Books by Robert Gildea

This text considers the nature of French history and the awareness of its influence, surveying the ways that various political communities in France during the past two centuries have used different versions of the past in order to define their identities and legitimize their goals.

The story of the French Resistance is central to French identity, but it is a story built on myths. 'La R,sistance fran,aise' was not simply a national effort to free the country from German occupation, but a wider struggle, filled with conflicts and division. It included Spanish republicans, Italian and even German anti-Nazis. The defence against the Holocaust brought in Jewish resisters and Christian rescuers. It involved a civil war for the French Empire in Africa and the Near East. The movement itself was split between those on the far right and the far left, fighting for very different visions of the world.Robert Gildea returns to the testimonies of the resisters themselves, asking who they were, what they believed in and what compelled them to take the terrible risks they did. He brings to the fore the woman resisters, who history neglected. By looking again at the constructions and interplay of the myths surrounding the resistance, Gildea builds a vivid, gripping and entirely new account of one of the most compelling narratives of the Second World War.

Nineteenth-century France was one of the world's great cultural beacons, renowned for its dazzling literature, philosophy, art, poetry and technology. Yet this was also a tumultuous century of political anarchy and bloodshed, where each generation of the French Revolution's 'children' would experience their own wars, revolutions and terrors. From soldiers to priests, from peasants to Communards, from feminists to literary figures such as Victor Hugo and Honor de Balzac, Robert Gildea's brilliant new history explores every aspect of these rapidly changing times, and the people who lived through them.

The period 1870-1914 saw the consolidation of republican government and recovery of national self-confidence in France, establishing firm parliamentary rule and building up an empire. This text offers an introduction to the period and incorporates recent research.