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Jean-Clément Martin (), born on 31 January 1948, is a French historian, a specialist in the French Revolution, Counter-revolution and the
War in the Vendée The War in the Vendée () was a counter-revolutionary insurrection that took place in the Vendée region of French First Republic, France from 1793 to 1796, during the French Revolution. The Vendée is a coastal region, located immediately so ...
.


Biography

Jean-Clément Martin was a pupil of
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie Emmanuel Bernard Le Roy Ladurie (, 19 July 1929 – 22 November 2023) was a French historian whose work was mainly focused upon Languedoc in the ''Ancien Régime'', particularly the history of the peasantry. One of the leading historians of Franc ...
. From 2000 to 2008 he was the director of the Institute for the history of the French Revolution, a center of academic research and teaching, connected to Pantheon-Sorbonne University. Since then he is professor emeritus. He studied the
Vendée Vendée () is a department in the Pays de la Loire region in Western France, on the Atlantic coast. In 2019, it had a population of 685,442.memory space". For some years his research has focused on understanding violence, the contribution of
gender history Gender history is a sub-field of history and gender studies, which looks at the past from the perspective of gender. It is in many ways, an outgrowth of women's history. The discipline considers in what ways historical events and periodization im ...
and the role of
religion Religion is a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...
and religiosity in the revolutionary process. He is opposed to considering the operations ordered in Vendée by the convention (whether the infernal columns, or the drownings of Nantes) as
genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...
. In his opinion, "there were
war crimes A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hos ...
and abominable battles, it is clear, but in no case a genocide". In 2016, he categorically denies (calling it "sacrificial"), the interpretation of the ''
Marseillaise "La Marseillaise" is the national anthem of France. It was written in 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in Strasbourg after the declaration of war by the First French Republic against Austria, and was originally titled "". The French Nati ...
'' that "qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!" (Let an impure blood water our furrows!) means in truth that the Fédérés of 1792 were proud to pour their own blood for their homeland.


Contribution to the history of the French Revolution

In particular, he studies the Vendée as a
lieu de mémoire A (French for "site of memory" or memory space) is a physical place or object which acts as container of memory. They are thus a form of memorialisation related to collective memory, stating that certain places, objects or events can have special ...
. In recent years, his research has focused on understanding violence, the contribution of
gender history Gender history is a sub-field of history and gender studies, which looks at the past from the perspective of gender. It is in many ways, an outgrowth of women's history. The discipline considers in what ways historical events and periodization im ...
and the role of
religion Religion is a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...
and
religiosity The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' defines religiosity as: "Religiousness; religious feeling or belief. ..Affected or excessive religiousness". Different scholars have seen this concept as broadly about religious orientations and degrees of inv ...
in the revolutionary process. He refuses to consider the operations ordered in Vendée by the
National Convention The National Convention () was the constituent assembly of the Kingdom of France for one day and the French First Republic for its first three years during the French Revolution, following the two-year National Constituent Assembly and the ...
, whether the
infernal columns The infernal columns () were operations led by the French Revolutionary general Louis Marie Turreau in the War in the Vendée, after the failure of the Royalist Virée de Galerne. Following the passage on 1 August 1793 and 1 October 1793 by ...
or the
drownings at Nantes The drownings at Nantes () were a series of mass executions by drowning during the Reign of Terror in Nantes, France, that occurred between November 1793 and February 1794. During this period, anyone arrested and jailed for not consistently sup ...
, as
genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...
. For him, "there were
war crimes A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hos ...
and abominable battles, that's clear, but in no way genocide" during the Vendée wars, the French Revolution having been an episode of
civil war A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
with all that that means in terms of a vacuum of State, competition for power and an explosion of violence2. A purely political reading of the episode cannot therefore account for this dimension, which is linked not to a particular ideology but to an institutional, political and social mechanism that is encountered in other circumstances.


Works

* ''Vendée-Chouannerie'', Nantes, Éditions Reflets du passé, 1981 . * ''Blancs et Bleus dans la Vendée déchirée'', coll. «
Découvertes Gallimard (, ; in United Kingdom: ''New Horizons'', in United States: ''Abrams Discoveries'') is an Collection (publishing), editorial collection of Book illustration, illustrated monographic books published by the Éditions Gallimard in Pocket edition, ...
, 1986 . * ''La Vendée et la France, 1789-1799'', Éditions du Seuil, 1987 . * ''La Vendée de la Mémoire, 1800-1980'', Éditions du Seuil, 1989 . * ''La Loire-Atlantique dans la tourmente révolutionnaire'', Éditions Reflets du Passé, 1989. * ''Le Massacre des Lucs, Vendée 1794'' (en collaboration avec Xavier Lardière), Geste Éditions, La Crèche, 1992. * ''Une région nommée Vendée, entre politique et mémoire'', Éditions Geste, 1996 . * ''La Révolution française, étapes, bilans et conséquences'', Éditions du Seuil, collection Mémo, 1996 . * ''La Vendée en 30 questions'', Geste Éditions, La Crèche, 1996. * ''Contre-Révolution, Révolution et Nation en France, 1789-1799'', Éditions du Seuil, 1998 . * ''Le Puy du Fou en Vendée, l'Histoire mise en scène'' (en collaboration avec Charles Suaud), L'Harmattan, 2000 . * ''La Guerre de Vendée'', Éditions Geste, 2001 . * ''La contre-révolution en Europe siècles. Réalités politiques et sociales, résonances culturelles et idéologiques'' (ouvrage collectif), Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2001 . * ''La Révolution française, 1789-1799'', Éditions Belin, 2003 * ''Violence et Révolution. Essai sur la naissance d'un mythe national'', Éditions du Seuil, 2006
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* ''Loire-Atlantique. Balades aériennes'' (en collaboration avec Michel Bernard), Patrimoines Medias, 2006 . * ''Comtesse de Bohm, prisonnière sous la terreur. Les prisons parisiennes en 1793'', Éditions Cosmopole, 2006 . * ''La Vendée et la Révolution. Accepter la mémoire pour écrire l'histoire'', Perrin, collection Tempus, 2007
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* ''La Révolution française'', Éditions Le Cavalier bleu, collection Idées reçues, 2008 . * ''La révolte brisée, femmes et hommes dans la Révolution française et l'Empire (1770-1820)'', Armand Colin, 2008 . * ''La Terreur. Part maudite de la Révolution'', Gallimard, coll. «
Découvertes Gallimard (, ; in United Kingdom: ''New Horizons'', in United States: ''Abrams Discoveries'') is an Collection (publishing), editorial collection of Book illustration, illustrated monographic books published by the Éditions Gallimard in Pocket edition, ...
, 2010 . * ''Marie-Antoinette'', coauteur Cécile Berly, Citadelles-Mazenod, 2010, . * ''La machine à fantasmes. Relire l'histoire de la Révolution française'', Vendémiaire, . * Édition critique de ''Peut-on prouver l'existence de Napoléon ?'', de Richard Whately, Vendémiaire*, 2012. * ''Nouvelle Histoire de la Révolution française'', Perrin, 2012. * ''Un détail inutile ? Le dossier des peaux tannées. Vendée, 1794'', Vendémiaire, 2013, . * ''La Guerre de Vendée, 1793-1800, ''Points-Seuil, 2014 . * ''La Machine à fantasme, Relire l'histoire de la Révolution française, ''Vendémiaire, Rééd. poche, augmentée, 2014. * with Laurent Turcot ''Au cœur de la Révolution, les leçons d'histoire d'un jeu vidéo'', Paris, Vendémiaire, 2015. . * ''Robespierre, la fabrication d'un monstre'', Perrin, 2016, 368 pages. * ''La Terreur. Vérités et légendes'', Perrin, 2017, 238 pages. * ''Les Echos de la Terreur. Vérités d'un mensonge d'Etat, 1794-2018'', Belin, 2018, 316 p., 9782410002065 *''Camisards et Vendéens. Deux guerres françaises, deux mémoires vivantes,'' with Philippe Joutard, Nîmes, Alcide éditions, 2018, 144 p.


See also

*
Historiography of the French Revolution The historiography of the French Revolution stretches back over two hundred years. Contemporary and 19th-century writings on the Revolution were mainly divided along ideological lines, with conservative historians condemning the Revolution, lib ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Martin, Jean-Clément 1948 births Historians of France 20th-century French historians Historians of the French Revolution Historiographers Living people French male writers 20th-century French people 21st-century French historians