Writing History in the Third Republic

This book offers new insight to one of the most neglected periods of historiographical output: that of French historians between 1860 and 1914, a period often referred to as of positivistic historians or the ecole methodique. Having sought to assert their independence from Germanic influence by emphasising the French element in their work, historians in the period comprised between 1860 and 1914 sometimes described their approach as positivistic and maintained that this was a distinctively French method of studying history. This is a heightened concern with sources, with facts as basis for all true knowledge, and with truth itself were unifying elements of the historiography of those in the hiatus - in the gap - in what historians now call ecole methodique. Composed by Hippolyte Taine, Ernest Renan, Fustel de Coulanges, Gabriel Monod, Ernest Lavisse, Charles Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos, this ecole represented the most sophisticated theoretical considerations about history and a method for historical studies in French academia in the late nineteenth century. To examine whether or not it is legitimate to call these historians methodiques for their concern with method and if they do, in fact, form a coherent school of thought is the purpose of this work. Likewise, it is my purpose to reassess whether or not this school is legitimately to be seen as having emerged in the Third Republic in response to political developments of nineteenth-century France, or if the so-called pre-methodiques and methodiques share more in terms of philosophy of history and methodology than previously emphasized by scholars. Finally, this book contributes to the debate surrounding the role of history and its method, offering a counter-argument to postmodernist scholars while reassessing the contribution of twentieth century theorists of history to the history of historiography.