France

Historical research is never totally independent of the society in which it is carried out. The amount of work done, the directions of its curiosity, its underlying preoccupations, are strongly influenced by the intellectual and material circumstances that govern the historian's work. Contemporary history in France does not escape this determinism, and even the change it has recently undergone provides an illustration of this general proposition. Barely ten years ago contemporary history, and more particularly that of the years after the First World War, had been practically abandoned by historians to writers who addressed themselves to the general public, and we had good reason to denounce this state of affairs in an article entitled 'Plea for a Neglected Branch of History'.1 Today the situation has greatly changed and, at any rate in some sectors, glut is taking the place of shortage. Several works on the subject appear every month, or practically every month; some of them are very estimable, and a few actually contribute to revising our knowledge of the period. Looking to the future, the amount of work in progress presages a still more abundant harvest. The history of the most immediate past enjoys such prestige among young historians looking for subjects for their doctoral theses that to the extent that it is only a passing infatuation not based on considered knowledge of the period and its problems, it almost calls for restraint. The previous attitude of reserve towards contemporary history was chiefly based on the time-honoured tradition of mistrust of using the historian's tools too close to the event. An intelligible and legitimate loyalty to the principle that each man should stick to his trade lent substance to the view that history was marked off from journalism and contemporary political or occasional writing

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• The Climax of British Decolonization in Africa

  R F Holland, Robert Holland•European Decolonization 1918–1981•1985

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