François Bédarida, (14 March 1926 – 16 September 2001) was a French academic historian. His work centred on

Victorian England In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. Slightly different definitions are sometimes used. The era followed th ...

and

France during World War II History of France, France was one of the largest military powers to come under occupation as part of the Western Front (World War II), Western Front in World War II. The Western Front was a military theatre of World War II encompassing Denmark, ...

. He made significant research contributions to the study of

The Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

. He was a director of the Maison française in Oxford among other leadership roles.

Life

François Bédarida was born on 14 March 1926 in

Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

, into a family of Catholic intellectuals. His father, Henri Bédarida, was a specialist in Italian studies and professor at the Sorbonne. François attended the

Lycée Montaigne (Paris) The Lycée Montaigne is a French public secondary school. It is located in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, near the Jardin du Luxembourg, and was founded in the 1880s. During World War II, the Nazis had a bunker built under the school. The sch ...

, the

Lycée Louis-le-Grand The Lycée Louis-le-Grand (), also referred to simply as Louis-le-Grand or by its acronym LLG, is a public Lycée (French secondary school, also known as sixth form college) located on Rue Saint-Jacques (Paris), rue Saint-Jacques in central Par ...

and the

Lycée Henri-IV The Lycée Henri-IV () is a public secondary school located in Paris. Along with the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, it is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious and demanding sixth-form colleges ('' lycées'') in France. The school educates more ...

where he was deemed a brilliant student. He died on 16 September 2001 in

Fontaine-le-Port Fontaine-le-Port () is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. Demographics Fontaine-le-Port has a population of approximately 800. Inhabitants of Fontaine-le-Port are called ''Portifonta ...

French Resistance

During the

Occupation of France The Military Administration in France (; ) was an Military Administration (Nazi Germany), interim occupation authority established by Nazi Germany during World War II to administer the occupied zone in areas of northern and western French Third ...

, his father gave sanctuary to the Catholic priest,

Pierre Chaillet Pierre Chaillet (1900–1972) was a French Catholic priest of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), who was recognised as Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem for his work to protect Jews from the Nazi Holocaust.Jewish Rescue Operations in Belgium and France
by Lucien Steinberg, published by

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem (; ) is Israel's official memorial institution to the victims of Holocaust, the Holocaust known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (). It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; echoing the stories of the ...

The youthful Bédarida was actively involved in the

French Resistance The French Resistance ( ) was a collection of groups that fought the German military administration in occupied France during World War II, Nazi occupation and the Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy#France, collaborationist Vic ...

and joined the Christian Témoignage chrétien movement where he met his future wife, Renée Bédarida.

Academic career

In 1946 he resumed his education and entered the

École normale supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...

in Paris and in 1949 graduated in History after a brief stint teaching at the Lycée Thiers in

Marseille Marseille (; ; see #Name, below) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Bouches-du-Rhône and of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region. Situated in the ...

. His doctoral thesis was on the Catholic population in London at the end of the 19th-century. François Bédarida then left for

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

to teach and carry out research at the

French Institute The ; ) is a French learned society, grouping five , including the . It was established in 1795 at the direction of the National Convention. Located on the Quai de Conti in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, the institute manages approximately ...

during 1950-1956. In 1956 on his return to France, he became an associate of the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...

(1956-1959). Then followed a period of five years as

assistant professor Assistant professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States, Canada, Japan, and South Korea. Overview This position is generally taken after earning a doct ...

in modern and contemporary history at the Sorbonne. In 1966 he was appointed head of the Maison Française in Oxford, whose first permanent home he launched and opened in the presence of French Culture Minister,

André Malraux Georges André Malraux ( ; ; 3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976) was a French novelist, art theorist, and minister of cultural affairs. Malraux's novel ''La Condition Humaine'' (''Man's Fate'') (1933) won the Prix Goncourt. He was appointed ...

. Between 1971 and 1978 he was master of conferences at the

Institut d'etudes politiques de Paris An institute is an organizational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes ca ...

. He became Director of research at the CNRS in 1979. He was a founder and first director of the Institut d'histoire du temps présent, from 1978 to 1990, and between 1990 and 2000 he held the post of General Secretary of the

International Committee of Historical Sciences The International Committee of Historical Sciences / Comité international des Sciences historiques (ICHS / CISH) is the international association of historical scholarship. It was established as a non-governmental organization in Geneva on May 1 ...

(ICHS/CIHS).

Historian of Victorian England and France under Vichy

François Bédarida's first studies were into Victorian England. Notable among his work was a study of

Will Thorne William James Thorne CBE (8 October 1857 – 2 January 1946) was a British trade unionist, activist and one of the first Labour Members of Parliament. Early years Thorne was born in Hockley, Birmingham, on 8 October 1857. His father and ot ...

. In the 1970s he changed tack and researched

Vichy France Vichy France (; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was a French rump state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II, established as a result of the French capitulation after the Battle of France, ...

and its antidemocratic political philosophy. Beside the work of the American historian, Robert Paxton among a few others, he exposed the nature and ideology of the régime of Pétain. Prior to that, for thirty years the Vichy administration was seen merely as an adjunct of the

Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

. He thereby locked into the two responsibilities of the historian in relation to that particular period, to perpetuate the role of the Resistance movement, and to establish scientifically the truth about events in order to avoid the creation of myths about that time. He collaborated with several authors in a number of publications on

, notably with Jean-Pierre Azéma and his own wife, Renée Bédarida.

Selected works

in French: * ''La Grande-Bretagne - L'Angleterre triomphante (1832-1914)'', Hatier, coll. « Histoire Contemporaine », Paris, 1974 * * ''Syndicats et patrons en Grande-Bretagne'' (with Éric Giuily and Gérard Rameix). Éditions de l'Atelier, 1980 * * ''La Politique nazie d'extermination'', Albin Michel, Paris, 1989 * ''La Société anglaise du milieu du 19è siècle à nos jours (1851-1975)'', Seuil, Paris, 1990 * ''Le Nazisme et le génocide – Histoire et enjeux'', Nathan, Paris, 1991 * ''Le Nazisme et le génocide – Histoire et témoignage'', Pocket, Paris, 1992 * ''Le régime de Vichy et les Français'', 1992 (with Jean-Pierre Azéma) * ''La France des années noires'', Azéma, Jean-Pierre and Bédarida, François (eds.) 2 vol., Paris, Seuil, 1993 ééd. Seuil, 2000 (Points Histoire)* * ''L'Histoire et le métier d'historien en France 1945-1995'', Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, Paris, 1995 * ''Churchill'', Fayard, Paris, 1999, * ''Histoire, critique et responsabilité'', IHTP-CNRS/Complexe, coll. « Histoire du temps présent », Paris/Bruxelles, 2003 * Preface to ''Les Témoins de Jéhovah face à Hitler'' by Guy Canonici Éditions Albin Michel S.A. 1998 * in English: * * ''A social history of England, 1851–1990'', Routledge, 1991, , in Spanish: * Bédarida, François (1998)
"Definición, método y práctica de la Historia del Tiempo Presente"
Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea 20:19-27.

Awards

* Honorary MA from the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

1966 * Prix Mémoire de la Shoah 1992 *

Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and civil. Currently consisting of five classes, it was o ...

* Officier du Mérite (1999) * Prix de la Fondation Pierre-Lafue, 2000

Legacy

The collected papers of François Bédarida are stored at the Archives nationales, on the site of

Pierrefitte-sur-Seine Pierrefitte-sur-Seine (, ) is a former commune in the Seine-Saint-Denis department and Île-de-France region of France, since 2025 a part of Saint-Denis, following a vote of both municipal councils on 30 May 2024. It forms part of the northern ...

, under code 673AP

Notes and references

External links

Bédarida's authorship and citations
on the Persée portal (in French)
tribute to François Bédarida in English

inventaire du fonds, archival catalogue
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bedarida, Francois 1926 births 2001 deaths 20th-century French historians 20th-century French male writers 20th-century French non-fiction writers 20th-century French linguists Writers from Paris French Resistance members French Roman Catholic writers Lycée Louis-le-Grand alumni École Normale Supérieure alumni French male writers Anti-German sentiment Historians of the British Isles Historians of England Historians of fascism Historians of Nazism Historians of Vichy France French historians of World War II Social historians Writers on antisemitism Scholars of antisemitism Recipients of the Ordre national du Mérite Research directors of the French National Centre for Scientific Research