Emile Chabal
Biographic Data
| ID | 1119645 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Emile Chabal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Emile |
| FAMILY NAME | Chabal |
| SIGNATURE | CHABAL E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2128-8878 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 28 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 36 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Insiders and Outsiders
The history of immigration has become a dynamic subfield of French history since the 1970s. We examine its origins in both academic and activist milieus, and we consider its development in relation to some of the most important civic debates that have animated the French public sphere. In particular, we explore how histories of immigration expose some of the central concerns of modern French history – about the boundaries of citizenship, the powe…
Le retour des idéologies
Observant la France depuis la Grande-Bretagne, l’historien est frappé par la permanence des idéologies politiques, la récurrence des crises politiques, la présidentialisation du régime et la centralité de la question des retraites
France’s Identity Crisis
While many other democracies in the world celebrate or simply tolerate public expressions of difference, France has traditionally remained hostile toward them in the name of republican universalism. The rise of identity politics in recent decades, however, has posed a serious challenge to this position. Today, France is torn between republican values that do not reflect the complexity of a multicultural society, and a global culture war that has …
The deluge
States of Ignorance
Much attention has been focused on how states produce knowledge about the people they govern; far less has been written about those aspects of society that states choose to keep obscure. This book makes an original contribution to understanding state ignorance by focusing on one of the most complex and contested social issues of our day: the governance of irregular migrants. Tracing the evolution of state monitoring and control of irregular migra…
Historical perspectives on the 2022 electoral cycle in France
This series of three essays explores the stakes and outcomes of the 2022 French electoral cycle. Written in real time, they call attention to several emerging trends in French politics, including the collapse of both the traditional political parties and the left–right divide, the dynamics of attraction and repulsion elicited by Macron’s personality, the far right’s ‘arrival’ as a mainstream party, and the cascading fractures that divide and weak…
Confronting the Past
The pandemic may have consigned historians to their homes, but this did not stop history from taking centre-stage in public debate. From falling statues to culture wars, history in all its forms has continued to be deployed by states, activists, prestigious institutions and grassroots organisations. As has always been the case, those who study history for a living have rarely played a prominent role in these debates. At best, historians have tend…
Nimisha Barton. Reproductive Citizens
In the 2000s, the global turn swept through modern French history, above all among scholars in the United States. In a post-Cold War context where Western Europe was no longer of great strategic interest, France and the French had to be made “global” to retain their relevance in a crowded disciplinary marketplace. Fortunately, it was easy to globalize the history of a nation that had once had a substantial overseas empire, was widely recognized a…
Between neo-liberalism and the nation
France’s 2022 electoral cycle suggests that the basic contours of French politics are in flux. This is largely because the traditional left-right spectrum proved increasingly incapable of structuring France’s political supply through the 1990s and 2000s. The result has been a reconfiguration of the political spectrum along a new quadripolar axis, in which political actors and voters position themselves along two spectrums: neoliberal-anti-neolibe…
Author’s response to reviews
France’s Long Reconstruction
To study modern Europe is, for better or for worse, to study the history of state formation. The story of how states emerged as unitary administrative entities and expanded into vast repositories of people, ideas and political power lies at the heart of modern European history. There was nothing inevitable about this process. Until at least the end of the nineteenth century, alternative models of sovereignty existed to compete with the national s…
Big data, small concepts
In this essay, we sketch out a method, histosophy, which makes possible the study of intellectual history and conceptual genealogy both in depth and over long periods of time. Histosophy uses digital tools to survey ‘large issues within small compasses.’ A genealogy of signifiers, it considers metonymic parts of a problem in order to contribute precisely and coherently to a larger perspective. We outline the theoretical contours of our approach. …
Eric Hobsbawm
By the time he died in 2012, Eric Hobsbawm was one of the best-known historians in the world. He had made signature contributions to a range of overlapping historical fields, from labour history to the history of nationalism. Hundreds of thousands of people across the world had read his books. And he had developed an unrivalled network of contacts in the Americas, western Europe and south Asia. Yet for all his fame, there is an astonishing paucit…
Historiadores do mundo, uni-vos! Eric Hobsbawm e o Grupo de Historiadores do Partido Comunista Britânico, 1946 - 1956
Como os historiadores se tornam historiadores? Alguns podem dizer que tudo o que é preciso é dedicação à proissão e um talento para ler fontes arquivísticas. Mas a realidade da proissão é bem mais complexa. Eric Hobsbawm - um dos historiadores mais famosos do século XX - é um exemplo perfeito disso. Sua jornada, de um brilhante estudante de doutorado para um nome conhecido globalmente, não foi inevitável; na verdade, esse percurso desenvolveu-se …
The Moral Economists
One of the most enduring questions in modern European political history is why Britain remained so resistant to Marxist and – later – Communist ideas. This is not what Marx and Engels predicted; th
Le capitalisme et ses critiques
Malgré une transformation en profondeur du paysage politique depuis les années 1980, les français restent particulièrement hostiles au libéralisme. Dans cet article, je tente d'élucider ce paradoxe en analysant une des formes d'antilibéralisme les plus connues : l'anticapitalisme de gauche. À travers quatre textes clés - Adieux au prolétariat (1980) d'André Gorz, « République et démocratie » (1989) de Régis Debray, Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme…
Whose France
Introduction
Scholars have, for some time now, warned of an impending crisis of French politics. Fragmentation, ideological reorientation and widespread voter dissatisfaction have altered the boundaries of the
At home in postwar France
At home in postwar France: modern mass housing and the right to comfort." Modern & Contemporary France, 24(4), pp. 454–455
From the banlieue to the burkini
It has become a truism now to say that history weighs heavily on political debate in France. From the endless, unfinished battles over Vichy to more recent struggles over the colonial past, the leg
The Agonies of Liberalism
It is striking the extent to which many liberals have seen themselves as figures on the margins of politics. This is partly an ideological issue. Of all the great ‘isms’ of the modern age, liberalism has had neither the historical certainty of the two great totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century, nor the reassuring hierarchical logic of conservatism. Most liberals have agonised about how much humans can achieve and have repeatedly stres…
French Political Culture in the 1970s
French politics in the 1970s is notoriously hard to decipher. The increasingly violent attacks on Gaullism and Communism, the decline in French geopolitical power, and the end of postwar economic growth led to unprecedented unease about the nation’s collective future. But rather than treat the 1970s as an endpoint, I argue in this article that the 1970s represented a new beginning. I explore how more modest conceptions of political action, the em…
Commemorating the Holocaust
Much of the historical literature on memory suffers from a tendency to over-generalise. Memory seems to reside everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The recent emergence of concepts such as ‘multi-directional memory’ has done little to clarify exactly what constitutes memory and how it works. Yet historians cannot ignore the term. Even sceptics must now take memory seriously, if only because it has become a major tool for states and social mov…
A Divided Republic Nation State and Citizenship in Contemporary France
This book is an original and sophisticated historical interpretation of contemporary French political culture. Until now, there have been few attempts to understand the political consequences of the profound geopolitical, intellectual and economic changes that France has undergone since the 1970s. However, Emile Chabal's detailed study shows how passionate debates over citizenship, immigration, colonial memory, the reform of the state and the his…
Muslims and Jews in France
It is often forgotten that France has the third largest Jewish community in the world after Israel and the USA. Of the 500,000 or so Jews living in France—a ban on ethnic statistics means we do not
From the banlieue to the burkini
It has become a truism now to say that history weighs heavily on political debate in France. From the endless, unfinished battles over Vichy to more recent struggles over the colonial past, the leg
French Political Culture in the 1970s
French politics in the 1970s is notoriously hard to decipher. The increasingly violent attacks on Gaullism and Communism, the decline in French geopolitical power, and the end of postwar economic growth led to unprecedented unease about the nation’s collective future. But rather than treat the 1970s as an endpoint, I argue in this article that the 1970s represented a new beginning. I explore how more modest conceptions of political action, the em…
Managing the Postcolony
Using the case study of Montpellier, this article explores the relationship between local political actors and postcolonial minorities since the end of the Algerian War – particularly, the city's pied-noir, harki, Moroccan and Jewish populations. It examines the discourses used to secure the electoral allegiances of these groups and the myriad ways in which they laid claim to certain civic and political spaces. It employs diverse oral, archival a…
Between neo-liberalism and the nation
France’s 2022 electoral cycle suggests that the basic contours of French politics are in flux. This is largely because the traditional left-right spectrum proved increasingly incapable of structuring France’s political supply through the 1990s and 2000s. The result has been a reconfiguration of the political spectrum along a new quadripolar axis, in which political actors and voters position themselves along two spectrums: neoliberal-anti-neolibe…
The Agonies of Liberalism
It is striking the extent to which many liberals have seen themselves as figures on the margins of politics. This is partly an ideological issue. Of all the great ‘isms’ of the modern age, liberalism has had neither the historical certainty of the two great totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century, nor the reassuring hierarchical logic of conservatism. Most liberals have agonised about how much humans can achieve and have repeatedly stres…
Writing the French National Narrative in the Twenty-First Century
With France currently in the midst of a fierce public debate over its identité nationale, now is a very appropriate time to revisit one of the most controversial questions in modern French history: the definition of the nation. Taking a wide range of French and foreign authors from a variety of disciplines, this article shows how debates around the national narrative in France have developed in the past twenty years, as the country's intellectual…
Eric Hobsbawm
By the time he died in 2012, Eric Hobsbawm was one of the best-known historians in the world. He had made signature contributions to a range of overlapping historical fields, from labour history to the history of nationalism. Hundreds of thousands of people across the world had read his books. And he had developed an unrivalled network of contacts in the Americas, western Europe and south Asia. Yet for all his fame, there is an astonishing paucit…
In the museum of man
Despite their best attempts to retreat to the safety of the ivory tower, academics are continuously engaging with their cultural and political context. This was particularly the case in the late ni
The Rise of the Anglo-Saxon
This article attempts to reconstruct a genealogy of one of the most ubiquitous terms in contemporary French politics: the Anglo-Saxon. It traces the emergence of the term in the second half of the nineteenth century and examines its numerous meanings through the twentieth century. Rather than assume that references to the Anglo-Saxon have been little more than straightforward forms of anti-Americanism or Anglophobia, it suggests that the term has…
Writing the French National Narrative in the Twenty-First Century
With France currently in the midst of a fierce public debate over its identité nationale, now is a very appropriate time to revisit one of the most controversial questions in modern French history: the definition of the nation. Taking a wide range of French and foreign authors from a variety of disciplines, this article shows how debates around the national narrative in France have developed in the past twenty years, as the country's intellectual…
Ruptures postcoloniales. Les nouveaux visages de la societe francaise
Journal Article Ruptures postcoloniales. Les nouveaux visages de la société française Get access Ruptures postcoloniales. Les nouveaux visages de la société française 2010 Edited by Nicolas Bancel, Florence Bernault, Pascal Blanchard, Ahmed Boubeker, AchilleMbembe and Françoise Vergès. Paris: La Découverte 539pp. €26.00 ISBN: 978 27071 5689> 1. Emile Chabal Emile Chabal Balliol College, Oxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Acad…
In the Shadow of the General
Journal Article In the Shadow of the General: Modern France and the Myth of de Gaulle Get access In the Shadow of the General: Modern France and the Myth of de Gaulle. By Sudhir Hazareesingh. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2012. xiv + 238 pp. £18.99. ISBN: 978 0 19 530888 4. Emile Chabal Emile Chabal St John’s College, Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar French History, Volume 27, Issue 2, June 201…
Le choix de la CEE par la France
Britain and France in two world wars
General Introduction: Robert Tombs Part I - The First World War Introduction: Gary Sheffield 1. Why Allies: Necessity or Folly? John Keiger 2. Sacrifice and Slaughter: Two Armies, Two Wars? William Philpott 3. The Push to Victory, 1918: The Allied Contributions, Elizabeth Greenhalgh Part II - The Second World War Introduction: Emile Chabal and Akhila Yechury 4. 1940: The French Army and the BEF, Martin Alexander 5. The British, the Free French, a…
The Rise of the Anglo-Saxon
This article attempts to reconstruct a genealogy of one of the most ubiquitous terms in contemporary French politics: the Anglo-Saxon. It traces the emergence of the term in the second half of the nineteenth century and examines its numerous meanings through the twentieth century. Rather than assume that references to the Anglo-Saxon have been little more than straightforward forms of anti-Americanism or Anglophobia, it suggests that the term has…
The Americanization of France
This is a perplexing—and often frustrating—book. Barnett Singer asks some very important questions about post-war French politics and culture, but the answers he gives are, at best, partial and, at worst, deeply problematic. Even more worryingly, he frequently fails to apply the most basic criteria of historical scholarship to his work: he treats sources uncritically, makes dubious generalisations based on anecdotal evidence, and indulges far too…
Les Gauches Francaises 1762-2012
This is not the first recent history of the French left. Jean Touchard published his La Gauche en France depuis 1900 in the late 1970s and Michel Winock followed with his La gauche en France in the mid-2000s. But neither of these two earlier volumes had the same ambitions as Jacques Julliard, who has painted his subject matter on a vast canvas, stretching back deep into the Enlightenment. The problem is, of course, that there was no such thing as…
Managing the Postcolony
Using the case study of Montpellier, this article explores the relationship between local political actors and postcolonial minorities since the end of the Algerian War – particularly, the city's pied-noir, harki, Moroccan and Jewish populations. It examines the discourses used to secure the electoral allegiances of these groups and the myriad ways in which they laid claim to certain civic and political spaces. It employs diverse oral, archival a…
In the museum of man
Despite their best attempts to retreat to the safety of the ivory tower, academics are continuously engaging with their cultural and political context. This was particularly the case in the late ni
A Divided Republic Nation State and Citizenship in Contemporary France
This book is an original and sophisticated historical interpretation of contemporary French political culture. Until now, there have been few attempts to understand the political consequences of the profound geopolitical, intellectual and economic changes that France has undergone since the 1970s. However, Emile Chabal's detailed study shows how passionate debates over citizenship, immigration, colonial memory, the reform of the state and the his…
Muslims and Jews in France
It is often forgotten that France has the third largest Jewish community in the world after Israel and the USA. Of the 500,000 or so Jews living in France—a ban on ethnic statistics means we do not
Culture et immigration
The French Republic
The French have a particular fondness for ‘encyclopaedias’ and ‘dictionaries’ of historical events. For the most part, these are aimed squarely at a student audience. Publishers know that they have a captive market in the army of lycéens revising for nationwide baccalauréat exams and (a rather smaller number of) students preparing grande école entrance exams or the dreaded agrégation. The target audience usually means that these books prioritise …
Whose France
Introduction
Scholars have, for some time now, warned of an impending crisis of French politics. Fragmentation, ideological reorientation and widespread voter dissatisfaction have altered the boundaries of the
At home in postwar France
At home in postwar France: modern mass housing and the right to comfort." Modern & Contemporary France, 24(4), pp. 454–455
From the banlieue to the burkini
It has become a truism now to say that history weighs heavily on political debate in France. From the endless, unfinished battles over Vichy to more recent struggles over the colonial past, the leg
The Agonies of Liberalism
It is striking the extent to which many liberals have seen themselves as figures on the margins of politics. This is partly an ideological issue. Of all the great ‘isms’ of the modern age, liberalism has had neither the historical certainty of the two great totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century, nor the reassuring hierarchical logic of conservatism. Most liberals have agonised about how much humans can achieve and have repeatedly stres…
French Political Culture in the 1970s
French politics in the 1970s is notoriously hard to decipher. The increasingly violent attacks on Gaullism and Communism, the decline in French geopolitical power, and the end of postwar economic growth led to unprecedented unease about the nation’s collective future. But rather than treat the 1970s as an endpoint, I argue in this article that the 1970s represented a new beginning. I explore how more modest conceptions of political action, the em…
Commemorating the Holocaust
Much of the historical literature on memory suffers from a tendency to over-generalise. Memory seems to reside everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The recent emergence of concepts such as ‘multi-directional memory’ has done little to clarify exactly what constitutes memory and how it works. Yet historians cannot ignore the term. Even sceptics must now take memory seriously, if only because it has become a major tool for states and social mov…
The Moral Economists
One of the most enduring questions in modern European political history is why Britain remained so resistant to Marxist and – later – Communist ideas. This is not what Marx and Engels predicted; th
Le capitalisme et ses critiques
Malgré une transformation en profondeur du paysage politique depuis les années 1980, les français restent particulièrement hostiles au libéralisme. Dans cet article, je tente d'élucider ce paradoxe en analysant une des formes d'antilibéralisme les plus connues : l'anticapitalisme de gauche. À travers quatre textes clés - Adieux au prolétariat (1980) d'André Gorz, « République et démocratie » (1989) de Régis Debray, Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme…
France’s Long Reconstruction
To study modern Europe is, for better or for worse, to study the history of state formation. The story of how states emerged as unitary administrative entities and expanded into vast repositories of people, ideas and political power lies at the heart of modern European history. There was nothing inevitable about this process. Until at least the end of the nineteenth century, alternative models of sovereignty existed to compete with the national s…
Big data, small concepts
In this essay, we sketch out a method, histosophy, which makes possible the study of intellectual history and conceptual genealogy both in depth and over long periods of time. Histosophy uses digital tools to survey ‘large issues within small compasses.’ A genealogy of signifiers, it considers metonymic parts of a problem in order to contribute precisely and coherently to a larger perspective. We outline the theoretical contours of our approach. …
Political science (29 works) · Law (22 works) · Sociology (22 works) · History (20 works) · Politics (19 works) · French Historical and Cultural Studies (14 works) · Law (13 works) · History (11 works) · Art (10 works) · European Political History Analysis (9 works)