Fransa’nın Kısa Tarihi

Cambridge Concise Histories

by Roger Price, Özkan Akpınar (Translator)

Ortaçağdan günümüze, Charlemagne’dan Chirac’a kadarki geniş bir dönemi kuşatan ve Fransa tarihi konusunda sarih ve kapsamlı bir rehber olan bu kitap, Fransa’nın bir devlet olarak tarih sahnesinde belirişinin ve sahip olduğu otoritenin genişleyip yayılmasının mahiyetini ve sebeplerini açıklamaya çalışıyor; bunu yaparken de, devlet ve toplum arasındaki kesintisiz etkileşime odaklanıyor. Fransa’nın Kısa Tarihi, ele aldığı her bölümünde, ekonomik ve toplumsal yapıların yanı sıra siyasal sorunların gelişim sürecini de ortaya koymaya çalışıyor. Devlet ve toplum ilişkileri, savaşların etkileri, siyasal güç sahipleri ve onların bu güçlerini nasıl kullandığı gibi pek çok canalıcı meseleye değiniyor. Philip Augustus, IV. Henri, XIV. Louis, Robespierre, Napoleon, de Gaulle gibi Fransa tarihinin önemli şahsiyetleri kadar sosyal tarihçilerin konu edindikleri sıradan insanlar, sosyal yapılar, inançlar ve ekonomik faaliyetler de bu kısa tarih içinde kendine yer buluyor.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, France, Audiobook, European History

472 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

1. I wanted you to love me, ________________ (nation-state), and to that end I bought compact discs (at least ten of them) which when played on a conventional jam-box or ghetto-blaster amplify, into the enclosure between tall incarceratory concrete walls, the voice of a ________________ (nation-state's Proper Adjective) woman and a fast-talking _______________ (ibid) man discussing where and/or when to have lunch. Watching two or three ants descend into a medium-large crack in the pavement -- which to them must have seemed like a hazardous canyon or gorge -- I also watched my dreams die, like the fizzle of a flame between spittled fingertips. My dreams of philosophical and political discussions disintegrated into a halting request for a cheese sandwich. Do they even serve cheese sandwiches? I cannot give myself over fully to any nation, democratic or otherwise, which doesn't.

2. We can learn a lot from grain yields. First of all we can learn how much grain is, for instance, yielded in a specific locality during a specific period. From this we can deduce other things perhaps, like the average duration of foreplay among the regressively feudal classes of Western Europse. Clothing was often loose and practical and did not lend itself to fumblings and the tired workings of buttons, you understand; in more fashionably complex societies, foreplay -- as a function of grain yields -- was a pastime during uncorsettings and sock suspender unfastenings. Another thing we can learn from grain yields is the availability of historical data from a given era. If grain yields are reliable, this implies that historical data is largely unavailable because why would we notice grain yields if we could talk about the war of the gnome-people from Lyon or the history of the queen's underthings or be generally pacified by capitalist faerie tales of unicorns and gumdrops and... I can't remember what I was talking about.

3. This book is the worst book of all books. Other books may be worse, but this book is by far worse than those other books. If you don't believe me, you are a horrible person and no one at all in the universe is worse than you are. Please don't take this personally. It's just that you're despicable and this can be scientifically proven, but I'm not interested in doing the experiments right now, so I will merely allude to your despicableness as if it were previously and always understood as being true because of course it has been. I don't have the charts and data at my fingertips. They are in a manilla file folder under some grain yield pie charts (for the 1700s) in my black Honda Civic, which could use a wash. It could really use a wash. Wash it for me, lackey, if you don't believe this book is worse than all other books, even this one. You have nothing better to do because everything you 'know' and understand stands upon a dry, crumbly fecal edifice which threatens to deliver you unto your despicable nature and expose you as a horrible person for believing untrue things which have no scientific support, including but not limited to grain yields. What is your grain yield, if you think this book is so great? Why are you so argumentative? It's like placing a strobe light right above the nucleus of your profound ignorance. Do you want the concise history of France? Is it a thing you really want or have you been watching those wretched Truffaut films again imagining that this knowledge (purportedly contained herein) is of a piece with your taste for all things cultural? I am tempted to call you a fraud as well as a despicable and horrible person and (provisionally) the worst person on the face of this poor planet, but I am many things and one of them is tactful. I will not tell you what you are because you are so horrible that you have not earned the right even to that meager knowledge. I will smile at you and pat your ass, demeaningly, and that's all I have to say.

4. The price of Roger Price is too much. It is expensive and worthless at the same time. Roger, you have no price because you have no value. You are a thing found along the roadside smelling of canned yams and the mold that grows in my armpits when I don't leave my house and I don't leave my house and I don't leave my house and I don't leave my house and I don't leave my house and I don't leave my house and I don't leave my house which I don't leave, not now, not tomorrow, not for any price, you Roger, you Price without price because you're unwanted. You're a dirty maxi pad in the heavy shadows of the underpass. Yes, I think you deserved that comment. And I am tactful. And I don't leave my house because of the mold in my armpits, but it's interesting -- because the mold in my armpits happens because I never leave my house. It is a house with tall concrete walls which are incarceratory because I don't have the key to the door between them. Now I'll never be able to order a cheese sandwich in the local dialect. But I am slowly coming to terms with that new reality.

5. Don't bother with:

(a) dreams.
(b) ironing your underthings. Even queens. Even incarceratory walls.
(c) the concrete industry, wherever you work. It is men in golf shirts and sexy women who look retarded and not at all sexy. Orange-tanned and freckled leather.
(d) histories, concise or of France or long-winded or of other countries. It's best not to know. Grain yields are okay, but other things should generally be avoided as much as possible.
(e) hope.
(f) keeping things in order. You can write up timelines, and I have done so as often as I am able to but then you forget the order of the years and remember the order again and then you have to reorient history to align it with your new numerology: the one you invented in your head.
(g) reality television. It has made a sham of you. It is not beneath you. You are (now) beneath it. It spits at you and winks at the other genres behind your back.
(h) grain yields. I've rethought the matter (carefully) and these, above all, should not be bothered with.
(i) point (b) above. Everything should be ironed and ironed properly, even time and hope, if you have any stockpiled, and you should for emergencies, which do happen.
(j) preparing for emergencies. They prepare for you and defeat you. Even if you are historical.
(k) everything else, mostly. Except that. Except that. Except that.
(l) even that.

[Shawn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Introduction

This book is largely a political history of France that almost totally ignores the literary, art, and philosophy that are so important in defining French culture. Like so many histories before it, this one is fixated upon the politics of Paris, largely neglecting the rest of the country.

Nevertheless, some valuable things can be gleaned from this reading, perhaps none more important than understanding how close French society, and essentially all societies, sit to the precipice of political anarchy.

This history also facilities our understanding of the origins of the clashes between liberals and conservatives that still persist so fervently today. Modern societies still struggle with inequality. The left wishes to tax the wealthy more than others while ignoring the slothfulness of the unproductive. The right wishes to exploit the poor with inadequate wages and educational barriers to more lucrative employment opportunities. The solutions to these conflicts do not lie in the sort of seesaw vacillation between liberal and conservative administrations that continues today.

The left must come to understand that the incentives of competition and merit are essential to motivate productiveness. The right must come to understand that higher wage compensation for workers is much better than inadequate wages subsidized by welfare, which belittles and destroys incentive.

Early History

Gaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age that was inhabited by Celtic tribes. Gaul encompassed present day France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerland, Northern Italy, as well as parts of the Netherlands and Germany. Gaul was occupied by the Romans between 58 and 51 BC.

Following the collapse of Rome, Frankish tribes were united under the Merovingians, who succeeded in conquering most of Gaul in the 6th century. The Frankish state consolidated its hold over the majority of western Europe by the end of the 8th century, developing into the Carolingian Empire.

The Kings of France emerged out of the ruins of the Carolingian Empire, which was a Frankish Noble family associated with the descendants of Charles Martel. You’ll remember Charles Martel as the one that defeated Islamic forces in the Battle of Tours in 732, thereby terminating the Islamic advance into Europe. The Carolingians reached their peak in 800, with the crowning of Charlemagne and thereafter fragmented. The last Carolingian was Louis V who died in 987.

With the coronation of their ruler Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in 800 AD, the Carolingian Empire gradually came to be seen as a continuation of the ancient Roman Empire. This empire would gradually evolve into the modern states of France, Germany, Italy, and others, though the Frankish identity remained most closely identified with France.

The Middle Ages & Early Modern Period (Until the Revolution of 1789)

For much of its history France was a feudal monarchy, with an aristocratic elite that wielded power by controlling the land. The aristocrats used religion and armed force as a means of social control. They squeezed taxes, rents, feudal dues, and tithes out of the peasants. This feudal situation formed the underlying tension that has perpetuated political conflict throughout French history.

France was an agricultural country, with the peasants struggling to produce enough to feed themselves and the aristocracy. The dependence on the harvest promoted a sense of submissiveness to divine will. The aristocracy used the mythology of primitive Catholicism to strengthen the state of psychological incarceration imposed upon the peasants. Serfs even depended on their lord’s permission to marry or pass their possessions on to their children, both of which were attained by payment of a tax.

The poor were kept in their place by promoting their sense of inferiority. Peasants made up about three-quarters of the population and after payment of rents, seigneurial dues, tithes, and taxes, were left with next to nothing. The nobles, merchants, renters, and clergy were all parasitic upon the peasants. The tithe forced to be paid to the church was sometimes as high as 12.5% of the crop.

The King maintained power through a series of alliances with the castles of the domineering lords around the country. Kings sought to maintain authority by traveling between castles and holding court. Insisting that they held the throne directly from God, the kings sought to assert themselves militarily and ideologically.

Versailles symbolized royal power and glory and provided a focal point for the aristocratic civilization. Attendance on the king at court was the means of obtaining high office and pensions all systematized within a carefully constructed etiquette. The nobles enjoyed fiscal exemptions such that the burden of taxation was borne by the peasants. The great court families monopolized pensions, favors, and senior positions in the army and bureaucracy. Nobles occupied all the important offices of church and state.

Resentment arose because the bourgeoisie (middle class) wanted to acquire noble status. The newly rich were often resented by families of ancient lineage, some of which had become stagnated because of generations of slothfulness. The bourgeoisie were property owners who lived primarily from rents and investments. Below the bourgeoisie were the less successful merchants, professionals, shopkeepers, and artisans. The increasingly better educated and more self aware bourgeoisie were naturally attracted by meritocratic and egalitarian ideas, and increasingly resentful of noble privilege.

Nobles of ancient lineage saw themselves as belonging to a race apart, with its identity maintained by breeding. The nobles felt they alone were the natural counsellors of the monarchy. The resentment of lawyers, landowners, renters, and large merchants against the nobles began to gain political expression. A growing intellectual climate arose promulgating the idea that progress was possible through the development of human reason and resisting traditional aristocratic and religious authority. A call for meritocracy, civil liberty, and relief from the burden of exploitation ensued.

The church was heavily criticized as irrational, superstitious, exploitive, and an enemy of reason. The Enlightenment fostered the spread of literacy among the well-educated professional bourgeoisie, but most of the population remained functionally illiterate.

Louis XIV, the so called Sun King, sought to reinforce the divine right of kings. Subsequently, the poor financial management of Louis XVI resulted in Holland and Britain gaining the advantage of better credit, investment, and economic growth. The mismanagement of a number of wars and involvement in the American War of Independence bankrupted the state. Public opinion blamed the growing French debt on the extravagance of Queen Marie-Antoinette and the court.

Revolution

The Revolution brought about the final and much delayed ending of the feudal system but the basic underlying cause of the revolution has never been fully resolved in any human society. That unresolved issue is greed. Should one possess the right to exploit another merely because of the circumstances of their birth? Clearly such ludicrous beliefs remain a retarding impediment in society today.

The revolution also marked the rise of Marxism. Marxists declared the revolution to represent the seizure of power by the bourgeoisie, which it defined as a class created by the longevity of capitalism. The intelligence of the bourgeoise allowed them to take advantage of the mass discontent among the poor in order to defeat the aristocrats, who were too stubborn to curtail their privileges so the country could progress. This stubbornness was wholly exemplified in the person of the Bourbon king Louis XVI who’s series of mistakes lead to his beheading and that of his queen in 1793.

As a group, the aristocrats were a people out of touch with reality and who arrogantly refused to recognize their own ineptitude. Popular protest manifested in a refusal to pay seigneurial dues, tithes, or taxes. The continuing rise in the price of bread was increasingly explained in terms of an aristocratic plot. Hundreds of noble chateaux were looted and burned as peasants searched for hidden stocks of grain and destroyed the records of seigneurial obligations. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen assaulted the legal basis of privilege and monarchy and guaranteed private ownership of property. Waves of noble emigres fled the country.

A summoned Assembly sought to wield power but the widespread refusal to pay taxes intensified the governments financial problems. The Assembly therefore chose to confiscate church property and issue treasury bills. The assembly began to reorganize the church in subordination to the State causing the Pope (Pius VI) to condemn the revolution. Subsequently the property of the emigres was also confiscated and sold, with the bourgeois in the best position to purchase it.

The attempts at counter revolution by the emigres resulted in a call to arms against other monarchial countries and a frenzied series of French victories abroad. French soldiers battled not only for the liberty of France but also for the future liberty of the human race. This rendered intense motivation for the army.

Robespierre, a French lawyer and politician radicalized politics. A widespread intellectual and anti-religious feeling prevailed including the destruction of religious images, the closure of churches, and a hunt for dissident clerics. The cult of the revolution was Reason as the supreme being. The revolutionary calendar abolished Sunday. It was finally brought to light that the Catholic church, in collusion with the nobility, had oppressed the common people for centuries.

The revolutionary leaders remained predominantly bourgeois professionals and landowners. Maintaining order was difficult particularly in 1791-1793 when the Vendee peasants felt deprived of the opportunity to purchase land because of bourgeois speculators from other towns. Widespread violence occurred, including guerrilla attacks on the bourgeois purchasers of confiscated property. As a result, there developed a counter movement of resistance that attracted royalists and conservatives.

In 1799 the emergence of conservatism resulted in the execution of Robespierre and the reassertion of sovereign powers in the form of Napoleon. Napoleons famous legal codes provided a uniform legal system and military victories restored French dominance over Northern Italy. Amnesty was offered to most of the emigres and a concordat negotiated with the papacy, as Bonaparte appreciated religion as a means of social control.

The rise of Napoleon brought the era of revolution to a close. However perpetual war would eventually lead to the Empire’s collapse. Annexed territories were lost and the French armies retreated. Underground networks linked the emigres with the British, where high society contempt for Bonaparte existed, particularly because of his abandonment of his troops in Egypt (1799) and again in Russia (1812). By the end of 1813 Napoleon was deprived of his throne.

Louis XVIII was obliged to accept a revised constitutional monarchy. But Napoleon escaped from Elba in 1815 only to be utterly defeated at Waterloo and subsequently imprisoned on the island of Saint Helena.

In a still agrarian society, the social elite retained many of its pre-revolutionary characteristics. The funds necessary to fund the appropriate life-style and to provide the education necessary to gain access to the professions or political office were denied to the great majority. The aspirations of the post revolutionary environment were defined according to the models established by the old.

And so the unlearned lessons of the Revolution still haunt us today. No system of government which provides that some should never work is proper. No system of government that awards unearned benefit by birthright is proper. Any such system serves only to retard the beneficiary, promote acute jealousies among the people, and detract from the economic productiveness of the whole. Any person who finds themselves relegated to the misery of the lower classes should have landed their by their own doings and not assigned such misery by the happenstance of their birth.

Post Revolution

The restoration of the Bourbon monarchy occurred in 1815 with the reign of Louis XVIII, brother of the king beheaded in 1793. Nevertheless, many gains of the revolution persisted in the charter granted by the king for constitutional monarchy. France remained dominated by a pre-industrial social elite enshrined by an electoral system based on property qualification. French society remained fundamentally inegalitarian. Access to political power continued to depend on possession of income and education.

The assassination in 1820 of the last heir to the throne in the direct line of Bourbons lead to the accession of Charles X. The death of Napoleon in 1825 left the Bonapartists without an obvious leader. Protests lead Charles X to abdicate followed by the abdication of Louis-Philippe. In 1848 a new constitution provided for the election of a president and the successful candidate was Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte , the former emperor’s nephew. In 1852 the constitution barred Louis-Napoleon from another term so he mounted a coup and reestablished hereditary empire, naming himself the new Emperor Napoleon III.

The tendency of society to elevate one of its persons as a figure of power and reverence is so sad. It is sad to the extent the masses want to believe such a one truly represents their plight and sadder still to the extent that pride and arrogance always succeed in overwhelming the one so elevated.

World War I

The empire eventually collapsed in 1866 and a long period of conservative republican rule lasted until 1898. The growing German threat came to the centre of the political agenda.

Clemenceau became president in 1906, committed to the bourgeois ethos. In 1914, the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand set off a rapid chain of events: Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbian government for the attack. Russia supported Serbia. Austria-Hungary declared war once it received assurances that Germany would support its cause in the event of Russian intervention (and that of Russia’s allies France and Britain). Russia, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Serbia lined up against Austria-Hungary and Germany. With the help of fresh American troops, the allies concluded the war in 1918 via an armistice with the Central Powers.

France regained lost territories but the German occupation had left northern France exploited and destroyed. France emerged from the first world war damaged as a result of international debts, wartime outflow of currency, the sales of overseas assets, losses from the Russian revolution, and a massive depreciation of the franc. France looked to the peace treaty to force Germany to make financial reparations. France received some payments from Germany but the payments were suspended in 1931.

French society remained profoundly inegalitarian. At least half the wealth that passed on from one generation to the next belonged to only 1 percent of the deceased. Education was the great divider and access to it came only with birth and culture. Access to decision making positions required manners, the ability to entertain, and to mix socially. This served to keep the less fortunate at a distance.

There ensued a long period of conservative domination until 1932 which thrived because of the anti-socialism against Bolshevism in Russia. The crash of Wall Street in 1929 had brought the most serious crisis ever to hit the capitalist world and severe depression. The war had caused hyper-production and its conclusion resulted in vast over-supplies that collapsed prices and businesses.

World War II

Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933. French politics were characterized by fervent anti-communism, anti-socialism, leanings toward traditional Catholic conservatism, xenophobia, anti-semitism, and support for the established social hierarchy.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed in 1939 between Hitler and Stalin. However, inspired by the American New Deal , the French left gained solid working-class and lower middle-class support. The left sought wage increases, recognition of trade unions, paid vacation, and a 40-hour work week. However, the impotence of the left lies with the ability of the wealthy to transfer their fortunes abroad. The rise of the left resulted in a massive outflow of capital abroad. This reduced France’s international competitiveness and provoked inflation. French firms suffered from sustained under-investment. Additionally, it was necessary to commit substantial resources to re-armament to oppose Germany’s re-militarization.

In 1938 the Munich Agreement was signed by Germany, France, and Italy, which permitted the Nazi’s to annex parts of Czechoslovakia inhabited by German speakers (which is called the Sudetenland). The Czech government was offered no say in the matter. World War 2 began in 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland.

A French communist party had arisen that communicated with Moscow. The French communists began to claim the war was the outcome of imperialistic rivalries and of no concern to the working classes.

The French and British remained defensive as the Poles were crushed. Russia invaded Finland. Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. The Belgians opted for neutrality but Germany invaded them anyway. When the Germans broke the French line in Belgium, hoards of miserable refugees fled south, inspired by bitter memories of the previous German occupation of France. Essential services collapsed as officials left their posts and joined in the exodus. The French government moved first to Tours and then to Bordeaux. Organized French resistance quickly came to an end. General de Gaulle departed from Bordeaux to London to establish a French National Committee pledged to act as a provisional government.

CONTINUED IN COMMENTS SECTION BELOW

[brian · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book sucks. 19 yrs old and obsessed with the french new wave, i took a course in french history and was given this book. it made me wanna stab myself in the face. the gothfrog wrote a funny review of this one before a hissy fit of post-menstrual rage made him destroy his old account. re-post that shit, bitch.

[Jessica]

Ten seconds in Jessica time!

[untogether · Rating 1 out of 5]

A Concise History of France (Cambridge Concise Histories) by Roger Price (1993)

[Augusto Alves · Rating 3 out of 5]

I get that summing up over a thousand years of history in five hundred pages is not the easiest of tasks. Yet, the author could have done better. In most chapters, Price merely recounts the events without a proper analysis of their meaning. I was overwhelmed by the never-ending list of generals and politicians that have impacted France. It becomes hard to keep track. The last part of the book is the worse: Price makes a point of mentioning every candidate, prime minister, and president and, in so doing, fails to capture the big picture. All in all, it was a worthwhile read, not because of the book quality but because I am interested in the subject.

[Bluenose · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is part of a series of concise histories of European countries and I can’t even remember when or where I got it but it must have been cheaply remaindered somewhere. The packaging is bland beyond belief and it just looks like an old text book which is probably why it sat unread for god knows how long.

It is, as stated, a concise history and skips a lot of stuff. It starts in mediaeval France, or, more precisely, the geographical area that would eventually become the country of France. As the author clearly states in the introduction, he is concerned with institutions, politics, economics, technology (in the broadest sense and not just as it is understood today to mean high tech) and demographics and those looking for vivid descriptions of historical events can look elsewhere. His prose is turgid, dense and, at times, convoluted. I had to go back and read entire paragraphs again to get an idea of what he was saying. That might just be me but it happened a lot.

The effort is not unrewarding. This reader anyway got a clearer view of the development of the French character and why the people and institutions of France are the way they are now. Lost glory pretty well sums up the present situation and the situation since Napoleon’s defeat. The French have never accepted this and its politics are a story of striving for greatness without any lasting success. The many Republics and constitutions reveal a constant effort to rejig the national machine in stark contrast with the continuity and often ruthless purpose of the U. S. and Britain. Yet France stands as one of the most admired and envied countries in the world in terms of its culture, art and intellectual influence though Price never explores this interesting paradox though he does provide insight into the remarkable continuity of every day life, ascribing it to an ingrained conservatism that was at least partly a reaction against the upheaval of that seminal moment in French history, the revolution of 1789. The revolutionary spirit lives on in the political turmoil of the last 200 years, always balanced to some degree or another with the need for political order and civil discourse.

[Rob · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfair perhaps to review a book I didn't finish but this cannot be the best book on the subject - not by a long stretch. An intensely dull monograph shoehorned into textbook status by Cambridge University Press. The previous reviewer sounds pleased with himself but he's right that there has to be more to the history of a nation than grain yields.

[Brian Griffith · Rating 3 out of 5]

The account is well-balanced and highly objective, but it is a stream of description without stories. The realistic depiction of public issues is non-partisan and insightful, but it seems to tell a tale where “life is pain” more than “life is beautiful.”

[Nude Literária · Rating 2 out of 5]

Darei créditos onde deve-se dar: o livro contém muita informação e claramente o autor é um estudioso da sócio-política da França. Contudo, os elogios acabam por aí. Poucas vezes vi um livro tão pouco didático sobre um assunto. Para além de expectativas próprias, a premissa do livro é a de ele será pego por alguém interessado em dar seus primeiros passos. O livro não tem boas divisões, ele começa pela França da Revolução sem explicar muito o porquê (há uma linha de historiadores que diz que a França enquanto país contemporâneo só existe a partir da revolução) e ele navega somente pelas questões diplomáticas e de relações políticas, mas não entra em muito sobre origens, colônias, formação de cultura, nada.

[Noel Cisneros]

Price cumple con su cometido: una concisa historia de Francia —todo lo concisa que puede permitir la historia de un país como Francia—, para hacerlo no se circunscribe a la narración de las grandes gestas de los grandes prohombres, ni da por buena la historia patria de Francia que quiere mostrarse como una continuidad desde los galos pre conquista romana hasta la actualidad. No, ofrece una aproximación a los procesos socio-culturales que permitieron que una región —L'ile de France y París— se tornaran en el centro de lo que hoy conocemos como Francia y cómo han sido los procesos que han configurado a la sociedad francesa contomporánea.

[Thorunn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Öðruvísi saga Frakklands en ég er vön. Ekki bara um kóngana og stríðin þeirra, heldur saga samfélagsins og í seinni hlutanum saga stjórnmálanna. Dálítið mikil upptalning af mannanöfnum sem maður gat ekkert tengt við, en annars ágæt. Og dálítið of nákvæm stjórnmálasaga síðustu 50 ára.

En það sem mér fannst merkilegast var að þetta var ekkert svo ólíkt sögu Íslands. Endalausar hungursneiðir hjá almúganum af völdum uppskerubrests vegna kulda og jafnvel vegna eldgosa á Íslandi. Helsti munurinn var að í Frakklandi bættust stríðsátök bæði innanlands og vegna stríða við nágranna þjóðirnar við.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't agree with the choice of the title given the contents, but overall I learned a lot about specific parts of French history I doubt would be covered in a different French history book. The author is determined to present evidence for some very bold conclusions, such as the cause of violent and sudden political upheaval influenced heavily on agricultural output/results of each given year.

[Ethan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Packs a lot in, but of ourse leaves a lot out.
Would have liked more about the role the colonies played in French life, and more on the social impact of losing them.
A main take away is how consistently conservative and unequal France has been — the revolution of 1789, and those that followed — as passing anomaly rather than defining moment.
Kind of depressing, really.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roger Price’s “A Concise History of France” is less a history and more a social commentary. Price gives analysis of social/political events before actually describing the events themselves. If you are looking for an actual history of France, look elsewhere.

[James Meier · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely horrible history. Stab me in the face, it would be less painful than reading this. Such a tragedy, I love France and everything French

[CP · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good introduction to French history with a good balance between great man and societal economics.

[Melisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ömür törpüsü mübarek

[João Paulo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Um pouco focada demais em temas políticos

[Joao Paulo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Full of political comprehension of a certainly bigger history of a country and it’s formation.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid overview but very limited narrative to hang the facts and themes on. Would recommend in conjunction with other books on the same subject.

[Juan Mesa · Rating 2 out of 5]

... pareciera que Francia comenzó en la revolución francesa....

[Nil Codina]

No he acabat les últimes 50 pàgines. Només està bé per tenir a la prestatgeria si algun dia cau internet.

[Kristen Lee Vire]

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

[Alexus · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book may be interesting to someone who already knows French history fairly well, but is almost useless to one who doesn't, like myself. And most likely it will be people like myself who will want to read a book called "A Concise History of France". The author seemed more interested in writing an academic monograph than a general history. He discussed his views on the underlying causes of events in French history while hardly even mentioning the events themselves-and many were not mentioned at all!. So I learned about the crop yields and economies of different areas of medieval and early modern France, but I still have no idea what actually happened during those periods in France (other than that there was a revolution in the late 18th century, which I already knew). He discussed the views of various historians about causes of things like the French Revolution, which is baffling in a book for the general reader. We need to learn what *happened* in the French Revolution before it will matter or make any sense to us to talk debate about the underlying causes, let alone the historians associated with this or that theory or historical interpretation. I actually had to read articles on Wikipedia on various people and events as I read through this, because the author hardly said anything about them before he was off talking about agriculture, economy, and causes again. I'm sure the author is an excellent scholar, but as a general history, this just doesn't work. The Wikipedia articles were more informative to me.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this! Excellent composition. Socio-political history analysis. I love all things French! I have more homework to do. This is a great over veiw, I have a Revolution project in mind and plan to follow up with some more French history. Some how I philosophically got in bed with the French Feminist point of veiw, I am trying to figure out how I got over there! More French History to come! The Concise History series has plenty more titles. If you have wanted to understand a country's history, socio-political make-up I recomend this series. I was so excited for the Revolutions!

[Seth Westhoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

The premise of the author's teaching on history was unique and relevant. Price gave pertinent facts strung together with clear logic. This is a great work of an observation of France's history without interpretation. However halfway through the work it became more or less a political history and he seemed to deviate from his original design. Nevertheless it is a book I will recommend to others for a accurate, clear and concise view of history.

[Gwilym · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a concise history of France. Does exactly what it says on the tin. Overview and reference, fantastic!

[şenay izne ayrıldı]

popüler tarih kitaplarının neden popüler olduğunu anlıyorum. çünkü kolay okunuyorlar :))) bu kitap kolay okunmuyor. siyasal tarih kısmı biraz detaylı ve sıkıcı :(((