IAHIS 3710 Paris at the Crossroads
The period of the long" French Revolution (1789-1804) as well as the early years of the Third Republic (instituted in 1870) laid the foundations for present-day France. Together these events turned "peasants" into Frenchmen in the words of one historian. Disparate populations with regional loyalties and identities slowly came to share a national identity one forged nurtured and propagated by a number of different institutions texts artifacts. We will be considering the construction of a French identity through these media a French identity that has repeatedly been contested and debated.