Chapter 7 The Modern French History Seminar

Alfred Cobban’s Seminar

The first regular seminar series in modern French history commenced in 1947–8 under the stewardship of Alfred Cobban (1901–68).⁷ Cobban was an Englishman who had obtained a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge in 1926. Up to that point, Cobban could be considered as much a political philosopher as an historian: his doctoral thesis focused on Edmund Burke; but from this it was not too much of a leap to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the French Revolution.⁸ Cobban was a secular liberal who joined the Fabians in 1920 while an undergraduate. He was first a lecturer at the University of Newcastle and moved in 1937 to become reader in French history at UCL,⁹ where he was promoted to professor in 1953 and remained until his death in 1968. The import and scope of Cobban’s academic work can hardly be underestimated; it has recently been the subject of a forum discussion in French History.¹⁰ His most notable intervention came from his inaugural lecture, ‘The Myth of the French Revolution’ (1954, publ. 1955), given in the presence of René Massigli, the French ambassador to Britain. Out of it grew The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution, presented first for the 1962 Wiles Lectures at the Queen’s University Belfast, and then published in 1964 as a book, which rapidly became ‘the handbook of revisionism for a new generation of Anglo-Saxon scholars’.¹¹ Cobban’s rejection of an established French-Marxist interpretation of the Revolution provoked historians such as George Lefebvre (1874–1959) and Albert Soboul (1914–82) into controversy.¹² More generally, Cobban’s fifteen books – including the History of Modern France (published by Penguin in three volumes, 1957–65) – and numerous scholarly articles made him the most respected and influential English-language historian of modern France in his generation.¹³ From 1957 to 1967 he was editor of History: The Journal of the Historical Association, and he also contributed to the Historical Association Pamphlets series which inspired a generation of school students and their teachers.¹⁴ In addition to convening the Seminar at the IHR, his presence was widely felt within the University of London: most significantly as head of the history department at UCL between 1961 and 1966.¹⁵

Cobban was also a devoted teacher. He ran an undergraduate special subject on the French Revolution at UCL and convened the IHR’s Modern French History Seminar, usually once a week during term time on Monday evenings from 1947 to 1967. During this period, the Seminar was first and foremost concerned with training doctoral students, who typically never missed a meeting unless they were out of the country doing archival research in France. Cobban assumed that his students had a good working knowledge of the French language, and that they would be doing research in French archives, so they were expected to spend at least a year in France. The Seminar met in the ‘France Room’ at IHR, where the bookshelves were filled, floor to ceiling, with volumes on French sources. Cobban’s students considered this area their own, frequently used the splendid collection of documents it contained and felt intruded upon when students with other interests wandered in to do their own work there. Seminars consisted of sessions on preparing the doctoral thesis and historical methodology, papers by those who had recently completed their doctoral studies, other scholars teaching at the University of London, and occasionally people from farther afield like Richard Cobb (1917–96), a doctoral student of Lefebvre who became professor of modern history at Oxford in 1972 – and, of course, student presentations.¹⁶ Research students had to make regular progress reports to the group, which could become a terrifying prospect; and anyone near completion or recently examined would be invited to give a full-length paper. Cobban himself would also regularly give a presentation on recent research in French history, and all attendees busily took notes. At some point, presumably in the late 1950s or early 1960s, a tradition developed whereby seminar members, although never Cobban himself, would often retire to a modestly priced, but often excellent, restaurant; there was, for example, Kwai’s, a Chinese establishment nearby on Tottenham Court Road, as well as the Spaghetti House on Goodge Street and Schmidt’s on Charlotte Street.¹⁷ These outings, as well as visits to nearby pubs, helped seminar members share ideas and form life-long bonds just as much as the seminars themselves. After the last seminar of the academic year, students would be invited for a delightful supper, cooked by Cobban’s wife Muriel (1906–88/9) at the couple’s flat in Bayswater. Cobban’s Seminar was later remembered by one of his students as ‘an inspiring occasion’ where fellow learners ‘enjoyed his warmth and humour as well as the originality of his thought’; the discussion, it was noted, ‘often saved us from losing our way in insignificant detail or vague speculation, for through those years Alfred Cobban never failed to teach that research must serve intellectual purposes and general ideas must be tested by research’.¹⁸

Many of Cobban’s doctoral students went on to become significant scholars.¹⁹ The most academically outstanding of his first recruits, George Rudé (1910–93), enjoyed a remarkable career.²⁰ The Norwegian-born Rude – the accented surname Rudé was not adopted until around 1953 – came to history as both a ‘mature student’ and as a member of the British Communist Party, while teaching modern languages at St Paul’s School, a task for which he had been prepared by a BA in French and German from Trinity College, Cambridge. His fascination with the past then drove him to study for a BA (1948) and then a PhD (1950) in history from the University of London. Rudé’s activity as a Party member was such that he was forced to resign from St Paul’s, but he found a conditional intellectual ally in Cobban and common cause with the London-based Historians’ Group of the Communist Party of Great Britain. A heavily revised version of his doctoral thesis was published by Oxford University’s Clarendon Press as The Crowd in the French Revolution (1959): a work that was prefaced with dutiful thanks to Cobban ‘for his help and guidance over a number of years’ and yet tellingly dedicated to Cobban’s critic and Rudé’s friend and collaborator George Lefebvre.²¹ Rudé benefitted from both Cobban’s supervisions and seminars, but Cobban briefly excluded him from attending the Seminar after he refused to condemn the Soviet occupation of Hungary in 1956 (the two later made up their differences). Throughout the 1950s, Rudé’s politics may have hindered him from securing employment at a British university, though jobs of any kind in French history were not abundant at that time. Nearing the age of fifty, he finally started his academic career in ‘exile’, as senior lecturer at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Except for an aborted appointment to a chair at the newly founded University of Stirling, Scotland, Rudé cultivated his reputation as one of the leading social historians of his generation overseas at the Universities of Adelaide and Flinders, and then latterly in Canada at Sir George Williams (now Concordia) University, from 1970 until his retirement in 1987. Despite all these difficulties, Cobban always acknowledged Rudé’s exceptional scholarship; and, for his part, Rudé contributed to the memorial volume of essays dedicated to his supervisor.

Cobban gained a strong following amongst young Canadian scholars. The prestige of his London chair and his reputation as an historian of ideas had an allure. However, when Cobban visited the USA in the late 1940s and 1950s it was evident that leading American scholars of French history, such as Leo Gershoy (1897–1975), R. R. Palmer (1909–2002), and Crane Brinton (1898–1968), worked largely within an historiographical tradition established by specialists in France, most notably the towering figure of Georges Lefebvre. Appropriately, the 1958 first issue of the US-based French Historical Studies was dedicated to Lefebvre and included a printed version of his patriotic words that ‘praised Robespierre as the great historical defender of democracy’.²² But Cobban was a little younger than most of his American counterparts, and much younger than the octogenarian Lefebvre. Cobban’s work therefore signalled something of a changing of the guard, beginning with the publication of his widely read History of Modern France (1957), and followed by his bold attempt (described above) to question and recast the very terms in which the history of the Revolution had hitherto been written. By the late 1950s, it was becoming increasingly clear to Canadians and others that to study with Cobban was to work with the leading English-language specialist in the field.

The experience of one of his earliest Canadian students, John Bosher (1929–2020), illustrates this attraction. Having obtained a BA in history from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1950, Bosher found his way to London a couple of years later on honeymoon, but also used the trip to strike up an acquaintance with Professor S. T. Bindoff (1908–80), a prime mover within both the University of London and the IHR during the 1950s, with whom he had previously corresponded about undertaking postgraduate study. Bindoff recommended his friend and colleague ‘Cobby’ as a supervisor and the two conspired first to send their young charge to the Sorbonne to prepare a diplôme d’études supérieures (DES, the equivalent of an MA by thesis) with Vaucher and the celebrated historian of medieval England, Edmond Perroy (1901–74). Bosher then returned to London to undertake a PhD, duly completed in 1957 with a thesis entitled ‘The Movement for Internal Free Trade in France during the Eighteenth Century’.²³ The department of history at UBC presently offered Bosher a position and he, along with his wife and children, returned to Canada. As a university teacher, Bosher helped foster an interest in French history amongst the next generation of students at UBC, among them Tim Le Goff and Fred Affleck, whom he encouraged to undertake postgraduate study under Cobban’s supervision.²⁴

The academic appeal of studying under Cobban was also enhanced for Canadian students by institutional factors. The specialization of the Canadian BA in history lent itself to moving straight on to research training in a way that was more suited to the postgraduate offerings in England than America. By the 1960s, Canadians could draw upon not only the collective example and experience of former students who had already prepared their doctorates in London but also more credible financial support, notably from the Canada Council and the Commonwealth Scholarship Programme.²⁵ By 1966–7, the membership of Cobban’s Seminar included no less than six Canadians, several of whom became close friends: there was Le Goff (PhD 1970, professor emeritus at York University, Toronto); Edward Whitcomb (PhD, 1970, sometime university teacher, civil servant, and, in retirement, writer on Canadian music and provincial history); Fred Affleck (PhD 1972, retired after a career as an Australian civil servant, railway executive, and holder of a university chair in Transport Economics at the University of Western Australia); Glennis Parry (former civil servant and Canadian media executive); John Robinson (retired diplomat and former Canadian High Commissioner to Jamaica); and D. M. G. Sutherland (PhD 1974, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland).

And, of course, Cobban attracted British students, including some who had first attended his special subject and option courses in French history as undergraduates. Cobban was both discerning and responsible in his choice of postgraduate students. Pamela Pilbeam recalled how, when he accepted her for postgraduate study in 1962, he encouraged Richard Sims, another former undergraduate from his special subject group, to work on Franco-Japanese relations. This ensured that Cobban could devote his time and expertise to Pilbeam whilst also seeking to do the best for Sims, who went on to complete his PhD in 1968 and pursue a distinguished academic career at SOAS. Cobban also drew students from Cambridge, including Keith Baker (London PhD 1964), J. E. Wallace Sterling professor in humanities at Stanford University, Julian Dent (1957–2020: London PhD 1965), formerly emeritus professor at the University of Toronto; and Roger Mettam (1939–2022: Cambridge PhD 1967), whom Cobban supervised, presumably as an external candidate.²⁶ A specialist in the seventeenth century, Roger had a significant career at Queen Mary College and served with distinction for many years as co-convenor of the Early Modern European History Seminar at the IHR.

Women constituted another noticeable group in Cobban’s Seminar. Cobban tried his best to advance women in university careers, particularly women from less advantaged backgrounds; this was a time when only around 6 per cent, or less, of the A-level cohort went on to university. Among them were Nicola Sutherland (b. 1925: PhD 1958, retired from the chair of modern history at Royal Holloway in 1987), Olwen Hufton (b. 1938: PhD 1961–2, emeritus fellow Merton College, Oxford), and Pamela Pilbeam (née Cartlidge; PhD 1966, professor emeritus in French history at Royal Holloway).²⁷ The most illustrious was Hufton, a grammar-school girl raised on a council estate. Hufton’s revised doctoral thesis was published by Oxford’s Clarendon Press as Bayeux in the Late Eighteenth Century: A Social History (1967); the last words of the preface gave thanks to her ‘friends in the seminar of French History at the University of London who discussed with me many of the themes treated here and to whom my debt is great’.²⁸ Hufton soon began to develop these and other ideas in a series of pioneering and widely read works on French and European history, such as The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France (1974), and The Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe (1995). She went on to hold chairs at the European University Institute, Harvard and Oxford; she is also Dame Commander of the British Empire (2004).

In the final years of Cobban’s life, his Seminar started to become a more ‘varied group’ comprising not just his latest ‘students but also several former students or current colleagues who had teaching jobs in or around London … and others from more distant UK universities … but we got along well when we were together in the seminar and afterwards in the pub’.²⁹

Transitions

Cobban’s successor to the chair of French history at UCL was Douglas Johnson (1925–2005), previously professor of modern history at Birmingham and then mainly known for his 1963 study of the nineteenth-century French historian, political thinker and politician François Guizot (1787–1874).³⁰ A graduate of Worcester College, Oxford, Johnson found both an aptitude for French history and his future wife, Madeleine Rébillard, while studying in Paris at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in the late 1940s. His academic credits included The French Revolution (1970), Michelet and the French Revolution (1990) and the editorship of the Fontana History of Modern France; but by the late 1970s he was also a central figure of the Franco-British Council (established in 1972 by a joint initiative of President Georges Pompidou and Prime Minister Edward Heath) and a notable commentator and journalist writing regularly for the right-of-centre Spectator. Indeed, he even became Margaret Thatcher’s advisor on France when she was prime minister.³¹ Although Johnson was almost as discreet about his own politics in academic company as Cobban had been, he believed firmly that leading academics ought to be public intellectuals, a view that resonated especially well in France. His dual commitment to French history and intellectual life were duly recognized by the French government, which made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1978, raised later to the rank of Officier in 1997.

Johnson managed Cobban’s remaining doctoral students through to completion and took the lead in running the Modern French History Seminar from 1968 onwards.³² The Seminar had already begun to broaden in scope during Cobban’s last years, with papers by more visiting scholars than previously. Under Johnson’s direction this process continued, and the Seminar became a more broadly based research forum for working historians of France at all stages of their research and careers. Johnson frequently invited distinguished French colleagues, often also friends of his, to give papers. Among the first was Annie Kriegel (1925–95), who had been active in the Jewish-Communist Resistance and then the French Communist Party, later becoming a leading student of French Communism (her thesis, Aux origines du communisme français, 1914–1920 was published in 1964), though she eventually rejected the Party itself; by the early 1970s she had come to be associated with Raymond Aron’s circle and wrote columns for the right-leaning Le Figaro.³³ Douglas had first met Kriegel in 1949 when Rébillard shared a room with her at the women’s ENS. He later took delight in saying that in those days Kriegel used to sleep with an AK-47 rifle at the head of her bed. When Kriegel spoke at the IHR, she did so to an eager audience in the France Room; alas, there was no sign of the Kalashnikov.

Douglas further enhanced the Seminar’s scope by encouraging members of the Institut Français du Royaume-Uni (IFRU) to attend its meetings at the IHR, an invitation to which they responded enthusiastically. The expansion of the British university sector in the 1960s also furnished the IHR with new possibilities. The Universities of York and Sussex soon acquired distinguished historians of France, and Rod Kedward (b. 1937) at Sussex established a close working relationship with the Seminar. Through such endeavours the group expanded from about fourteen attendees to as many as thirty on some occasions.

After 1975, Johnson withdrew as an active seminar organizer, but it was agreed that his name could remain as a convenor. Pamela Pilbeam – a former doctoral student of Cobban, long-serving member of the Seminar, and lecturer at Bedford College since 1965 – took the lead in planning programmes, which she did a year in advance, in consultation with other members. She established new contacts and firmed up invitations by letters and phone calls, an onerous task in those days, now much simplified by today’s online communications. Outside speakers who had made a notable contribution to French history were invited to give papers, although preference was given to academics and doctoral students at the University of London and other regular seminar members. Now very much a research group, the Seminar met regularly about ten or twelve times, mainly in the first and second terms of the academic year, with the sessions now almost exclusively given over to presenting research papers. In the early 1980s, specialists in pre-1789 history, notably Nicola Sutherland and Roger Mettam, moved to the IHR’s Early Modern European History Seminar, although joint meetings between the two seminars were subsequently held for appropriate topics. Through much of the 1980s and 1990s, Pilbeam worked tirelessly to keep the Seminar going despite the increasing demands of her own developing academic career; fortunately, however, she was able to share the burden latterly with Tom Gretton, lecturer in the history of art department, and Rebecca Spang, lecturer in history department, at UCL. Both were members of the Seminar’s organizing committee at various points. Pilbeam also revived the tradition of inviting everyone for a meal at the end of the academic year, and recalls her daughter Ashka commenting, after handing round drinks at one large gathering, that there was even one handsome young man (Julian Swann, now professor of history at Birkbeck) in attendance.

Anglo-French collaborations

In 1998 Geraldine d’Amico, cultural attaché at the French Embassy and the London IFRU, helped organize a very advantageous arrangement that brought several fully funded speakers from France to deliver papers at the IHR. This led to the Modern French History Seminar being jointly run for a time by the IHR and the IFRU.³⁴ This magnificent and unusual opportunity served a mutual benefit, for the French were keen to have their scholarly pre-eminence recognized more widely while British specialists in French history and culture made the most of learning from and engaging with their French counterparts. These links were also made more immediate and frequent by the recent (1994) opening of the Eurostar rapid train service through the new channel tunnel. In 1998, French guests included Maurice Agulhon (1926–2014), recently retired from his chair at the Collège de France and just appointed Officer of the Legion of Honour, who spoke on ‘De Gaulle et la symbolique nationale de la France’.³⁵ In 1999 the Seminar heard the renowned historian of nineteenth-century French society Alain Corbin (b. 1936) present his ‘Réflexions sur le paysage sonore parisien au XIXème siècle’.³⁶ He was followed in 2000 by Odile Krakovitch, head archivist at the Archives Nationales, on ‘La Repression des imprimeurs sous Napoleon’; in the same year Pascal Dupuy, from Université de Rouen, addressed a combined seminar meeting at the IFRU on ‘History and Films: Methods and New Approaches’. In 2001, the Seminar heard from Jean-François Sirinelli, professor at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). This highly prestigious and beneficial arrangement lasted into 2003–4, when Hervé Ferrage was cultural attaché. The last meeting held in this format featured Professor Jean-Pierre Azéma who filled the IFRU cinema with an expectant audience for a talk about Vichy France; Azéma delivered an excellent public lecture, but the event was not really a seminar.

The demise of the joint seminar series was symptomatic of a broader change in the French government’s cultural policy. French decision-makers lost interest in bringing researchers to London to talk about their special research, and seminars ceased to be subsidized; they now wanted events that could attract le grand public. In another sign of the times, the IFRU’s library in London was made to remove research works considered of no interest to the general public, and instead fill its shelves with magazines. Films now took precedence over talks. Yet the fact that the French government had been willing for a number of years to fund visits by French researchers chosen by the Seminar organizers indicates the strong reputation of the IHR and the recognition of history as a worthy subject of enquiry. Equally impressive was the willingness of senior French academics and archivists to come and speak, and the way in which interested parties from other institutions such as the British Library were able to use the IHR Seminar to establish personal contact with their counterparts in France. And the link between the IFRU and academic history continues with occasional lectures, most notably the annual Douglas Johnson Memorial (est. 2010), which in 2023 was co-organized by the Society for the Study of French History and the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France and hosted at the London IFRU.³⁷

For two academic years, 2004–6, the Modern French History Seminar, in association with the IHR’s Europe from 1500–1800 Seminar (convened by Roger Mettam) and the Medieval France Seminar (convened by Jinty Nelson), entered a joint arrangement with Université Paris IV Sorbonne, the British Institute in Paris, and the Vice-Chancellor’s Development Fund. Speakers from Paris IV came to speak at IHR and in return IHR members went to speak at Paris IV. The establishment of this Seminaire d’Histoire Franco-Britannique contributed greatly to raising the profile of the IHR, not just in Paris but within France as a whole. It enabled the participating seminars to invite rising young researchers to take part in their proceedings and made it possible for British and French scholars to develop dynamic reciprocal relations. Through this collaboration, the Modern French History Seminar welcomed Fabrice Bensimon from Paris-X, François Poirier from Paris-XIII, Eric Fassin of the ENS and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and Tim Le Goff, then at Paris-Sorbonne.

Renewal

Between the early 2000s and the present, the organization, format and intellectual scope of the Seminar have changed considerably, and continue to do so. At the same time, younger generations of scholars have come to assume leadership roles.

Through the late twentieth century, the Seminar had functioned with a leading convenor, Pamela Pilbeam, supported by an organizing committee that by 2004 included Julian Jackson (Queen Mary), Rebecca Spang (UCL), Geraldine d’Amico (IFRU) and Debra Kelly (Westminster); they were joined in 2006 by two other senior colleagues from Queen Mary, Jeremy Jennings and Colin Jones, the latter replacing Pilbeam as the main convenor. But gradually the Seminar’s organization became collective in nature and by 2022 the committee consisted of a dozen members: Venus Bivar (University of York), Ludivine Broch (Westminster), James Connolly (UCL), Alison Carrol (Brunel), Charlotte Faucher (Sorbonne Nouvelle), Julian Jackson (Queen Mary), Colin Jones (Queen Mary), Daniel Lee (Queen Mary), Tyson Leuchter (King’s College), Julia Nicholls (King’s College), Robert B. Priest (Royal Holloway) and Andrew W. M. Smith (Chichester).

In the early 2000s, doctoral students in the final stages of their theses were still encouraged to give full-length seminar papers. After about 2006, however, this practice became rarer as doctoral students began to deliver shorter talks. Another innovation saw authors of recent scholarly publications introduce their work, followed by a group discussion. These formats proved especially popular when the Seminar had to move online during the COVID-19 pandemic. An online book launch of Natalya Vince’s The Algerian War, The Algerian Revolution (2020) hosted by the Seminar in February 2021 attracted 140 participants, many of them North Americans and affiliates of the Society for French Historical Studies. The new online format has made possible a much larger, and indeed global, sense of group participation. However, the advantages of the traditional in-person format will be hard to replace: to take just one example, Andrew Smith recalled how in 2016 he had profited within the brief moments between the formal seminar discussion and the ensuing socializing to get candid but constructive support for a draft book manuscript from one Pamela Pilbeam.³⁸

In recent times, the subject matter of the Seminar has also broadened, following the increasing interest in the French Empire and the Francosphere, as can be readily seen by looking up the collection of select summaries and recordings of past papers at the Seminar on the French History Network blog.³⁹ Until twenty or so years ago, scholars could write about the history of France with perhaps only a passing mention of colonization and/or decolonization. Yet, in January 2021, the Seminar held a full debate on Pan-Africanism. Now, the Seminar ‘welcomes a range of scholarship on France, its empire, and its people from the French Revolution to today’, considering a ‘spectrum of approaches … from political history to environmental history, comparative studies to interdisciplinary reflections’.⁴⁰ These developments encapsulate the dynamism and respect that the Modern French History Seminar has retained throughout its nearly century-old existence; they also hint at even more and better offerings in the decades to come.

Notes

1. * Grateful thanks to Clive Church (who sadly died in December 2021, aged 82), Negley Harte, Malcolm Crook, Julian Jackson, Rebecca Spang and Tim Le Goff for reading, commenting upon and helping to improve this chapter.

2. 1.  University of London: The Historical Record (1836–1912), being a Supplement to the Calendar Completed to September 1912 (London, 1912), pp. 181–2.

3. 2.  For further context, see M. Rapoport, ‘The London French from the Belle Epoque to the End of the Inter-War Period (1880–1939)’ and C. Faucher and P. Lane, ‘French Cultural Diplomacy in Early Twentieth-Century London’, in A History of the French in London: Liberty, Equality, Opportunity, ed. D. Kelly and M. Cornick (London, 2013), pp. 241–80 and 281–302; G. Banner, ‘The Early Years: A Department in the Making, 1895–1920’, in Political Science at the LSE: A History of the Department of Government, from the Webbs to Covid, ed. C. Schonhardt-Bailey and G. Bannerman (London, 2021), pp. 21–52; R. Dahrendorf, LSE: A History of the London School of Economics and Political Science 1895–1995 (Oxford, 1995), pp. 72–134; and N. Harte, The University of London 1836–1986: An Illustrated History (London, 1986), pp. 162–213, esp. p. 180.

4. 3.  Paul Mantoux graduated DLitt. from Paris in 1905. His thesis, which was extensively researched and written in England, was published as La Révolution Industrielle au XVIIIe Siècle (1906, English trans. 1927). In 1910, he was appointed professor at École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Paris. For wider context, see P. D. Boer, History as a Profession: The Study of History in France, 1818–1914, trans. A. Pomerans (Princeton, 1988), pp. 309–57. For the history of the Graduate Institute of International Studies, see https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/sites/internet/files/2020-12/Book_90years_Institute_web.pdf [accessed 1 Nov. 2022].

5. 4.  J. Rule, ‘Paul Vaucher: Historian’, French Historical Studies, iv (1967), 98–105. For more on the complex and idiosyncratic figure of Halévy, see S. Vincent, Élie Halévy: Republican Liberalism Confronts the Era of Tyranny (Philadelphia, 2020).

6. 5.  Institute of Historical Research, Wohl Library: IHR 3/3/21, f. 21; Institute of Historical Research: Third Annual Report 1923–1924 (London, 1925), p. 7; G. G. Coulton et al., ‘University Research, Session 1923–24’, History, ix (1925), 361.

7. 6.  Rosamund White went on to write several history textbooks for the Macmillan’s Senior School Series, edited by F. W. Chambers, sometime HM Inspector of Schools and presumably a relative of Rosamund’s husband, G. A. Chambers. Under her married name, Rosamund also published a serious work of historical fiction that dealt with the ‘first five years of the married life of Napoleon and Josephine, from Josephine’s point of view’, based upon ‘extensive reading in a great variety of sources’ and quoting directly from ‘Napoleon’s letters’: see R. Chambers, Little Creole: A Story of Napoleon and Josephine (London, 1952), p. 7.

8. 7.  O. Hufton, ‘Alfred Bert Carter Cobban’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online, 2007): https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/56344 [accessed 1 Nov. 2022]. This is now largely superseded by the 2020 forum discussion in French History, see below.

9. 8.  P. Pilbeam, ‘The Impact of Alfred Cobban on approaches to 1789’ [Conference Paper], H-France Salon, xii (online, 2020): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkgiju0_pmI [accessed 1 Nov. 2022].

10. 9.  P. Pilbeam, ‘A Liberal Voice and a Fabian: Alfred Cobban’, La Révolution Française, xxiii (online, 2022): https://doi.org/10.4000/lrf.6819 [accessed 1 Nov. 2022].

11. 10.  M. Crook et al., ‘Forum: The Legacy of Alfred Cobban’, French History, xxxiv (2020), 512–60.

12. 11.  G. Lewis, ‘Introduction’, in A. Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution, second edition (Cambridge, 1999), pp. xiii–xlix at p. xiv.

13. 12.  C. Behrens, ‘Professor Cobban and His Critics’, Historical Journal, ix (1966), 236–41.

14. 13.  For a bibliography of Cobban’s main writings, see J. F. Bosher (ed.), French Government and Society 1500–1850: Essays in Memory of Alfred Cobban, (London, 1973), pp. xv–xviii.

15. 14.  A. Cobban, Historians and the Causes of the French Revolution (London, 1946). This work was then superseded in the Historical Association Pamphlet series by G. Rudé, Interpretations of the French Revolution (London, 1961).

16. 15.  For further details, see P. Pilbeam, ‘Alfred Cobban, His Writing and His Teaching’, in ‘Forum’, French History, 519–30. See, also V. Wedgwood, ‘Alfred Cobban (1901–1968)’, in French Government and Society 1500–1850: Essays in Memory of Alfred Cobban, ed. J. F. Bosher (London, 1973), pp. xi–xiv.

17. 16.  For Cobb’s own illuminating memoir, see his ‘Introduction: Experiences of an Anglo-French Historian’, in R. Cobb, A Second Identity: Essays on France and French History (London, 1969), pp. 1–50.

18. 17.  Amongst the student community, Schmidt’s had a reputation for its surly German waiters – reflecting something of the culture of the time, UCL undergraduates once joked that ‘Martin Bormann is alive and well and working in Schmidt’s’.

19. 18.  J. F. Bosher, ‘Preface’, in French Government and Society 1500–1850: Essays in Memory of Alfred Cobban, p. v.

20. 19.  For an annotated list of Cobban’s doctoral students, see ‘Forum’, French History, 559–60.

21. 20.  J. Friguglietti, ‘Rudé, George Frederick Elliot (1910–1993)’, ODNB (2004): https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/53299 [accessed 1 Nov. 2022]; D. Munro, ‘The Strange Career of George Rudé – Marxist Historian’, Journal of Historical Biography, xvi (2014), 118–69; J. Friguglietti, ‘A Scholar “In Exile:” George Rudé as a Historian of Australia’, French History and Civilization, i (online, 2005): https://h-france.net/rude/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/vol1_Friguglietti1.pdf [accessed 1 Nov. 2022]; and for Rudé’s bibliography see The George Rudé Society: https://h-france.net/rude/who/ [accessed 1 Nov. 2022]

22. 21.  G. Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford, 1959), pp. i and iii.

23. 22.  J. Harvey, ‘Alfred Cobban as a Transnational Voyager to America’, in ‘Forum’, French History, 541–58 at p. 554.

24. 23.  T. Le Goff, ‘Reminiscences of a Canadian Postgraduate Student in London: The Seminars of Alfred Cobban and Douglas Johnson (1965–1970 and After)’, in ‘Forum’, French History, 530–40 at pp. 531–2. At p. 559 the ‘Forum’ mistakenly presents the title of Bosher’s PhD thesis as ‘French Finances, 1770–1795’; this is the title of a later (1970) monograph. N.B. In conversation, Tim Le Goff has noted that it would have been all but impossible for a Canadian or an American to do a doctorat d’état in France before the French doctoral system was reformed in the 1970s and 1980s. One could prepare various inferior postgraduate degrees, such as a doctorat de l’université, a diploma awarded by the Sorbonne, although not recognized by the French State. Or you could do as Bosher did, and prepare a DES, which indeed was a State-recognized degree. However, the real doctorate in France, the one that counted for jobs, was the doctorat d’état, in those days an arduous, often decade-long task that presupposed the candidate’s time of preparation would be paid for till completion by a reliable job in the educational establishment.

25. 24.  There were other students of Bosher’s at UBC, like Gillian Thompson, Angus McLaren and William Irvine, who pursued active scholarly and university careers as historians of France.

26. 25.  Le Goff, ‘Reminiscences’, in ‘Forum’, French History, 530–40.

27. 26.  While the Drapers professorship of French was established in 1919 and the professorship of modern history in 1930, the University of Cambridge had no chair in French history at the time; however, scholars such as John P. T. Bury (1908–87) and C. M. Andrew (PhD, Cambridge 1965) provided teaching expertise in modern French history.

28. 27.  For some reminiscences of life at Royal Holloway see Royal Holloway, University of London: https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/about-us/our-alumni/for-alumni/alumni-news/a-grown-ups-view-of-bedford-college/ [accessed 1 Nov. 2022].

29. 28.  O. Hufton, Bayeux in the Late Eighteenth Century: A Social History (Oxford, 1967), p. viii.

30. 29.  Le Goff, ‘Reminiscences’, in ‘Forum’, French History, 534.

31. 30.  R. Gildea, ‘Douglas William John Johnson’, ODNB (online, 2009): https://doi-org.ezproxy4.lib.le.ac.uk/10.1093/ref:odnb/95778 [accessed 1 Nov. 2022]; S. Reynolds, ‘Douglas Johnson 1925–2005’, Modern & Contemporary France, xiii (2005), 483–87; M. Cornick and C. Crossley, Problems in French History (Basingstoke, 2000).

32. 31.  Franco-British Council: https://francobritish.org/en/about/ [accessed 1 Dec. 2022].

33. 32.  Students who started with Cobban and ended with Johnson included Tim Le Goff, Donald Sutherland and Ed Whitcomb. N.B. Nicola Sutherland provided valuable service in helping to organize the Seminar through Cobban’s declining health in 1967–8 and oversaw things until Johnson took over.

34. 33.  For further details, see S. Hoffmann and R. Tiersky, ‘Hommage à Annie Kriegel’, French Politics and Society, xiii (1995), 63–7.

35. 34.  There are no records for the joint IHR-IFRU seminars. The planning was rather informal with Pamela Pilbeam taking a lead to agree with Geraldine d’Amico whom to invite from France and on what date. At first the speakers presented at IHR, but later meetings were hosted at the IFRU.

36. 35.  R. Chartier and P. Rosanvallon, ‘Hommage à Maurice Agulhon’, Collège de France Newsletter (2015), 88–90: https://doi.org/10.4000/lettre-cdf.2210 [accessed 1 Nov. 2022].

37. 36.  S. Godfrey, ‘Alain Corbin: Making Sense of French History’, French Historical Studies, xxv (2002), 381–98.

38. 37.  For details, see French History Society, ‘Fourteenth Douglas Johnson Memorial Lecture in French History’: http://frenchhistorysociety.co.uk/douglas-johnson/ [accessed 1 Dec. 2022].

39. 38.  A. W. M. Smith, ‘Doing History: A Timeline of My Book’s Publication’: https://awmsmith.wordpress.com/2016/09/27/doing-history-a-timeline-of-my-books-publication/ [accessed 1 Nov. 2022].

40. 39.  French History Society Network Blog: http://frenchhistorysociety.co.uk/blog/?cat=7 [accessed 1 Nov. 2022]. Cf. Institute of Historical Research, French History Collections: https://www.history.ac.uk/library/collections/french-history [accessed 1 Nov. 2022].

41. 40.  Institute of Historical Research, Modern French History: https://www.history.ac.uk/seminars/modern-french-history [accessed 1 Nov. 2022].

References