Fifth Douglas Johnson Memorial Lecture in French History
The Society for the Study of French History
and
The Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France
and
Institut Français, Royaume-Uni
Douglas Johnson Memorial Lecture, Wednesday 16 January 2015.
Myth or Model? The French Revolution in the Great War
John Horne, Professor of Modern European History, Trinity College Dublin
Download a recording of the event HERE (right click to save mp3 file)
Venue:
La Médiathèque, Institut Français, 17 Queensberry Place, South Kensington, London SW7 2DT
Synopsis:
The political culture of the Third Republic was saturated with references to the French Revolution. This was never truer than when France faced a new and devastating confrontation with modernity in the First World War. But what aspects of the Revolution were mobilized in the face of mass death in combat and an economic and industrial effort that opened up new vistas for French society in the future. Did the French Revolution act as a myth, a model or merely as a vague historical memory?
John Horne is Professor of Modern European History at Trinity College, Dublin, of which he is also a Fellow. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and of the executive board of the International Research Centre of the Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne (France). He serves on the official French Mission du Centenaire and chaired the scientific committee of the exhibition, Vu du Front, organized by the Musée de l’Armée and the Musée d’Histoire Contemporaine (October 2014–January 2015). He has published widely on the history of modern France and on the comparative history of World War One. In 2012–13 he was a Fellow in the School of History at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Study, Germany.
Previous Lectures:
The First Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
The Society for the Study of French History and The Institute of Historical Research, London present:
Julian Jackson (Queen Mary University of London), ‘The Century of Charles de Gaulle’ (November 2010).
[details and video/podcast of event]
The Second Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
The Society for the Study of French History and The Institute of Historical Research, London present:
Professor Richard Thomson (Edinburgh University), ‘New Wine in Old Bottles: Adapting and Abusing Tradition in French Visual Culture, 1880-1910’ (January 2012).
[details and podcast of event]
The Third Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
The Society for the Study of French History and The Institute of Historical Research, London present:
Professor Ruth Harris, (New College, Oxford), ‘Rolland, Gandhi and Madeleine Slade: Spiritual Politics, France and the Wider World’ (January 2013).
[details and podcast of event]
The Fourth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
The Society for the Study of French History, the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France and The Institute of Historical Research, London present:
Professor Andrew Knapp, (University of Reading), ‘Bombing and Memory: Britain and France, 1940-1945’ (January 2014).
[details and podcast of event]
