Jacques Godechot

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Jacques Léon Godechot (born January 3, 1907 in Lunéville , † August 24, 1989 in Hèches ) was a French historian who dealt with the era of the French Revolution .

life and work

Godechot came from a Jewish family in Lorraine and studied history in Nancy and Paris with the Agrégation in 1928. He began his dissertation in Paris with Albert Mathiez and was able to research from 1930 to 1933 in various archives in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy. In 1934 he taught at the Lycée Kléber in Strasbourg and stayed in contact with the university there, where he met Marc Bloch . In October 1935 Godechot took over a professorship for naval history at the Naval Academy in Brest.

After Mathiez's death in 1932, Godechot had continued work on his dissertation ( Les Commissaires aux armées sous le Directoire ) under the guidance of Philippe Sagnac . He received his doctorate in 1937 and awarded for his dissertation in February 1938 by a jury under Georges Lefèbvre . He was reactivated as a reserve officer in 1939. Persecuted as a Jew under the Vichy regime , he fled to Versailles with his family in 1942 . After the liberation he took over a professorship at the University of Toulouse in April 1945 . From 1961 to 1971 he was dean of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Toulouse-Le Mirail. He died in 1989 in the year of the bicentenary of the French Revolution, which he was still helping to prepare.

Godechot was a representative of Atlantic History and expanded the view of the French Revolution to include transatlantic aspects. He worked with the founder of Atlantic History in the USA, RR Palmer (joint lecture, International Congress of Historians Rome 1955). With Palmer he tried to classify the French Revolution in a total age of revolutions in Europe and America from 1770 to 1850. While this thesis met with great echo in the USA, Belgium, Great Britain and Italy, it met with in France, where the revolution was the basis Republic was considered and Franco-centric viewpoints were prevalent, rejected during the Cold War in the 1950s and was also criticized by Marxist historians. At that time Godechot was even accused of working for NATO and the CIA . Other historians like Pierre Renouvin saw a common revolutionary currents due to the very different social structures z. B. in America and France as not given. Among the French historians of the French Revolution, Godechot was one of the best networked internationally due to the positive reception of the transatlantic theses on the revolution abroad.

Godechot tried to get closer to Marxist historians of the revolution such as Albert Soboul , which was rewarded in 1959 by his appointment as vice-president of the Société des études robespierristes, which publish the Annales historiques de la Révolution française .

Fonts

  • Histoire de l'Atlantique. Bordas, Paris 1947.
  • Les institutions de la France sous la Révolution et l'émpire. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1951.
  • Histoire de Malte . Presses universitaires de France, Paris 1952.
  • with RR Palmer: The problem of the Atlantique du XVIIIième au XXième siècle. Comitato internazionale di scienze storiche. X8 Congresso internazionale di Scienze storiche, Rome, 4. – 11. September 1955. Relazioni 5 (Storia contemporanea). Florence 1955, pp. 175-239.
  • La grande nation: l'expansion révolutionnaire de la France dans le monde de 1789 à 1799. Aubier, Paris 1956.
  • La contre-révolution: doctrine et action, 1789-1804. Presses universitaires de France, Paris 1961. (2nd edition. 1984) (English translation The counter-revolution: doctrine and action, 1789–1804. 1971).
  • La pensée révolutionnaire en France et en Europe, 1780–1799. A. Colin, Paris 1963.
  • L'Europe et l'Amérique à l'époque napoléonienne (1800-1815). Presses universitaires de France, Paris 1967.
  • La prize de la Bastille 14 juillet 1789. Gallimard, Paris 1965. (English translation The taking of the Bastille, July 14th, 1789. 1970)
  • Les Révolutions, 1770-1799. Presses universitaires de France, Paris 1963, 1986. (English translation France and the Atlantic revolution of the eighteenth century, 1770–1799. 1965)
  • with Beatrice Fry Hyslop and David L. Dowd: The Napoleonic era in Europe. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York 1971.
  • Un jury pour la revolution. Laffont, Paris 1974. (Analysis of the attitude of 40 writers to the revolution)
  • La vie quotidienne sous la Directoire. 1977 ( La vie quotidienne ).
  • Editor of Madame de Staël : Considérations sur la Révolution française.

literature

  • Claude Petitfrère: Jacques Godechot (1907-1989). In: Annales historiques de la Révolution française. 281: 308-317 (1990). ( online )

Web links


personal data
SURNAME Godechot, Jacques
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Godechot, Jacques Léon (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French historian
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Luneville
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 1989
Place of death Hèches