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French History

Last Updated: 11-Jun-2015

This guide contains materials for doing research on French history.

Subject Librarians

Sarah B Sussman
Curator, French and Italian Collections, Head, International and Area Studies Resource Group
Cecil H. Green Library
(650) 723-9481

Subjects

French history
Caribbean studies
French studies

Around Stanford

France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies
History Department

Useful Databases

CAIRN - French full-text humanities and social science journals

PERSEE - more French full-text humanities and social science journals, including back archives

Gallica - French National Library (BnF) digital library with digitized materials of all formats (monographs, periodicals, historical primary sources, images)

Making of the Modern World- historical primary source database focusing on issues of politics and economy, international in scope.

ARTFL - full text database of French literature, dictionaries, and other primary sources. 

Champion Electronique databases:

  • Godefroy dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française
  • Dictionnaires des 16e et 17e siècles
  • Textes de la Renaissance
  • Colloques, congrès, et conférences de la Renaissance européenne 

 

Notable primary sources and collections at Stanford for French History

Gustave Gimon Collection on French Political Economy: This collection contains approximately 1000 books and manuscripts that concentrate broadly on the philosophical and social foundations of economic theory in France from the late sixteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century. It is composed primarily of works in French, but within a comparative world-wide perspective that includes works on religious theory, trade with the Americas, colonial policy, and transmission of economic systems to non-European settings.

Gimon Collection Visiting Scholar Fellowship  / Offre de bourse, Collection Gimon : We are proud to offer the opportunity for scholars to visit Stanford for the purpose of doing research in the Gimon Collection. 

Paris Commune Collection: The Paris Commune Collection was acquired in 2005. It consists of over one thousand titles dating from 1870 to the present. Provenance: Mr. Robert Le Quillec, a collector and bibliographer of the event. Included among the titles are personal and journalistic accounts of the Commune, memoirs, historical monographs, contemporary posters, journals and individual and bound articles. Paris Commune (1871), Franco-Prussian War, workers' rights, 19th century French socialism.

French 18th Century Judicial and Administrative Sources: Clustered largely during the reign of Louis XV, these sources offer an in-depth look at the concerns of both theorists and activists, reformers intent on ending abuses in government and in consolidating their own power in ways that foreshadow issues in contention during the Revolutionary period. Topics include taxation, church-state relations, trade regulations, judicial practices and powers, disputes with royal agents, and the consolidation of provincial assemblies. There are approximately 450 items in the finding aid, but the library's collections contain many more early official reports and materials documenting the government's role in Early Modern France.

 

Historical French Dictionaries

 

Database of 16th and 17th century French dictionaries, including: 

  • Thrésor de la langue françoyse, tant ancienne que moderne, 1606 / Jean Nicot
  • A Dictionarie of the french and english tongues, 1611 / Randle Cotgrave
  • Les Origines de la langue françoise, 1650 / Gilles Ménage
  • Dictionnaire françois, 1680 / Pierre Richelet
  • Essai d'un Dictionaire universel, 1687 / Antoine Furetière
  • Dictionaire Universel, 1690 / Antoine Furetière
  • Dictionnaire étymologique ou Origines de la langue françoise, 1694 / Gilles Ménage
  • Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise dedié au Roy, 1694
  • Le Dictionnaire des Arts et des Sciences, 1694 / Thomas Corneille

Académie française, Paris. Dictionnaire de l’Académie française. Several editions in the stacks and in Special Collections. 
Online: ARTFL (several editions) and the Académie’s website, with 8th and partial 9th ed. online.

Dictionnaire historique de la langue française. Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert, 1992.
2 vols. PC2580.D52 1992 IC

Le Grand Robert de la langue française. 2d rev. & enl. ed. Paris: Le Robert, 1985. 9 vols.  PC2625.R58 1985  IC and online.

Littré, Emile.  Dictionnaire de la langue française.  Paris: Hachette, 1889. 4 vols. and suppl. 443.L782  SAL,  56-58 ed.  PC2625.L63  IC 

Imbs, Paul, ed.  Trésor de la langue française; dictionnaire de la langue du 19e et 20e siècles (1789-1960).  Paris: CNRS, 1971-  PC2625.I4  IC and online.

 

French Microfilm Collections


More information about these microfilm collections can be found by searching by title in Searchworks

  • Les armées françaises d'outre-mer. France. Armée. Etat-Major. Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1931-32. New York, Andronicus Pub.Co., 1974. 5 reels.
  • Catalogue of French-language medieval manuscripts in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek and Meermanno-Westreenianum Museum, the Hague on microfiche. Amsterdam : Moran Micropublications, 2002. 18 microfiches.
  • Correspondence of Marc-Michel Rey, 1747-1778, publisher of the Enlightenment. 
  • The Dreyfus Affair in the Making of Modern France.
  • France and America during the French Revolution : the rise of independent Haiti, first independent black nation of modern times.  A collection of 46 works (predominantly in French) originally published between 1788 and 1801.
  • French royal and administrative acts, 1256-1794.  Consists of approximately 16,000 pamphlets offering a wealth of information on the financial and political administration of France from the late thirteenth century to the end of the monarchy.
  • French Voyagers in the Mediterranean, 16th to 18th Centuries, 1500 - 1800. This collection contains 37 rare works written by French voyagers...266 fiche.
  • Manuscripta, history of France. Saint Louis University, 1982.
  • Mazarinades : a collection of French political pamphlets from the Lockwood Library, SUNY at Buffalo. 
  • Mazarinades : microfiche reproduction of 17th century French civil war tracts in the Houghton Library, Harvard University.
  • Les Saint-Simoniens, 1825-1834. 
  • The Search for Utopia in the Age of Enlightenment, 1677 - 1800. 1,156 fiche & 14 reels of 35 mm, vols. 1-2.
  • The Slave Trade and Abolitionism in France 1700 - 1900. 233 fiche.
  • Le Théâtre de la Révolution et de l'Empire. 132 pièces de théâtre. 
  • The trial of Louis XVI, parliamentary speeches and opinions, 1792-1793. Collection of almost 300 pamphlets from the Zentralbibliothek Zürich, containing speeches and interventions by representatives of the National Convention.
  • The World of Port-Royal. Jansenism in the Catholic Church, 17th-18th centuries. 

Biography

Useful Databases

CAIRN - French full-text humanities and social science journals

PERSEE - more French full-text humanities and social science journals, including back archives

Gallica - French National Library (BnF) digital library with digitized materials of all formats (monographs, periodicals, historical primary sources, images)

Making of the Modern World- historical primary source database focusing on issues of politics and economy, international in scope.

ARTFL - full text database of French literature, dictionaries, and other primary sources. 

Champion Electronique databases:

  • Godefroy dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française
  • Dictionnaires des 16e et 17e siècles
  • Textes de la Renaissance
  • Colloques, congrès, et conférences de la Renaissance européenne