Robert Gildea's subject is less French history than French 'political culture'. His method eschews 'the theorising pretensions of the Marxist and the Annales schools' without 'reducing history to one senseless deed of violence after another', as he presumes (wrongly) Simon Schama to have done. Also to be avoided is Theodore Zeldin's pointilliste description of isolated individuals, moving through time and space like 'rogue electrons'. Following Keith Baker, Gildea means to study instead the 'set of discourses and practices' used by one community 'to articulate and enforce its claims against those of rival communities' and to define 'the identity and boundaries of the community to which they belong (or from which they are excluded)'.

LRB 4 August 1994 | PDF Download