Introduction: ‘Perfide Albion’ All the Way?

Abstract

The contributions presented here are taken from an international Conference held at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, University of Bordeaux (France), on 6–7 November 1998. The original idea was to bring together the — relatively few — French historians working on modern and contemporary Britain. But, underpinning all our efforts at organizing the Conference, was one anguished question: whatever had happened to the French school of British studies, once of good international repute? The fact that the final product was a Franco-British Conference, with more participants coming from the other side of the Channel, is in itself revealing enough of how British history has become a terra incognita to an overwhelming majority of the French academic community. Paul Mantoux, Elie Halévy or André Siegfried have had very few disciples and we must praise Professor François Crouzet for not letting British history disappear altogether from the French academic scene. He has had disciples in a number large enough that we can now speak of a renewed, burgeoning school of French historians of Britain.1