The Origins of Contemporary France

Portrait of Hippolyte Taine, by Jean Béraud

Les Origines de la France Contemporaine (1875–1893) is a work by the French historian Hippolyte Taine, translated into English by John Durand as The Origins of Contemporary France. It was published in five volumes.

Thesis

Taine analyzes French society in an original way, by placing himself in a long perspective. He is specially interested in the causes of the French Revolution. In particular, he denounces the fact that the institutions and laws established by the French Revolution are artificial and result from violence and ideological choices (for example, the abstract and rationalist ideas of Robespierre). The revolution would contradict the construction of political institutions which, according to Taine, should be slow and natural.

In the years following the establishment of the Third Republic, the lines hardened between the universities and the rest of the French intellectual establishment. Fewer academics were ushered into the ranks of the “forty immortals,” into the fashionable salons of the Champs-Elysees, into the gastronomic feasts of the French literary world. If Taine became the apostle of the French Academy, he was also the nemesis of the universities. Alphonse Aulard, one of Taine’s scholarly enemies, announced that “at the Sorbonne, a candidate for the diploma in historical studies or the doctorate would disqualify himself if he cited the authority of Taine in any historical question.”

Susanna Barrows in Distorting Mirrors (1981).

The considerable number of facts reported to illustrate a given period of the history of the Revolution suggests a considerable amount of research work. Following verification of his text by historian Alphonse Aulard, the examples used by Taine to support his statements proved to be very reliable; few errors were noted by Aulard — and fewer than those found in his own texts, as Augustin Cochin has demonstrated.

Taine's interpretations, which cannot be denied as to their fulgurances, nor as to their political significance, have been and still are very successful, both in France and abroad. Taine's greatest merit is to propose a vision of the revolution free of the fatalistic (teleological) vision of the democrats and republicans, and of the Marxist interpretations that were those of the contemporary historical school of Albert Mathiez, Georges Lefebvre and Albert Soboul, the most famous representatives of this tradition.

Modern editions

• Les Origines de la France Contemporaine (1986; introduction by François Léger)
• Les Origines de la France Contemporaine (2011; preface by Jean-Paul Cointet)

Further reading

• Birot, E. (1897). La Révolution et le Régime Moderne d'après M. H. Taine... ou Analyse Critique des "Origines de la France Contemporaine". Paris: Delhomme.
• Gallavresi, Giuseppe (1928). "Ippolito Taine Storico della Rivoluzione Francese," Nuova Antologia, Vol. LXIII, 1928, pp. 21–25.
• Gasparini, Éric (1993). La Pensée Politique d'Hippolyte Taine: Entre Traditionalisme et Libéralisme. Aix-en-Provence: Presses Universitaires d'Aix-Marseille.
• Lacombe, Paul (1909). Taine Historien et Sociologue. Paris: V. Giard et E. Brière.
• Léger, François (1994). "Taine Historien: Les Origines de la France Contemporaine," Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger, Vol. LXXVII, No. 4, pp. 463–76.
• Müller, Philipp (2015). "Comment Sortir de la Maladie Révolutionnaire?, La Structure de l’Âme et la Réforme de la Pensée chez Hippolyte Taine," Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte, Vol. XXXIX, No. 1/2, pp. 111–25.
• Poggiolini, Alfredo (1901). Ammiratori e Giudici della Rivoluzione Francese. Firenze: B. Seeber.
• Richard, Nathalie (2013). Hippolyte Taine: Histoire, Psychologie, Littérature. Paris: Classiques Garnier.
• Richard, Nathalie (2015). "L’Imagination Scientifique: Configurations Fictionnelles dans Les Origines de la France Contemporaine d’Hippolyte Taine," Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte, Vol. XXXIX, No. 1/2, pp. 127–37.
• Scherer, Edmond (1882). Études sur la Littérature Contemporaine, Vol. 7. Paris: Calmann Lévy.

External links

• The Origins of Contemporary France at Hathi Trust