This study analyzes sex ratios garnered from one hundred and one years of baptismal records from the south-western French town of Villeneuve-sur-Lot, between 1610 and 1711. It is the continuation of a larger project attempting to divine infanticide among married couples in early modern Western Europe. By comparing observed sex ratios (OSRs) in baptisms with the Universal Sex Ratio at Birth (USRB) established by Visaria (1967) it has been suggested a number of times that significant and patterned deviations represent sex-selective infanticide. In the case of Villeneuve, swift shifts between preponderances of girl children and boy children during crises suggest compensatory practice, purposefully engaged in to even out potentially imbalanced sex ratios among adults later. In this way it may be suggested that the preference for boys or girls in Villeneuve over time was balanced, based on circumstance, rather than some inherent perceived value of boys over girls.

<p>This paper has been awarded the Ronald S. Love Prize of the Western Society for French History in 2009.</p>

National historical memory in France has often given rise to violent polemic. Controversial episodes of national history, such as the Second World War and Algerian conflict, have attracted considerable attention. Yet despite its obvious importance as a particularly violent war of decolonization and precursor to the Vietnam War, the First Indochina War (1946-54) has largely been ignored. In the context of decolonization and the beginning of the Cold War, however, Indochina offers a unique example of the complex relationship between event, commemoration, and memory. This dissertation examines state commemorations, official and unofficial sites of memory, film and other media representations of the war, and several “flashpoint” events that have elicited particularly heated debates over the legacies of the war. The thematic structure allows me to bring together various vehicles and artefacts of memory, from monuments to commemorative ceremonies to veterans’ associations, along with less tangible expressions of memory expressed through public debates and film. I also analyze the tangible legacy of colonialism in the metropole: the ‘repatriate’ camps that housed primarily French citizens of Vietnamese, Lao and Cambodian origin after 1956. This chapter makes an important contribution to the history of immigration to France, which is critical to understanding issues currently facing this multicultural society. Two dominant narratives emerge from my analysis. The first is maintained by a majority of veterans and elements of the political right and extreme right, and is characterized by themes of heroic soldiers combating communism and a belief in their abandonment by the metropolitan government and public. In some cases, a sense of duty to protect ‘Greater France’ is invoked, and in others, the duty to fight with the independent Vietnamese against their communist oppressors. The second narrative casts the conflict as a ‘dirty’ war of colonial reconquest. Though the primary goal of the dissertation is to elucidate the construction of particular narratives of war, I argue that this memorial process is inherently intertwined with the re-evaluation of the colonial project. The fundamental disagreement over the nature of the war, as either a battle against communism or a war of colonial reconquest, has prompted extensive debates over the relative merits of the colonial project and its putative resurrection in 1945.

National historical memory in France has often given rise to violent polemic. Controversial episodes of national history, such as the Second World War and Algerian conflict, have attracted considerable attention. Yet despite its obvious importance as a particularly violent war of decolonization and precursor to the Vietnam War, the First Indochina War (1946-54) has largely been ignored. In the context of decolonization and the beginning of the Cold War, however, Indochina offers a unique example of the complex relationship between event, commemoration, and memory. This dissertation examines state commemorations, official and unofficial sites of memory, film and other media representations of the war, and several “flashpoint” events that have elicited particularly heated debates over the legacies of the war. The thematic structure allows me to bring together various vehicles and artefacts of memory, from monuments to commemorative ceremonies to veterans’ associations, along with less tangible expressions of memory expressed through public debates and film. I also analyze the tangible legacy of colonialism in the metropole: the ‘repatriate’ camps that housed primarily French citizens of Vietnamese, Lao and Cambodian origin after 1956. This chapter makes an important contribution to the history of immigration to France, which is critical to understanding issues currently facing this multicultural society. Two dominant narratives emerge from my analysis. The first is maintained by a majority of veterans and elements of the political right and extreme right, and is characterized by themes of heroic soldiers combating communism and a belief in their abandonment by the metropolitan government and public. In some cases, a sense of duty to protect ‘Greater France’ is invoked, and in others, the duty to fight with the independent Vietnamese against their communist oppressors. The second narrative casts the conflict as a ‘dirty’ war of colonial reconquest. Though the primary goal of the dissertation is to elucidate the construction of particular narratives of war, I argue that this memorial process is inherently intertwined with the re-evaluation of the colonial project. The fundamental disagreement over the nature of the war, as either a battle against communism or a war of colonial reconquest, has prompted extensive debates over the relative merits of the colonial project and its putative resurrection in 1945.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 340-357). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Louis XIII's reign has long garnered historians' and popular interest. The king of Cardinal Richelieu and the three musketeers, Louis is traditionally viewed as having presided over the development of the French state and facilitated the rise of absolutism. Yet his court has received comparatively little attention. Traditionally understood as the reflection of its master, Louis XIII's court has been assumed to be backwards and inconsequential. On the contrary, this thesis contends that Louis's court experienced substantial institutional development and expansion over the course of his rule. Neither Louis nor Richelieu was the principal instigator of this growth. The main drivers were the courtiers themselves who sought to expand their prerogatives and to find new ways of profiting from their offices. The changes that were initiated from the top down were not determined by a broad, sweeping agenda held by Louis or his minister-favourites but rather by immediate needs and contingencies. Cardinal Richelieu, nonetheless, recognised that Louis's court really mattered for high politics in this period: the royal households produced key players for the governance of the realm, either gravitating from court office to broader governmental office, or holding both simultaneously. Furthermore, Louis's court helped to bind the realm together, not just because it acted as a hub attracting people from the provinces but also because of the time it spent in the provinces. Richelieu, however, struggled to control this court — so vital to the direction of the French monarchy in this period — because its members were so active and vibrant. They shaped the cultural and social environment surrounding and associated with the court because they were heavily invested in the court as an institution. Indeed, the court did not only serve the needs of the monarch: courts could only operate because a large group of people had a stake in ensuring that they functioned. By establishing the importance of Louis XIII's court for the direction of the French monarchy, and his courtiers' role in moulding it, this thesis seeks to throw light on humans' fundamental relationship with power.

<p>Jean d’Espagnet (c. 1564–1637?) was a magistrate and presiding judge at the<em> parlement </em>of  Bordeaux  in  the  late  sixteenth  and  early  seventeenth  centuries.    He  served  on  the  court  from 1590 until retiring in 1615, from 1600 as a <em>président</em>, a venal office of significant power and social standing. After retirement he wrote three books which comprise his literary and intellectual legacy.Together they speak to the fertile philosophical ground of the late Renaissance and present a vision of order and God’s cosmos deeply influenced by Neoplatonism,  Hermetism,  Paracelsianism, Neostoicism,  and  medieval  alchemy,  as  well  as  d’Espagnet’s  judicial  education  and  social experience as a magistrate.  This dissertation explores the foundations of d’Espagnet’s philosophy of nature, tracing the development of certain philosophical ideas from ancient sources such as the Platonic and Hermetic traditions through medieval and Renaissance philosophers like Ramon Lull, Pseudo-Geber, and Marsilio Ficino to d’Espagnet and his contemporaries.  Paracelsian chemical medicine found some  acceptance during d’Espagnet’s lifetime, though not without struggle and dangers to its adherents.  This project also examines the context of d’Espagnet’s life and experience as a judicial elite in a kingdom and community beset by religious strife and political uncertainty.It argues that d’Espagnet and his fellow magistrates desperately sought order in the midst of these troubles,  and  that d’Espagnet echoed across all his writings this  concern  for  order  alongside a particular set of ideas about gender, shared by his fellow magistrates, according to which feminine passions  were  the  root  of  disorder  and masculine  reason was  the  antidote.    This gendered understanding of order was fundamental to d’Espagnet’s thought and reinforced by his syncretic reading of ancient and modern philosophical textsalongside his own experience, leading him to produce a unique and consistent syncretic philosophy that sought to answer definitively some of humanity’s oldest questions about the nature of matter, man, and the cosmos.</p>