Böcker av Robert Gildea

A powerful new history of the Great Strike in the miners’ own voices, based on more than 140 interviews with former miners and their families

"History", suggests Robert Gildea, "is a battlefield." Questions of power, rights, identity and nationhood always have an ancient and modern historical dimension and countries still go to war over their interpretation of history. Yet accounts of history are just as prone to fabrication as fake news, so how can we tell good history from bad? How can history be critical, learning from the past and righting wrongs, rather than divisive, such as riding roughshod over the rights of others? In this passionately argued book, Gildea suggests that the more people who really understand what good history entails, the more likely history is to triumph over myth. He sees positive signs in public history, citizen historians and community projects, among other developments. And he debunks claims that 'you cannot rewrite history', arguing that good history that's attuned to its times must be rewritten time and again.

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.

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.