A powerful new history of the Great Strike in the miners’ own voices, based on more than 140 interviews with former miners and their familiesForty years ago, Arthur Scargill led the National Union of Mineworkers on one of the largest strikes in British history. A deep sense of pride existed within Britain’s mining communities who thought of themselves as the backbone of the nation’s economy. But they were vilified by Margaret Thatcher’s government and eventually br...

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 Honoré de Balzac, Robert Gild...

“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?...

'The empires of the future would be the empires of the mind' declared Churchill in 1943, envisaging universal empires living in peaceful harmony. Robert Gildea exposes instead the brutal realities of decolonisation and neo-colonialism which have shaped the postwar world. Even after the rush of French and British decolonisation in the 1960s, the strings of economic and military power too often remained in the hands of the former colonial powers. The more empire appears to have declined and ...

The period 1870 - 1914 in France saw the consolidation of republican government and the recovery of national self-confidence. Though political crises such as the Dreyfus Affair threatened to tear it apart, the Republic established firm parliamentary rule, built up an Empire and an army which was to see it through the Great War. The new edition of this key text - first published as The Third Republic From 1870 to 1914 - offers a clear introduction to the period and incorporates the...

The last fifty years of French history have seen immense challenges for the French: constructing a new European order, building a modern economy, searching for a stable political system. It has also been a time of anxiety and doubt. The French have had to come to terms with the legacy of the German Occupation, the loss of Empire, the political and social implications of the influx of foreign immigrants, the rise of Islam, the destruction of rural life, and the threat of Anglo-American cult...

This is a comprehensive survey of European history from the coup d'etat of Napoleon Bonaparte in France to the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo, which led to the First World War. It concentrates on the twin themes of revolution and nationalism, which often combined in the early part of the century but which increasingly became rival creeds. Going beyond traditional political and diplomatic history, the book incorporates the results of recent research on population moveme...

A startling and original view of the occupation of the French heartland, based on a new investigation of everyday life under Nazi ruleIn France, the German occupation is called simply the "dark years." There were only the "good French" who resisted and the "bad French" who collaborated. Marianne in Chains, a broad and provocative history, uncovers a rather different story, one in which the truth is more complex and humane.Drawing on previously unseen...

Robert Gildea presents an ambitious and wide-ranging but succinct history of France from 1945 to 2024, which seeks to provide a sympathetic understanding of the forces that have shaped a country that is so close to Britain and yet so different. This third edition, following the second in 2002 and first in 1996, takes into account twenty more years of French history, history writing, and changing historical approaches, notably in colonial history and gender history. France Since 1945

“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?...

The French Resistance has an iconic status in the struggle to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe, but its story is entangled in myths. Gaining a true understanding of the Resistance means recognizing how its image has been carefully curated through a combination of French politics and pride, ever since jubilant crowds celebrated Paris’s liberation in August 1944. Robert Gildea’s penetrating history of resistance in France during World War II sweeps aside “the French Resistance” of a thousand cl...

The last fifty years of French history have seen immense challenges for the French: constructing a new European order, building a modern economy, searching for a stable political system. It has also been a time of anxiety and doubt. The French have had to come to terms with the legacy of the German Occupation, the loss of Empire, the political and social implications of the influx of foreign immigrants, the rise of Islam, the destruction of rural life, and the threat of Anglo-American cult...