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"The book gives an account of an essential part of Britain's troubled relationship with the rest of Europe after 1945, particularly considering the rivalry of France and Britain between 1945 and 2007. The record of Britain's relations with the rest of Europe, and in particular with France, from 1945 onwards was seen by the politicians and diplomats in charge of foreign policy very much in terms of a diplomatic battle. This is paradoxical given that European integration was supposedly aiming to create a European community. Although Britain has usually been seen as an at best half-hearted participant in European integration it nonetheless maintained its ambition to assume the leadership of Europe. This inevitably led to a confrontation with France which shared the same goal. This book begins by looking at the opposing ways in which these two ancient European rivals presented very different models for the sort of Europe they wished to see emerge. It goes on to consider the record of their rivalry between 1945 and 2007. After this Britain effectively gave up the battle for the political leadership of Europe. This, however, should not obscure the fact that it had succeeded in imposing much of its social and economic model on Europe. This volume will be of interest to both undergraduate students and general readers interested in Britain's position in Europe"--

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- 1. National History and the Shape of the Nineteenth- Century World -- Part I. Spaces of History -- 2. Liberal Social Imaginaries and the Interiority of History -- 3. The Nationality of Expansion -- 4. Decline, Renewal, and the Rhetoric of Will -- Part II . Times of Crisis -- 5. The Rupture of Meiji and the New Japan -- 6. Americanization and Historical Consciousness -- 7. French Revolution, Third Republic -- Conclusion: National History and Other Worlds -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Leading Europe -- Fighting over Europe -- Defining and directing Europe -- Initial skirmishes -- Rethinking Europe -- Messina to the Treaty of Rome -- Facing up to de Gaulle -- EEC, FTA and EFTA : Europe at sixes and sevens -- Taking on de Gaulle -- Countering de Gaulle -- Entering the EEC -- Reforming and redirecting Europe -- Maastricht, monetary union and enlargement -- Last chance for leadership -- European laggards and leaders.

The 1950s and 1960s were a key moment in the development of postwar France. The period was one of rapid change, derived from post-World War II economic and social modernization; yet many traditional characteristics were retained. By analyzing the eruption of the new postwar world in the context of a France that was both modern and traditional, we can see how these worlds met and interacted, and how they set the scene for the turbulent 1960s and 70s. The examination of the development of mass culture in post-war France, undertaken in this volume, offers a valuable insight into the shifts that took place. By exploring stardom from the domain of cinema and other fields, represented here by famous figures such as Brigitte Bardot, Johnny Hallyday or Jean-Luc Godard, and less conventionally treated areas of enquiry (politics [de Gaulle], literary [Françoise Sagan], and intellectual culture [Lévi-Strauss]) the reader is provided with a broad understanding of the mechanisms of popularity and success, and their cultural, social, and political roles. The picture that emerges shows that many cultural articulations remained or became identifiably "French," in spite of the American mass-culture origins of these social, economic, and cultural transformations

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: Traditions of Nationhood in France and Germany -- I. THE INSTITUTION OF CITIZENSHIP -- 1. Citizenship as Social Closure -- 2. The French Revolution and the Invention of National Citizenship -- 3. State, State-System, and Citizenship in Germany -- II. DEFINING THE CITIZENRY: THE BOUNDS OF BELONGING -- 4. Citizenship and Naturalization in France and Germany -- 5. Migrants into Citizens: The Crystallization of Jus Soli in Late-Nineteenth-Century France -- 6. The Citizenry as Community of Descent: The Nationalization of Citizenship in Wilhelmine Germany -- 7. "Etre Français, Cela se Mérite": Immigration and the Politics of Citizenship in France in the 1980s -- 8. Continuities in the German Politics of Citizenship -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Abbreviations -- Acknowledgments -- INTRODUCTION -- A Law of Difference in the History of Difference. THE FIRST EDICT OF "TOLERANCE" -- Waging Peace. MEMORY, IDENTITY, AND THE EDICT OF NANTES -- Sharing Sacred Space. PROTESTANT TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS COEXISTENCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY -- Religion and Politics in France during the Period of the Edict of Nantes (1598–1685) -- Catholic Conciliar Reform in an Age of Anti-Catholic Revolution -- French Protestants, Laicization, and the Separation of the Churches and the State, 1802–1905 -- Totems, Taboos, and Jews. SALOMON REINACH AND THE POLITICS OF SCHOLARSHIP IN FIN-DE-SIÈCLE FRANCE -- Catholic Culture in Interwar France -- The Right to Be Different. SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT THE "FRENCH EXCEPTION" -- Islam in a Secular Context. CATALYST OF THE "FRENCH EXCEPTION " -- Bibliography -- Index -- Contributors

Scholars across disciplines on both sides of the Atlantic have recently begun to open up, as never before, the scholarly study of race and racism in France. These original essays bring together in one volume new work in history, sociology, anthropology, political science, and legal studies. Each of the eleven articles presents fresh research on the tension between a republican tradition in France that has long denied the legitimacy of acknowledging racial difference and a lived reality in which racial prejudice shaped popular views about foreigners, Jews, immigrants, and colonial people. Several authors also examine efforts to combat racism since the 1970s

National indifference is one of the most innovative notions historians have brought to the study of nationalism in recent years. The concept questions the mass character of nationalism in East Central Europe at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Ordinary people were not in thrall to the nation; they were often indifferent, ambivalent or opportunistic when dealing with issues of nationhood. As with all ground-breaking research, the literature on national indifference has not only revolutionized how we understand nationalism, over time, it has also revealed a new set of challenges. This volume brings together experienced scholars with the next generation, in a collaborative effort to push the geographic, historical, and conceptual boundaries of national indifference 2.0.

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Maps and Figures -- 1. The Left in France -- 2. The French Labour Movement in the Nineteenth Century -- 3. The French Socialist Party 1920-1936 -- 4. French Marxism 1945-1975 -- 5. The Elections of 1981 in Historical Perspective -- Select Bibliography -- Chronology -- Index

In France's Third Republic, secularism was, for its adherents, a new faith, a civic religion founded on a rabid belief in progress and the Enlightenment conviction that men (and women) could remake their world. And yet with all of its pragmatic smoothing over of the supernatural edges of Catholicism, the Third Republic engendered its own fantastical ways of seeing by embracing observation, corporeal dynamism, and imaginative introspection. How these republican ideals and the new national education system of the 1870s and 80s - the structure meant to impart these ideals - shaped belle époque popular culture is the focus of this book. The author reassesses the meaning of secularization and offers a cultural history of this period by way of an interrogation of several fraught episodes which, although seemingly disconnected, shared an attachment to the potent moral and aesthetic directives of French republicanism: a village's battle to secularize its schools, a scandalous novel, a vaudeville hit featuring a nude celebrity, and a craze for female boxing. Beginning with the writer and performer Colette (1873–1954) as a point of entry, this re-evaluation of belle époque popular culture probes the startling connections between republican values of labor and physical health on the one hand, and the cultural innovations of the decades preceding World War I on the other