History Commons^™

Le Temps Des Copains: Youth And The Making Of Modern France In The Era Of Decolonization, 1958-1968, Drew Fedorka

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the popular yé-yé phenomenon and its role in articulating a vision of modern France in the aftermath of decolonization. Yé-yé, a teen-oriented and music-based popular culture that flourished from roughly 1962-1966, was in a unique position to define what it meant to be young in 1960s France. I argue that the yé-yé popular culture, through its definition of youth, provided an important cultural channel through which to articulate a modern French identity after the Algerian War (1954-1962). Using a combination of advertisements, articles, and sanitized depictions of teenage pop singers, the yé-yé popular culture constructed an idealized …

Visions Of Race And Gender: Press Coverage Of The French Colonial Expositions Of 1922 And 1931, Zachary Morgan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During the interwar period, France attempted to reinvigorate interest in the empire amongst the public via elaborate colonial expositions. The colonial expositions of Marseille (1922) and Paris (1931) served as a means to celebrate the empire and to educate the French about the benefits of living within Greater France, an entity that included the metropole and the colonies. This thesis examines how press coverage of both expositions worked alongside these events to counteract anxieties regarding France's economic recovery after the war, continuing world presence, demographic losses, and most importantly the relationship between France and its colonies. It explores how the …

The Riom Trial : Marshal Petain's Attack On The Third Republic., James Estel Williams 1985-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a history of the Riom Trial beginning with the French defeat in June 1940 and the foundations of the National Revolution, continuing with the initiation of the trial and its proceedings, and ending with a historiographic survey of the trial's studies. The trial began in February 1942 and continued through twenty-four sessions until it was suspended in April 1942. Marshal Philippe Pétain instigated the trial in an attempt to legitimize the Vichy government and the National Revolution by trying six leading members of the last few Third Republic governments for their responsibility in not preparing France adequately …

Reconciling Order And Progress: Auguste Comte, Gustave Le Bon, Emile Durkheim, And The Development Of Positivism In France, 1820-1914, Khali Navarro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the philosophy of positivism in nineteenth century France. Based on an empirical vision of society, positivism advocated values of rationality, progress, and secularization. In that way, it stood as one of the defining systems of thought of the modern era. I discuss, however, an undercurrent of anxiety about those same values. Positivism's founder, Auguste Comte, argued that all sciences would become unified and organized under universal principles and empirical standards. He viewed the human mind as becoming more rationalized throughout history. In his later career, however, he argued that rationalism was a destructive force and that a …

Drugi Potop: The Fall Of The Second Polish Republic, Wesley Kent

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to examine the factors that resulted in the fall of the Second Polish Republic and track its downward trajectory. Examining the Second Republic, from its creation in 1918 to its loss of recognition in 1945, reveals that its demise began long before German tanks violated Poland’s frontiers on 1 September, 1939. Commencing with the competing ideas of what a Polish state would be and continuing through the political and foreign policy developments of the inter-war years, a pattern begins to emerge -that of the Poles’ search for their place in modern Europe. The lead up to the …

Another Forgotten Army: The French Expeditionary Corps In Italy,1943-1944, Brook White

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The French Expeditionary Corps that fought in Italy during World War II was a French army, but that description must be qualified. Therefore this thesis asks two questions: how did France manage to send the equivalent of an army to Italy if French military leadership in 1943 had no direct access to French manpower resources; and the most important question since it is unique to the historical debate, why were the troops that were sent to Italy so effective once there when compared to the 1940 French army? To answer the first question, it was a French colonial army - …

Visioning The Nation: Classical Images As Allegory During The French Revolution, Kristopher Guy Reed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the latter half of the Eighteenth Century, France experienced a seismic shift in the nature of political culture. The king gave way to the nation at the center of political life as the location of sovereignty transferred to the people. While the French Revolution changed the structure of France's government, it also changed the allegorical representations of the nation. At the Revolution's onset, the monarchy embodied both the state and nation as equated ideas. During the Revolutionary Decade and through the reign of Napoleon different governments experienced the need to reorient these symbols away from the person of the …

Letters From The Communications Zone: Lt. Edwin Best In The Second World War., Jeremy Eugene Cobb

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The subject of this paper is the experiences and observations of Lt. Edwin Best of the 618th Ordnance Ammunition Company from 1943 until 1946. This includes time in the United States, England and France.

The primary sources for this paper include letters home from Lt. Best and an oral history transcript. Secondary sources have been used to place Lt. Best into the overall context of the war.

He made keen observations regarding the level of training before D-Day, comparisons of life in England and the US, from the "communications zone" in Normandy, as a temporary Judge Advocate General officer, and …