Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2240 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-31
• Binding: Hardcover
• 560 pages

Literary Review
'Elegantly written ... Gildea's touch ... is deft and assured ... the author's sympathetic understanding of the French shines through his prose'

John Thornhill, FT
'Robert Gildea is an accomplished interpreter of this convulsive era'

Donald Sassoon, Sunday Telegraph
'Where Gildea comes into his own is in the sections on social and cultural history... His method is to zoom in on an anecdote... and then zoom out again to the broader picture'

Customer Reviews

French Impressionism, a cultural explanation
If I were offering "France: culture, politics and society 1800-1900" as my specialist subject on Mastermind, before getting into the black chair what main source would I depend on? Well you could do worse than read Robert Gildea's book but I would not make it my sole choice.

The book is in two parts, 1799 to 1870 then the Franco-Prussian war up to 1914. The chapters are pithy with a lot of detail. They read as self contained essays, or perhaps lectures. The long - apparently never ending - story of centrifugal and centripetal politics, Paris as the root of all division or the source of national unity is told. And the divided French left, an enduring legacy where the game seems more than the consequences. For me it was well written but, frustratingly, only as far as it went. Such a wide-ranging book is of necessity impressionistic. Adding little cameos, and employing literature to reinforce analysis added momentum.

The main limitation was that only political challenges and social change within France were dealt with but these were paralleled in other countries, or states forming nations. Although Professor Gildea does make some comparative reference, I was constantly wondering how Germany, or Britain, or Italy compared in many areas. What was specific, or special to France? Europe was changing massively, and was changing the world. France was part of this, not isolated, so comparisons beyond her borders are essential and relevant.

With this broad brush, he deals with themes, the ever-present challenge for the French - finding accommodation with themselves, how to employ the revolutionary ideals and live up to them, modernisation, industrialisation, class, religion, feminism, literature, coping with a superior culture that the world does not quite appreciate. The imposition of the French language and the invention of a French national identity, both occurring very late in the 20th century, were sketched. This is not a political or economic history, it is not a social history, it is an amalgam equating to a cultural explanation.

This is a book you can appreciate more than enjoy. It is for the curious, possibly the curious undergraduate, for those wanting orientation leading to specific political, social, diplomatic histories. It would have been helpful to have had a short bibliography. Having read Graham Robb's anthropology "The Discovery of France" and Rod Kedward's political history "La Vie En Bleu: France and the French Since 1900" Gildea's book fits well. I would not sit in the Mastermind chair without having read all three.