SSFH Society News

The Society for the Study of French History (SSFH) supports postgraduate research by funding students to carry out archival research as well as helping them to attend and/or present work at conferences. These awards are open to all postgraduate students registered at a UK university who are carrying out research on an aspect of French history, and reports from successful applicants clearly indicate the tremendous range of research interests supported by the Society. The Society also supports conferences on French history as well as Visiting Scholars to UK and Irish Universities. In this edition we present reports from recipients of Postgraduate Research Grants and Covid Support Grants for Early Career Researchers. The edition further includes details on recent and forthcoming books in the Studies in Modern French and Francophone History series with MUP, for which members of the SSFH are entitled to a 35% discount. More information on the postgraduate awards (and on the full range of bursaries and prizes offered by the SSFH) is available from the Society’s website: www.frenchhistorysociety.ac.uk.

UNDERGRADUATE DISSERTATION PRIZE

In 2006 the Society for the Study of French History instituted three undergraduate prizes each year as part of its efforts to promote French history in universities. The prizes - one first prize of £300 and two supplementary prizes of £100 each - are awarded for the best final year undergraduate dissertation or extended research essay produced in a UK or Irish university in each academic year, concerning any aspect of French history, or any aspect of contemporary French Studies with a substantial historical dimension.

We particularly encourage submissions from under-represented groups.

2022 Winner: Beatrice Barr (Oxford), ‘Revolutionaries, Feminists, Martyrs? Revisiting the image of the Religieuses Hospitalières in pre-revolutionary France’

The prize panel described this as marvellous work which was extremely well written and presented. The dissertation explored issues of Church-State relations and the significance of Jansenism and public debate in ancien régime France very effectively, through examining the ‘resistance’ of the Religieuses Hospitailères to episcopal authority in the context of the 1713 papal bull Unigenitus.

The overall approach was nuanced and supplements sometimes simplistic accounts of the royal attitude towards accusations of Jansenism in certain religious orders and the problems it presented for Crown and Church. By highlighting individual experience (so far as it can be reconstructed) the dissertation questions generalisations and shows a sophisticated approach to history writing. The analysis in Chapter 3 is particularly sophisticated and nuanced.

2022 Joint Runner-up: Joshua Castle (Royal Holloway), ‘The Republic in Quarantine: To what extent, and with what consequences, did contemporary observers conceive of French anarchists in pathological terms, c.1880-1900?’

2022 Joint Runner-up: Nathan Davies (Cambridge), ‘Altered States, Psychotropic Substances, and Perceptions of Time in Nineteenth Century Paris’

CONFERENCE GRANTS

“Resistance in becoming”: Armenian Genocide survivors on French territories 1918-1928

Irem Gülersönmez (Birkbeck, University of London)

My doctoral project examines the imagery of Ottoman Armenians in relation to vulnerability, resistance, and survival from the Adana massacres in 1909 to the dismantling of the refugee camps in Marseille in 1927. It looks at the French presence during successive waves of mass violence and tries to understand how it affected Armenian survivors’ self-representation in relation to photography.

Through the Society for the Study of French History (SSFH) conference bursary, I had the chance to participate in the international doctoral workshop: ‘The Ways of Archiving. Practices, Conditions, and Discourses around the Study of Arts and Culture’. This took place between September 12-13 at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and between September 15-16 at the Laboratoire de Recherche Historique Rhône-Alpes. I presented my paper, ‘“Resistance in becoming:” Armenian Genocide survivors on French territories (1918-1928)’ at the former.

My paper was divided into two parts based on my research in France, notably in Valence, Lyon, Marseille, and Paris. In the first part of my paper, I discussed the different archives I have encountered, the archival practices of these institutions and how my archival discoveries have led towards a less studied aspect of the history of France: that of the three years of occupation in Cilicia (1918-1921) to the expulsion from the camps in Marseille in 1927. In the second part of the paper, I focused on the photographic documentation of Armenian genocide survivors on French territories. As part of my third chapter, I examined the period of the French occupation, when survivors were repatriated to the region to commence ‘a new life’. Armenians established not only benevolent organisations, created networks of solidarity, and built massive orphanages and schools, but also celebrated the 14 July with flags and banners. Two years later, France changed its politics and withdrew from the region. While the Muslim population remained, Armenian genocide survivors were once again displaced from their homes and forced to take refuge in the Levant under the French mandate. A year later, the first ships started to carry survivors to the port of Marseille. Eventually, most arrivals were directed to the military camps dispersed across the city.

The generous bursary enabled me to receive feedback for both the archival discussion that features in my PhD introduction as well as a crucial part of my third chapter. Furthermore, as part of the workshop, I had the chance to visit several archives. While the archives were not related to my research, the discussions we held around these archives have inspired me to think about my project more broadly.

POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH GRANTS

Franco-Hungarian diplomacy in the context of European imperial rivalries, 1519-1547

Elvira Tamus (Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge)

The SSFH research grant was a generous contribution to my research trip to Paris, carried out between September and December 2022. My PhD focuses on early sixteenth-century Franco-Hungarian diplomacy in the context of the Valois-Habsburg-Ottoman great power rivalries, under the supervision of Nora Berend. Inspired by the methods of new diplomatic history, I am moving from a more traditional political history towards an approach that queries the previously unexplored agency of diplomatic anti-Habsburg actors. I am also interested in the extent to which the terminology needs to be revised regarding these agents. I study a wide range of sources that provide me with information on the various aspects of diplomatic work – identity, loyalty, and practices. I investigate treaties of alliance, dispatches, letters of credence, reports, financial certificates, and pieces of correspondence.

I conducted archival work in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Archives nationales de France (Site de Paris). I consulted several envoys’ reports and correspondence, circulating between Paris, London, Buda, Kraków, Constantinople, Rome, Milan, and Venice, that made reference to the ways in which they helped Francis I of France and John I of Hungary seek allies and reach agreements on political, military, and dynastic matters. I examined documents related to Francis I’s candidacy to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, dated between 1517 and 1520. These pieces testify to the French king’s early attempts at alliances against the increasing power of the Habsburgs as well as his envoys’ negotiation techniques at different courts. I looked at certificates of assistance provided for John I against Habsburg forces by the members of the League of Cognac. I was able to digitise a number of microfilm sources of French diplomacy from the period between the 1510s and 1540s that I will transcribe, translate, and analyse for my thesis, and additional publications.

Furthermore, I enhanced my understanding of early modern European diplomatic history thanks to the seminars I attended at Sorbonne University, given by Lucien Bély and Denis Crouzet, and the advice I received from Charles de Miramon, Olivier Descamps, and Victor Simon, at Panthéon-Assas University, my host institution.

I am very grateful to the SSFH for their funding which allowed me to complete my doctoral fieldwork in Paris, and especially to Andrew Smith and W. Jack Rhoden for their continued support.

Political songs in Brittany, Lyonnais, and New France across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Aoife Miralles (University of Oxford)

I am very grateful to the Society for the Study of French History for their postgraduate research grant. This enabled me to conduct archival research for my doctoral project, which investigates popular political culture in the late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century francophone world. My thesis focuses on songs and singing practices in three contrasting regions: Brittany, Lyonnais, and New France.

Over the course of my research trip, I was able to visit several archives and municipal libraries in Aix-en-Provence, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, and Rennes. I first visited Lyon, where I was able to identify and consult a range of manuscript and printed song materials, legal records, and correspondence. At the Archives départementales du Rhône, these included: a songbook found amongst the papers of Jean Matthieu Cheifelin, a seventeenth-century immigrant merchant and resident of Lyon; two satirical noels in Lyon patois; several songs concerning workers’ revolts; and seigneurial court records about a brawl in a local inn in 1787, which arose from the singing of a song in Bresse patois. Likewise, at the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon, I accessed many materials concerning religious controversy, municipal authorities, and political disputes in song.

I spent time in Aix-en-Provence and Marseille, where I visited the Archives nationales d’outre-mer and the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (MUCEM). At the Archives nationales d’outre-mer, I consulted documents concerning New France. Although song texts themselves were few and far between, there were reports of singing in correspondence, official memoranda, and memoirs. These included instructions for Te Deums to be sung to celebrate military victories and coronations, as well as an account of a canoe cadet’s diplomatic singing in the face of English troops in the memoirs of a Canadian artillery officer. At the MUCEM, I was able to access several seventeenth- and eighteenth-century compendiums of dance tunes, and some useful secondary literature.

Thereafter, I divided the remainder of my time abroad between Nantes and Rennes. In the Archives départementales de Loire-Atlantique, I was able to identify and consult a range of song materials in the papers of Nantes’ chamber of commerce, family collections, and regional press archives. These included printed broadsides celebrating military victories, as well as records of the warnings given to authors of satirical songs in the correspondence of the province’s intendant with the mayor of Nantes. Among the documents examined at the Médiathèque Jacques Demy, I found an even broader range of songs, from satirical noels criticising government officials to an interracial dialogue song from an almanack of 1788.

Despite some complications in the Archives départementales d’Ille-et-Vilaine, I was able to access many useful source materials in the ‘fonds divers’ and private collections. These included several songs on military affairs, religious disputes, and political controversy between the French crown and the Breton parlement. At the Bibliothèque de Rennes Métropole, I consulted numerous materials with similar themes, such as two manuscript songbooks which belonged to Christophe-Paul de Robien, a counsellor and president of the Breton parlement between 1720 and 1756.

This research trip has proved invaluable in enabling me to identify and access core materials for my doctoral project. I am incredibly thankful for the generous support of the Society, without which this would not have been possible.

COVID SUPPORT GRANTS FOR EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS

The Franco-Flemish War (1297–1302)

Noah Smith (University of Kent)

The many challenges presented to working historians during the Covid-19 pandemic are, at this stage, well documented. A general lack of access to archives, the inability to travel, and the resulting institutional and economic precarity hit postgraduate researchers particularly hard. This is why the chief outcome from this grant application – and the one most appreciated by its author – was time. The material aide administered by the SSFH enabled the continuation of work that would have been otherwise completely paralysed, namely the ability to spend additional time with and further analyse a selection of French primary sources concerning the Franco-Flemish War (1297–1302).

My doctoral thesis, entitled ‘Remembering Kortrijk: Civic Pride & Cultural Memory in Flanders ca.1302-1348’, analyses the many and varied ways the Flemish communities most directly impacted by the county’s conflict with Capetian France around the turn of the fourteenth century remembered, memorialised, and commemorated those events. The research grant provided by the SSFH allowed my interaction with early fourteenth-century French primary sources to be expanded from a series of small assessments to an entire chapter. This enabled the prime historical event contained therein – namely the Battle of the Golden Spurs (11 July 1302) – to have its early French historiography thoroughly considered. This included an analysis of the Chronique Artésienne, the earliest known historical account of the Battle of the Golden Spurs, as well as Guillaume Guiart’s Chronique Métrique—a lengthy rhymed chronicle that merges a personal exposure to the battle with highly rhetorical and bombastic narrative flourishes.

Furthermore, this research grant allowed for additional time to be spent conducting a visual analysis of the Courtrai Chest, enabling a novel reinterpretation of its ornately carved frontispiece. Using micro-architectural and iconographical signposts, this radical new reading of the frontispiece’s visual programme places the antagonisms between the vengeful French armies and the stalwart Flemish militias as the prime symbolic concern of the object’s creators. While the final outputs of this research are still forthcoming, they benefited greatly from the assistance rendered by the SSFH.

Death as an institution: managing the anonymous dead at the morgues of Paris and New York, c. 1864-1910.

Catriona Byers (King’s College London)

I was generously awarded a Covid Support Grant by the SSFH in 2021. As a self-funded student in precarious employment, this financial support made a huge difference to my ability to continue with my research during a particularly difficult period.

My research investigates the first modern morgues of Paris and New York during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When we think of morgues today, we imagine discreet, medical spaces: waiting rooms between the worlds of the living and the dead. But the earliest modern morgues of the nineteenth century had multiple functions, ranging from exhibiting unclaimed bodies to advancing anatomical study, forensic science and criminology. The most famous of these was the Paris morgue, where tens of thousands visited every day to see the bodies on display. A duplicate institution was established at Bellevue hospital in New York, adding a new dimension to the Franco-American medical relationship.

My project is a comparative, transatlantic study of these new ‘sister’ morgues, positioning them as key civic institutions operating within the complex and overlapping medical, judicial and carceral networks of the nineteenth-century metropolis. Although ostensibly designed to process and identify the growing number of anonymous dead, the use of these bodies also facilitated significant medical, scientific and medico-legal advancements, yet their frequent exploitation for commercial gain, entertainment, and wider social policies have been largely overlooked by existing scholarship.

My research has been supported by small grants and bursaries, as well as my professional career. For over a decade I have supported myself through my freelance work providing creative services in restaurant photography and food styling. However, given the impact of Covid-19 on the hospitality industry, my income was significantly reduced, and I was in the position of having to seek additional income to afford fees and living costs. Combined with personal health issues exacerbated by the pandemic, the time I had available for my research was severely affected as I worked towards my upgrade.

The SSFH Grant allowed me to significantly limit my professional work for two months, giving me the time, energy and focus I needed to successfully upgrade my PhD to Candidate status, and publish my first journal article. I am hugely grateful to the Society for their support and generosity during this difficult time.

STUDIES IN MODERN FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE HISTORY

This series with Manchester University Press is published in collaboration with the SSFH and the French Colonial Historical Society. It aims to showcase innovative monographs and edited collections on the history of France, its colonies and imperial undertakings, and the francophone world more generally since c. 1750. Authors demonstrate how sources and interpretations are being opened to historical investigation in new and interesting ways, and how unfamiliar subjects have the capacity to tell us more about France and the French colonial empire, their relationships in the world, and their legacies in the present. The series is particularly receptive to studies that break down traditional boundaries and conventional disciplinary divisions.

Members of the Society for the Study of French History are entitled to a 35% discount on orders for personal use on all Studies in Modern French and Francophone History series titles.

Recent and forthcoming titles include:

Alexandra Paulin-Booth, Time and radical politics in France: From the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War (Mar 2023)

Susan K. Foley, Republican passions: Family, friendship and politics in nineteenth-century France (Apr 2023)

Confiscating the common good: Small towns and religious politics in the French Revolution

Edward Woell ISBN: 978-1-5261-5913-7

Sport and physical culture in Occupied France: Authoritarianism, agency, and everyday life

Keith Rathbone ISBN: 978-1-5261-5328-9

Psychoanalysis and the family in twentieth-century France: Françoise Dolto and her legacy

Richard Bates ISBN: 978-1-5261-5962-5

Mutinous Memories: A Subjective History of French Military Protest in 1919

Matt Perry ISBN 9781526114105

Death and the Crown. Ritual and Politics in France before the Revolution

Anne Byrne ISBN 9781526143303

Catholicism and Children’s Literature in France: The Comtesse de Ségur (1799–1874)

Sophie Heywood ISBN 9780719084669

Aristocratic Families in Republican France, 1870–1940

Elizabeth C. MacKnight ISBN 9780719085017

The Routes to Exile: France and the Spanish Civil War Refugees, 1939–2009

Scott Soo ISBN 9780719086915

Émile and Isaac Pereire: Bankers, Socialists and Sephardic Jews in Nineteenth-Century France

Helen M. Davies ISBN 9780719089237

The Republican Line: Caricature and French Republican Identity, 1830–52

Laura O’Brien ISBN 9780719089350

From Empire to Exile: History and Memory within the Pied-Noir and Harki Communities, 1962–2012(Winner of the 2017 RHS Gladstone Prize)

Claire Eldridge ISBN 9780719087233

Robespierre and the Festival of the Supreme Being: The Search for a Republican Morality

Jonathan Smyth ISBN 9781526103789

Terror and Terroir: The Winegrowers of the Languedoc and Modern France

Andrew W. M. Smith ISBN 9781784994358

The Stadium Century: Sport, Spectatorship and Mass Society in Modern France

Robert W. Lewis ISBN 9781526106261

In Pursuit of Politics: Education and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France

Adrian O’Connor ISBN 9781526120564

Nobility and Patrimony in Modern France

Elizabeth C. Macknight ISBN 9781526120519

Series editors:

Professor Jennifer Sessions (University of Virginia): [email protected]

Professor Julie Kalman (Monash University): [email protected]

Dr Jessica Wardhaugh (University of Warwick): [email protected]