created, reluctantly at times, a unified German nation. Throughout Imperial Germany and through World War I, the German sense of nationalism was built on a unifying government and language. Various events during the early twentieth century led to a greater sense of unity, such as Zeppelin’s air ships. Of most consolidating force was the German experience in World War I. The feelings of unity and comradeship overcame political and religious boundaries leading up to the war. As the War efforts became unfruitful, feelings of nationalism declined into feelings of betrayal and into political fracturing that endured the Weimar period. The rise of the Nazis was in part due to their appeal to the sense of recapturing the essence of the Volk, the people. Feelings of national unity rose during the Nazi period. After World War II, Germany went through a period unique to any modern European nation. Division into East and West German nations led to vary different national narratives and senses of nationality. Re-unification in 1990 collapsed one national narrative and modified the remaining one.

Works Mentioned:

1. Benedict R. O’G Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Rev. ed. (London: Verso, 2006).
2. Caroline C Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France: Religion and Political Identity in Brittany (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1993).
3. Philip G Nord, The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
4. Eugen Joseph Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1977).
   

So, what are the big issues in modern French History?

• Fears of change. Periphery versus the national (Paris). Modern versus traditional. New versus old forms of society, government, culture. National versus local.
• Social importance and role of individuals. Individual versus community versus monarchy.
• Vitality and virtue of French. Really comes into play during Dreyfus affair and national result indicating lowering birth-rate. Escalated through the two World Wars, and can be seen as the cause of issues with Algeria, and blossoms again in their search for vitality in nuclear power.
• Political troubles. Around eleven (11) major changes in political power from 1780-1960, contrasted with other European and world powers (USA – 1, England – 1, Germany – 5)

I’ll look at the following:

• Republicanism and Nationalism
• Antisemitism
• Colonialism
• World War I and World War II
• Post-war national identity

Referencing some of these books:

1. Caroline C Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France: Religion and Political Identity in Brittany (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1993).
2. Christopher E Forth, The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood, The Johns Hopkins University studies in historical and political science 121st ser., 2 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
3. Sudhir Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen: The Second Empire and the Emergence of Modern French Democracy (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1998).
4. Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity After World War II, Inside technology (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1998).
5. Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 (New York: Viking Press, 1978).
6. Eric Thomas Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics: Pétain’s National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940-1944 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2001).
7. Maurice Larkin, France Since the Popular Front: Government and People, 1936- 1986 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
8. John McManners, Church and State in France, 1870-1914 (New York: Harper & Row, 1972).
9. Philip G Nord, The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
10. Robert A Nye, Crime, Madness, & Politics in Modern France: The Medical concept of National Decline (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1984).
11. The Sorrow and the Pity Chronicle of a French Town During the Occupation = La Chagrin Et La Pitie: Chronique D’une Ville Francaise Sous L’occupation (Milestone Film & Video ; [New York], 2000).
12. Robert O Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944, Columbia University Press Morningside ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).
13. Pamela M Pilbeam, The Constitutional Monarchy in France, 1814-48, Seminar studies in history (Harlow, England: Longman, 2000).
14. David Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bône, 1870-1920 (Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
15. Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France Since 1944 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1991).
16. Rebecca L Spang, The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000).
17. Eugen Joseph Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1977).
18. Eugen Weber, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s, 1st ed. (New York: Norton, 1994).
    

Republicanism and Nationalism

Genl. E. Cavaignac: appointed provisional president of the French republic with the powers of a dictator, June 23, 1848

French history is replete with episodes of the populace coming to terms with their political ideas about republicanism and ideals about nationalism. Throughout most of the 19th century, France waffled between a republic and an aristocratic monarchy or empire.

Comparing Weber and Ford.

National vs local, nationalism vs individualism. Weber looks at the peasants and periphery from the government’s perspective as they sought to unify France with a national identity through language, education, culture and politics. From the governments view point, the rural population was a hindrance to modernization and improvement of France. Those outside of Paris were backwards, coarse and ignorant. For Weber, 19th Century France is the struggle for national government to overcome the periphery to create nationalism and a unified France.

Ford sees things from the perspective of those in the periphery, those outside of Paris. She argues that peasants and rural France were intelligent, politically active, and interested in maintaining their current culture and language. The Catholic democratic movement seen in this century was an attempt of local areas to keep political autonomy by using the Republican ideals to help create a new France, rather than just be overpowered by the national, urban movement. Those in the periphery were an active agent in creating France, rather than a passive or resistant minority.

Phillip Nord argues that France was finally able to create a stable Republic in the last quarter of the 19th century as they built the republic upon ideals of a civic-society and a civic-culture as the government relinquished some national power in favor of local authorities. In essence, the Third Republic allowed France to create themselves instead of forming into the mold established by the politicians.

Antisemitism

Dreyfus Affair.

Hannah Arendt’s thoughts that Dreyfus Affair is important to study of antisemitism, for it shows that such thoughts and feelings were prevalent outside of Germany. Antisemitism was only one aspect of the Dreyfus Affair, the perceived decline of masculinity, anxiety about modernity, the rise of feminism, the rise in the bourgeois and the intellectual, and the increase in material wealth and leisure all played a part in making much ado about Dreyfus.

Captain Alfred Dreyfus on the right.

Jews were stereotyped as weak and effeminate, foreigners and traitors. To combat this stereotype the Dreyfusards portrayed Dreyfus as a Christ-like figure, being sacrificed before the populace. They appealed to examples such as Emile Zola who changed from being obese to a picture of health, as typical of Dreyfusard willpower and manliness.

It was believed by both sides that the masculinity of French men was in decline, and that it was something men could choose. This was a troubling recognition if true, for previous belief was that masculinity was a self-evident attribute of being born male, they had to come to grips with the thought that masculinity was a trait, that it was acquired by societal constraints. This could pull into question the whole foundation of gender.

Colonialism.

Colonialism in 19th century France, as in all of Europe, was a sign of power. A countries status and abilities rose with increased territory, which came with resources. In the 20th Century the political power achieved by controlling colonies was replaced by economic power which was a result of a growing world market for resources and goods.

Infantry, Algeria, 1853

David Prochaska writes of France’s colonization of Algeria, specifically settler colonization, in which France set out to make Algeria a French state. Algeria was unique because more non-French Europeans came to settle in Algeria, yet it retained its connection to France. As such the status of France’s relationship with Algeria greatly influenced the politics in France. When things were good in Algeria, the people were content with the government, but as conflicts arose, so did dissatisfaction with the Republic.

Eric Jennings continues the history of French colonialism into World War II by looking at three countries under Vichy control. Again, these colonies were to show the French and their Nazi captors that they retained political and world power, despite their loss and surrender to Germany. As the Vichy instilled their own version of fascism built on the cult of Petain. Not uniquely, as they foreign nation sought to build up nationalism for France, the native populations developed their own sense of nationalism until it became strong enough to overpower French indoctrination.

Such was the case as shown by Alistair Horne in Algeria after World War II. Continuing tensions between native Algerians and the European settlers lead to years of bloody conflicts resulting in the expulsion of the French noir. Initially desiring to maintain control of Algeria to further show military ability, de Gaulle eventually realized the need to cut losses in Algeria and save France from civil unrest.

WWI and WWII.

The Great wars were devastating to France for two main reasons. First, the number of men killed in each war left a devastating toll on Frances population. Second, continual defeat at the hands of the Germans crushed morale and confidence. As Eugen Weber argues, the French in interwar Europe had become ultra pacifists, doing all they could to avoid (which amounted to doing nothing to stop) another war.

During World War II French politicians led France into another tangle of actions that afflict French perceptions of themselves even to the present day. One of the largest results of World War II is how they come to terms with the Vichy involvement with the Nazis. During the reign of Charles de Gualle, the national narrative was of the true French who were the Resistance, and the anomaly of the Vichy government. Research done in the 1960s and later has shown that the French were more complacent with the Vichy than the national narrative accounted for. These new revelations have given the French a sort of mentality complex, or as Henry Rousso terms it, a Vichy syndrome. Rousso states that the French have a lasting issue with their memories of the Vichy government because the ideological conflict that was WWII still exists, along with the defeat in 1940 that left lasting scars, and the need to include the Vichy government in any account of French history. The Vichy government has become to French history as the Nazi past is to German. The atrocities of a decade seem to overpower the centuries of national diversity.

Post-war National Identity

Since the mid 19th century, it seems the French have been continually dealing with a declining confidence in their national virility and strength. One way France has found a way to regain national identity is through technology. Gabrielle Hecht shows that France sought to redeem their national identity through a competitive nuclear power program. Their ability to innovate and achieve nuclear sustainability became the new colonialism or victory in war. It showed to themselves and the world that they were independent and still a world power.