Keynote: France in the 21st century: Restless Citizens in a Global State by Emile Chabal, Professor of Contemporary History, University of Edinburgh

For many people, a strong and centralised state is one of France's most distinctive political characteristics. From Louis XIV's aspirations to build a state fit for a "Sun King" in the 18th century, to Charles de Gaulle's dreams of a nuclear-powered "grandeur" in the 1960s, successive French rulers have tried to harness the power of the state for their own ends. The current French president, Emmanuel Macron, is no exception. He, too, imagines France as a benevolent state that both protects its citizens and projects the country's global status from the Sahara to the Pacific.

But every French leader has also had to contend with a disgruntled and restless people. Indeed, the French have often been suspicious, if not resentful, of state power - and this has played out in myriad revolts and revolutions over the centuries.

Emile wants to explore how this tension has developed over the last 30 years during his keynote speech. During this time, French geopolitical power has been definitively reshaped by decolonisation and Europeanisation, and the country has experienced several major waves of protest. These highlight in a particularly acute way one of the major challenges for bureaucrats and politicians in many developed countries, namely how to satisfy citizens who yearn for more approachable and accessible governance while still aspiring to a place on the world stage.

About Emile Chabal 

Emile Chabal is a historian of twentieth-century European political and intellectual life.

He was educated at Cambridge, Rice University, Harvard University and the École Normale Supérieure, Paris. He completed his PhD at Cambridge and his thesis was subsequently awarded the History Faculty’s Prince Consort and Thirlwall Prize, and Seeley Medal for the best dissertation across all periods. 

Immediately after completing his doctorate, he took up a position as a Departmental Lecturer in Modern European History in the Faculty of History and Balliol College, Oxford. He returned to Cambridge in 2012 as a Research Fellow in French Political History at St John’s College. In 2013, he moved to the University of Edinburgh as a Chancellor’s Fellow in History. He was promoted to Reader in 2018 and served as the director of the Centre for the Study of Modern and Contemporary History from 2017 to 2020. He was made Professor of Contemporary History in 2024.

Much of his research has focused on France, in particular the transformation of French politics since the 1970s, Franco-British relations in the 20th century and the complex legacies of colonialism. This has led to a range of publications on subjects as varied as French republicanism, the idea of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ in modern French thought, and the history of inter-community relations in Montpellier since the end of the Algerian War.

Over time, he moved beyond France to think more generally about how we might imagine alternative frameworks for understanding contemporary politics. His current project is an intellectual biography of the historian Eric Hobsbawm.In addition to his work on French and European history, he have a longstanding interest in the politics of migration and immigration. He has published widely on this subject, and was a co-investigator on a major ESRC project on illegal migration and state rationality from 2016 to 2018.

His other great passion is music where he holds an LRSM performing diploma on the classical guitar and, for many years, taught the instrument to unsuspecting students of all ages.

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This event is part of the 30th anniversary of the Bachelor of International Studies at UTS and also part of FASStival 2024.