The Société de l'histoire de France (SHF) ( English: ''Society of the History of France'') was established on 21 December 1833 at the instigation of the French minister of Public Instruction,

François Guizot François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (; 4 October 1787 – 12 September 1874) was a French historian, orator and Politician, statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics between the July Revolution, Revolution of 1830 and the Revoluti ...

, in order to contribute to the renewal of historical scholarship fuelled by a widespread interest in national history, typical of the

Romantic period Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...

. On 31 July 1851 it was approved by President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte as being of public interest. For over 175 years, the SHF has been one of the main forces in the publishing of texts and documents on French history. Many leading French historians of the 19th and 20th centuries have been elected to its annual presidency. Its field was initially limited to the period before

1789 Events January–March * January – Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès publishes the pamphlet '' What Is the Third Estate?'' ('), influential on the French Revolution. * January 7 – The 1788-89 United States presidential election ...

, but the SHF later absorbed the Société d'histoire contemporaine (1927). Its series of critical editions and its periodicals (''Bulletin'' and ''Annuaire'', combined since 1863 under the title ''Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société de l'histoire de France'' ABSHF) amount to over 500 volumes, containing considerable historical source material: mainly chronicles, memoirs, journals and letters, but also other documents such as financial or judicial records. A large proportion of all volumes published up to 1940 are now freely accessible online, through the digital library of the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

Gallica
and

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical charac ...

. The SHF gathers twice a year for a lecture on a historical subject and, on occasions, holds conferences for a wider audience. Membership is open to both professional historians and serious amateurs interested in supporting and taking part in the activities of the SHF. Among other resources, the SHF website provides the complete catalogue of publications (with links to all titles available for reading or buying online) and a general index of articles and documents published in the ''Annuaire-Bulletin'' from 1911 to the present. The Current President is

Claude Gauvard Claude Gauvard is a French historian and Middle Ages specialist. She has been the President of Société de l'histoire de France since 2009. Life She was an assistant at the University of Rouen in 1969, then at the Sorbonne in 1971. She is ...

References

* Charles-Olivier Carbonell, "La naissance de la Société de l'histoire de France", in ''ABSHF'' 1983-1984, pp. 111–27. *

Philippe Contamine Philippe Contamine (7 May 1932 – 26 January 2022) was a French historian of the Middle Ages who specialised in military history and the history of the nobility. Life Contamine was a president of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettr ...

, "La Société de l'histoire de France et son programme de travail de 1834 à 1851", in ''ABSHF'' 1987, pp. 135–43. *Françoise Hildesheimer, « Discours : Bulletin ou Annuaire, Annuaire et Bulletin, Annuaire-Bulletin enfin », in ''ABSHF'' 2007, pp. 3–15.

External links

SHF websiteFrench National Archives:
inventory of documents relating to the Société de l'histoire de France.
Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques
(French national commission for historical and scientific research, in charge of learned societies since 1834). Historians of France 1833 establishments in France {{France-org-stub

See also

References

External links