Joaquin Phoenix in Ridley Scott’s ‘Napoleon.’ Napoleon was a prolific legislator who sponsored the Civil Code, later known as the Napoleonic Code.
(Apple TV+)
Ridley Scott’s film is not intended to paint a romanticised image of Napoleon, but rather immerse the viewer in the dilemmas and complexities of power.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1753).
Public domain
A series of laws voted up in late 1793 enabled the expedited judgement of thousands of people suspected of counterrevolutionary beliefs.
Under a portrait of Theodor Herzl, David Ben-Gurion on May 14, 1948, declares the establishment of a Jewish state to be known as the state of Israel.
Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
He was an important philosopher, mathematician and social reformer of his time. But Richard Price was subsequently written out of history.
‘Lamartine rejects the red flag in front of the town hall,’ a painting by Henri Félix Philippoteaux (1815–1884), captures a seminal moment in the second French Revolution in Paris in 1848, when revolutionaries demanded human and civil rights.
(Les Musées de la ville de Paris)
French has historically been a language of human rights. That’s why the Québec government should promote it as a tool of a human rights-based civic education, not force it on newcomers.
Jacques-Louis David, The Lictors bringing to Brutus the bodies of his dead sons, 1789 Paris, Louvre.
Musée du Louvre
Jacques-Louis David’s picture of death and despair has a strange and compelling beauty.
People attend an exhibition of Russian equipment destroyed by the armed forces of Ukraine, in Lviv, Ukraine, Aug. 11, 2022.
Olena Znak/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Democratic nation-states were supposed to be the legitimate successors of empires. It hasn’t quite worked out that way in the past century, and Russia’s war on Ukraine is a reflection of that.
Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet and Emilia Fox as Georgiana Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (1995), BBC.
IMDB
Music is featured in most of Jane Austen’s novels and recent research is teaching us more about her personal love of music. What can it tell us about the world of Jane Austen?
The Grand Véfour has been serving fine dining to Parisians for more than 200 years.
Lionel Bonaventure/AFP
The first restaurants in Paris were based on the medicinal powers of soup, but these establishments soon transformed into the temples to gastronomy we know today.
History isn’t just learning facts. Students learn about the past by researching information and synthesising it to form an evidence-based argument. This skill is useful for a range of careers.
The Fête de la Fédération at Champ de Mars on July 14, 1790. Woodcut by Helman, from a picture by C. Monet, Painter of the King.
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The polarisation of today’s political discourse has echoes of the intolerance that characterised the Puritan era and the French Revolution.
How a conspiracy theory about the origins of the French Revolution became steeped in antisemitism.
Nine émigrés executed by guillotine, from La Guillotine in 1793 by H. Fleischmann/Wikimedia
The dangerous legacy of a letter received by Augustin Barruel, a French Catholic priest and famous conspiracy theorist, in the early 1800s.
A taxi rank marshal sprays hand sanitiser on a commuter wearing a mask as a preventive measure as she arrives at the Wanderers taxi rank in Johannesburg.
Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images
Reactions in South Africa give little reason for hope that the virus will bring people closer together or trigger more energetic action against poverty.
Maitre de conferences en histoire de l'Europe moderne, Université de York, Fellow 2018 - IEA de Paris, Institut d'études avancées de Paris (IEA) – RFIEA