Uses of the Past in Education: Receptions of Antiquity by the Cercle Fustel de Coulanges during the Vichy Regime (1940-1944)

Abstract

The present project aims to study the uses of the past in the teaching of history by the French reactionary movement Cercle Fustel de Coulanges, a group institutionally and ideologically very close to Action Française. From its quarterly publication, Les Cahiers Du Cercle Fustel de Coulanges, focusing on 1941 to 1944, it will be possible to understand how the history of the transition between Antiquity and the Middle Ages was mobilized in the group's pedagogical project. However, the documentation is not available online and, therefore, the applicant will undertake a 4-month internship at the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, under the supervision of Dr. Laurent Olivier, Curator General of Heritage and responsible for the collections of Celtic and Gallic archaeology. The initial hypothesis of the research is that this educational undertaking by the Cercle was due to the active reception of the figure and works of the nineteenth-century historian Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, more precisely his work Histoire des Instituitions de l'ancienne France. Based on this text, the CFC defended the non-existence of any Germanic influence in the formation of feudal French society, since Gallo-Roman customs and institutions had been consolidated. It would be viable, thus, to defend an ethnic-cultural continuum between Gallic society, the Frankish Monarchy, and Modern France. The documents will be analyzed, from a theoretical point of view, based on the combination of contributions from the Uses of the Past and the Theory of Reception.