Sensing, Measuring, Writing: On Recent French Historiography of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay surveys recent francophone historiography of the Nineteenth Century. It focussed on three areas of research in particular: the french tradition of l’histoire des sensibilités; historical works that grapple with time, space, and scales of analysis; and the poetics of writing history in dialogue with literature. In each of these areas, the essay finds evidence of innovative and creative scholarship that is changing our understanding of nineteenth-century France and the French empire.