#french political history

[bookloversofbath]

The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War :: Douglas Porch

[skf-fineart]

Guillotine earrings commemorating the execution of Louis XVI during France’s Reign of Terror, c. 1793

[theorahsart]

Me pretending to interview a guy who died 230 yrs ago just for a really silly comic

[davidaugust]

[czerwonykasztelanic]

En route to Charleroi

[blackswaneuroparedux]

For the average person, all problems date to World War II; for the more informed, to World War I; for the genuine historian, to the French Revolution.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

[enlitment]

I dont know if you already answered this question (I'm sorry if you did!) but, which JJ's book do you recommend for starters?

Hi, thank you for the ask. I don't think I've ever answered it publicly actually!

It depends entirely on what interests you:

1. The Social Contract/Du contrat social

-> start here if you want to pick up Rousseau because you're interested in the French Revolution/politics/political philosophy. It is probably his most famous work (along with Emile maybe)

It's surprisingly readable (and funny at times!), though if you expect a perfectly coherent and logical system, be prepared for disappointment. It also helps to know at least some basics (like the gist of Hobbes' or Locke's political philosophy), but don't worry if you don't, you're still understand most of it.

2. Letter to M. d'Alembert on Spectacles

-> start here if you want a genuinely fascinating insight into late 1700s misogyny. It's chilling how some of the arguments feel so contemporary. It's fairly short, and reads more like a ramble/angry twitter thread that just pulls you right in.

It's great to get your blood boiling, but not a great start if you want to like Rousseau. Oh, and if you read it alongside Confessions, the sheer level of cognitive disonance/denial it's simply delicious.

3. Confessions

-> start here if you want to learn about Rousseau's life. It won't necessarily give you the true facts, but it will offer you a fascinating insight into his mind.

It's one hell of a ride, but it's not all weird psychosexual wtf moments. You can learn a lot from it about what life was like in the 18th century, and about the (usually unspoken) social norms. One thing I loved was that it revealed how much power French women actually had in the society, though it wasn't immediately obvious.

Also, there are some passages in which he talks about his social anxiety and insecurities where I genuinely find myself sympathising with him.

I'm also sorry to say that I firmly believe that it's a fun read. It gets very, very frustrating at times, but the man could write.

4. Introducing Rousseau by Dave Robinson

-> Start here if you want a quick overview/something to hold onto before jumping straight in!

Yeah, it's an illustrated guide, it's a tiny book and it looks a bit daft, but I personally swear by it. It's a very quick and engaging read, but it represents his philosophy and his life fairly well from what I can tell.

Pictured here with my hand and the man himself:

Honourable Mentions:

5. Discourse on the Arts and Sciences -> start here if you want to start with a text that first made Rousseau famous/are keen to approach his works in a chronological order

6. Emile, or On Education -> I haven't read this one I'm afraid (though I now own it!), but it's one of his most influential works. If you're interested in the idea of childhood and education, this one's for you! (but prepare to be angry re: Education of Sophie I guess)

Hope this helps, and do let me know how you get on!

[empirearchives]

The keys to the city of Lyon, France. 1805.

Joseph Chinard drew the pieces and the goldsmith Antoine Saunier made them.

They are symbols of Lyon’s allegiance to Napoleon I, who lifted the city from its ashes after the French Revolution. They were created in 1805 on the occasion of the emperor’s visit to Lyon.

These three keys are works of art and do not materially open any door of the city. They symbolically represent the three divisions (north, west and south) that made up the city under the First Empire (1804-1814). Each is decorated with a symbol illustrating the specificity of the neighborhood.

They were made for the visit to Lyon on April 10, 1805, of Emperor Napoleon I and Empress Josephine. They are presented to him publicly, in front of a floor of politicians —whose names are engraved on the back of the dish — as a sign of allegiance and gratitude on the part of the city.

MHL - Musée d'Histoire de Lyon

[brick-van-dyke]

If there's one thing I've respectively noticed from Zionists and defenders of Israeli war crimes, it's that every source, argument and potential avenue to explore each explanation is riddled with cherry picking, moving the goalposts and mental gymnastics to explain why their conclusions, which typically are barely even related to the sources they use, somehow overshadow literal reality and what we see with our own eyes.

While scrolling, one example I came across was the repetitive misrepresentation of BLM, antifa and quotes from Martin Luther King Jr, as well as statistics, scholarly journal articles and government website information. These are all good sources, yet every single time they're mangled completely until the only possible "interpretation" of any of them is "well Israel is right to defend itself after shorting rockets beforehand because the retaliation was brutal and all Arabs are bad by default therefore". As if any of these sources are even about individual exceptions of Israel versus hatred towards Arabs.

I think what I find most absurd, as someone in the middle of their own studies, is how every bit of critical thinking and logic goes out the window as they do every single thing possible to do what professors worldwide say NOT to do when evaluating sources. It's like watching a race to see who can tangle and misconstrue scientific information to fit their world view the fastest. Then said people say "um actually I studied at university before so it's actually not wrong that I'm doing this exact this everyone is warned not to do because I have a permit". Ignorance I can forgive, but willful and arrogant manipulation? That's another thing entirely.

[frail-simulacra]

la chinoise!(1967)

[cadmusfly]

The One Time Marshal Soult Called Thiers A Little Pissant And Then It Got Into A Dictionary

Happy birthday, you grumpy asshole curmudgeon military man who I'd probably hate if I lived at the same time as you (for I am a modern day leftist) but with the distance of time I'm utterly fascinated by what is wrong with you! I'll post a weird drawing/animation of you later probably.

So I've been perusing a 1870s biography of Soult written by someone who met him with the help of very dodgy AI machine translation, getting through a chapter or two per night, and I got to this chapter called

So that translates to "A WORD ABOUT A WORD". It's about 500 words long, not a long chapter, but I laughed so hard when I discovered it's entirely and literally about one word.

And the worst part is that the author refuses to write what the word actually is.

On the occasion of dissent, real or supposed, which had determined Marshal Soult to leave the Ministry, the press hastened to indulge in the most hazardous conjectures. According to some, Mr. Thiers and his adversary had come to the most lively explanations, the most personal recriminations, the most incisive reproaches; according to others, everything would have been limited to a single word from the mouth of the old soldier, a word to which his young opponent would not have known how to respond. This word is not that of Cambronne, but it is of an origin just as abject. Therefore, I will not write it. Its origin is linked to a low phrase, whose root is a verb not listed in the dictionary, and which has very little time. In the present indicative it serves to say: I don't care; in the future: I will put my hand on your face; in the infinitive it is only a swear word; in the past participle it energetically replaces an adjective always expressing an idea of loss, or a feeling of bad mood. This word is familiar, trivial, dirty, common, vulgar; and if, for some time, it has been introduced into conversation, it is with the help of a Germanic ending which almost completely distorts it.

More quotation from the chapter under the cut, as well as what the word actually is.

Was this word, in the beginning, Romance, Gallic or French? One could easily attribute this first character to it, if one paid attention to the quantity of applications that have come from it. Thus, with a completely patois ending, it means simpleton, dullard, deceived husband, etc.; welded to a very respectable first name, since it appears twice each year among the saints of the Gregorian Calendar, it becomes French and applies to a man who deceives, by not keeping his promise; finally in the southern countries where the Romance language is still spoken, it produces an epithet very accurate by its expression, but very difficult to define in any other language. This very euphonic epithet, very easy to pronounce, very expressive in its meaning, applies to any individual endowed with a certain natural wit, but using it badly, always talking a lot, but often saying very little, not fearing difficulties, but creating them, calling for the help of others, but hindering them in their exercise by a multitude of objections, having more thoughtlessness than malice, more malice than wickedness; this spirit denotes a man always ready to have his say on any question, penetrating enough to grasp its form whatever it may be, except sometimes to make light of the substance; not very moral, moreover, that is to say not attaching his feelings, his ideas, his conduct to any superior belief, to any religious dogma, to any philosophical principle; this is the developed explanation of this word attributed to Marshal Soult, and which he obviously never pronounced with the spelling and accent that disfigure it, if tradition is to be believed. Indeed, he would never have substituted the letter r, inappropriately inserted in the second syllable, for the letter s, which ends the second syllable; above all, he would never have given the French sound to the final vowel, he who was so accustomed to expressing another sound quite particular to the patois idiom.

(1) Here, moreover, as to the authenticity of the word attributed to the Marshal, is how tradition tends to establish it. We read in fact in a newspaper of September 13, 1869: "It was told, last night, in a circle where one likes to politicize between two cigars, that, under the July government, when a fiery Marshal of France treated Mr. Thiers as a 'little f.... iquet', Mrs. Dosne asked, the same day, to the statesman, her son-in-law: -- 'Well! what do you intend to do?' -- 'That's fine! but.... revenge? What do you want me to do to that animal? He is Marshal, Duke and Peer of France; he has everything he could dream of and even more....' -- 'Well! write the history of the conquest of Algeria, and don't put his name in it once: he will burst with spite! ' Did Mr. Thiers ever begin this history-vendetta?"

It took me a little bit to find out what the word was with all this word charades and me not knowing French, but I found it in the end:

"foutriquet"

I don't need to speak french to know what that second definition is referring to. And that second screenshot is from a French dictionary website, so this word is in the dictionary, take that, biographer writer who also trips balls about Soult's daughter!

Wiktionary claims it means "weedy man", which is also very funny. I'm guessing that it used to be a much ruder word but now probably just sounds quaint/historical/dated. I'm curious about the "s" form that the author alludes to, it seems that might have been supplanted by Soult's usage of the word.

Anyway yeah, I'm still cracking up that Soult dunked on Thiers so hard it ended up in a dictionary. Happy birthday you fuckin asshole, I might bake a cake in your honour or something.

[sprites4ever]

Extremely hard to swallow pills for the Western far Left:

The only reason Latin and Southern American countries can act like they're the victims of oh-so-evil US imperialism is because the native owners of those countries are all dead. The US American people are descendants of British colonists. Latin and Southern American peoples are descendants of Spanish colonists. The Spanish were far more thorough in their eradication of Natives, hence none of them protesting this misuse of a victim role.

The idea that imperialism and racism are bad was not invented by Brits, but it was popularized in the Western world by Brits.

Socialism was invented by Germans and Brits.

The French revolution may have been a bloody act of democracy, but didn't work. Napoleon and his Grande Armee used the chaos to declare themselves Emperor.

The Soviet Union was not a victim of capitalism, but collapsed because Communism does not work. It was also corrupt beyond belief, and its collapse has led to ex-Soviet countries, especially russia, becoming even more capitalist than before the establishment of the Soviet Union.

The People's Republic of China is less Chinese than the Republic of China aka Taiwan. The PRC was established in 1949 by Mao Zedong and his Chinese Communist Party, and Chinese nationalists fled to the island of Taiwan, establishing an exile government. They are the same people with the same culture, but mainland China is arguably less Chinese, because the CCP constantly revise historical records to suit their propaganda.

[mx-loar-tev]

I wonder what my great-grandparents would think if they could see what's going on in France right now. You know, actual adults that lived through the Nazi Occupation.

My grand-parents were real young back then. My grandma told me about the bombs and hiding in the basement, about starving and how a single egg for dinner felt like a treat. But she also said she was so young she didn't realise back then how bad things were.

It was different for my great-grandparents. My great-grandmas struggled alone to keep their kids alive. One of my great-grandpa's was a POW. Another was a resistant and was executed by the nazis, leaving a widow and four very young kids. He wasn't even French, he was an immigrant and died for his country of adoption.

What would they think if they could see their country fall back into the hands of fascists?

I think they would weep. I certainly do.

Why can't people remember History?

[theorahsart]

Incorruptible pt 32

If you didn't know where the terms 'left wing' and 'right wing' come from...now you know! Also, can you spot the Robespierres in these pages? lol

[weedle-testaburger]

i kinda find it really fucking gross how tankies will act like they're such huge allies to lgbtq people ackshully. because as we all know dictatorial so-called communist states were and are so tolerant of queer people protesting their rights

[unhinged-arsonist]

I miss the good ol' days when we could chop off corrupt rulers' heads to solve political problems. It was like enrichment for the working class.