126,492 research outputs found
Caste, class and profession in old regime France: the French army and the Ségur reform of 1781
No full textFirst published in French in 1974, David D. Bien’s essay on the nature of nobility in old regime France pivoted around the 1781 “Ségur regulation” that required four generations of nobility for most officers entering the army. Once seen as a classic manifestation of the so-called “aristocratic reaction” against commoners, the loi Ségur, in Bien’s deft analysis, instead emerges as a telling sign of tensions within an increasingly divided nobility. While exploding crude myths about class conflict and its causative role in the Revolution, Bien mounts a strong case for viewing eighteenth-century social tensions as the product of professional identity as much as social class. This study is presented here for the first time in English with a short preface by Rafe Blaufarb, and a wide-ranging introduction by Jay M. Smith that places Bien’s work in the wider context of historical thinking over the past half-century on the origins of the French Revolution.Publisher PD
“Proven patriots”: the French diplomatic corps, 1789-1799
No full textThis study analyzes a hitherto unexamined group, the French diplomatic corps during the Revolution (1789 to 1799), and focuses on the question of loyalty and conscience. For some diplomats choice was an illusion as their status often determined their fate. Some supported the king and continued to do so in spite of the high cost, often creatively sabotaging the Revolution. Others put nation, as they defined it, above king. Because the definition of loyalty constantly shifted the corps, like the army and the bureaucracy, was periodically purged. Those who had worked for or been sympathetic to the old regime or those who had allied with a certain political faction came under scrutiny. The turmoil in the diplomatic corps not only had international repercussions but also reflects larger societal trends, such as the attack on the aristocracy and the displacement of one elite by another. The French diplomatic corps was thus emblematic of many issues surrounding the revolutionary struggle of this decade.Publisher PD
Heritage Society (Houston)
No full textLetter from Burtis French & Woodward to William M. Rice discussing the purchase of Railway stock
Heritage Society (Houston)
No full textTranscript of Letter from Burtis French & Woodward to William M. Rice discussing the purchase of Railway stock
Hold still, Madame: wartime gender and the photography of women in France during the Great War
No full textThis study investigates French images of women during the First World War, the feminine postures and roles captured by photographers, how female images were used in the wartime media and by the state, and how captions and other textual modes strengthened an overarching message of total consent. By analysing the three most prominent genres of female imagery during the period – women in distress, feminine devotion, and women toiling for the war effort – this book seeks to demonstrate how photography assisted in the gender work of the war. Photographers and publishers showed how traditional feminine traits could contribute to a male-designed and directed war effort, while also concealing instances of female dissent, which included feminist, socialist, popular and pacifist objections to the war. Yet, although the archives contain few wartime images created by French women themselves, this work also introduces a small group of period photographs, lithographs, articles and literary works that disrupted the visual narrative of subordination.Publisher PD
Towards a performance theory of robust adaptive control
No full textWe consider standard robust adaptive control designs based on the dead-zone and projection modifications, and compare their performance w.r.t. a worst case transient cost functional penalising the L∞ norm of the output, control and control derivative. If a bound on the L∞ norm of the disturbance is known, it is shown that the dead-zone controller outperforms the projection controller if the a-priori information on the uncertainty level is sufficiently conservative. The second result shows that the projection controller is superior to the dead-zone controller when the a-priori information on the disturbance level is sufficiently conservative. For conceptual clarity the results are presented on a nonlinear scalar system with a single uncertain parameter and generalisations are briefly discussed
Au Revoir, Chantal [French]
No full textArticle translated and adapted in French on Chantal Akerman the artist and her exhibition at Ambika P3 curated by the author in the context of her untimely death
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