Political History

The French exploration of Tibet (1846–1912) and its resulting culture has been largely neglected by critics. Accounts of French-speaking travellers in Tibet have mostly been subsumed into the imperial and geopolitical framework of British policy in the region. This framework, which came to be known as the Great Game, informed all British expeditions of the imperial period. Yet the insights and representations developed by French explorers in fact constitute a largely separate and specific cultural paradigm. The approach of the earliest Tibetan explorers is paradoxical inasmuch as they perceived both the land and its inhabitants to be so wild and savage that the existence of a Tibetan culture seemed impossible. Working with a diverse range of French texts and accounts dating from the latter half of the nineteenth century, I shall explore this attitude under the heading of what I propose to entitle the ‘Tibetan paradox’. But this paradoxical approach to Tibetan landscape and its inhabitants was to be definitely superseded by one the most unusual travellers ever to explore the country, Jacques Bacot (1877–1965). On the basis of his expeditions, from 1906 to 1910, in uncharted parts of the country, Bacot came to play a leading role in the development of French Tibetology. In the accounts of his travels, Bacot pays close attention to how Tibetans themselves represent their environment. This change in focus signals the emergence of a new understanding of Tibet, for which the term ‘Tibetan médiance’ − to borrow a neologism from the French geographer Augustin Berque − might profitably be coined. Bacot’s perspective marked the first step in the development of an entirely new set of questions that were to arise within the human sciences in France during the twentieth century. As such it constitutes a cornerstone in the literary history of French representations of Tibet.

This book develops a number of new conceptual tools to tackle some of the most hotly debated issues concerning the nature of fascism, using three profoundly different national contexts in the inter-war years as case studies: Italy, Britain and Norway. It explores how fascist ideology was the result of a sustained struggle between competing internal factions, which created a precarious but highly dynamic balance between revolutionary/totalitarian and conservative/authoritarian tendencies. Its focus on fascist ideology’s internal variety and aggregative potential leads the book to argue that when fascism "succeeded," this was less an effect of its revolutionary ideas, than of the opposite – namely, its power to integrate elements from other pre-existing ideologies.

"This paper proposes a model of dialectical development of the society, created by the dialectical schemes and formulas based on a binary notation (dialectic model of East and West, the political economy model, and others).
Предлагаются модели диалектического развития общества, созданные с помощью диалектических схем и формул на основе двоичного счисления (модели диалектики Востока и Запада, политэкономические модели, и другие)."

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From the second half of the 19th century, Upper Normandy has played a cutting edge role in the development of the sport culture. Its proximity to Paris and England, its commercial and industrial vitality or even the early building of the railway in the west has favoured the propagation of the “sport spirit”. The study of the specific case of Rouen aims at understanding how this dynamism persisted during the interwar years. It also lies in the questioning on the conditions of the spreading of sport culture by considering that the peculiarities of the local approach represent one of the possible expressions of the national diversity.
By having recourse to both oral (biographies) and written sources (administrative files, regional press) but also to photographic and film sources that are either preserved in public institutions (Archives Municipales de la Ville de Rouen, Archives Departementales de la Seine Maritime, Bibliothèque Nationale de France) or stemming from private funds. This thesis focuses on sport and its relation to society.
Under the 3rd republic, the development of various forms of sociabilities that are based on sport and physical activities lead to the integration of places of practice in Rouen’s urban landscape and the advent of associations which is carried out according to national as well as local influence. The time of a structuration of a sport policy at the local level in the early 1930s which reinforces the activity of associations follows the inertia of Rouen town council in the 1920s. If sportsmen and champions in particular are hardly ever linked to decisions concerning the local sport organisation, the influence of Rouen’s town counsellors and sport leaders increased during the interwar years and a sport public service was born out of this cooperation.

Résumé
Dès la seconde moitié du XIXè siècle, la Haute-Normandie joue un rôle d’avant-garde dans la diffusion du fait sportif. Sa proximité avec Paris et l’Angleterre, sa vitalité industrielle et commerciale, ou encore la construction précoce du chemin de fer de l’ouest sont favorables à la propagation de « l’esprit sportif ». L’étude du cas rouennais ambitionne de comprendre comment ce dynamisme se prolonge dans l’entre-deux-guerres. Il s’agit également de questionner les conditions d’expansion de la culture sportive, en considérant que les singularités de l’approche locale constituent une des expressions possibles de la diversité nationale.
En s’appuyant sur des sources écrites (dossiers administratifs, presse régionale), photographiques ou cinématographiques conservées dans des institutions publiques (Archives municipales de Rouen, Archives départementales de Seine-Maritime, Bibliothèque nationale de France) ou issues de fonds privés, mais aussi à partir de sources orales (récits de vie), cette thèse s’intéresse au sport dans sa relation avec la société.
Sous la IIIè République, le développement de diverses formes de sociabilités fondées sur les activités physiques et sportives entraîne l’intégration des lieux de pratique dans le paysage urbain rouennais et l’essor de l’associationnisme qui s’effectue au gré d’influences nationales comme locales. À l’inertie du conseil municipal rouennais dans les années 1920, succède le temps de la structuration d’une politique sportive locale au début des années 1930 qui conforte l’activité des associations. Si les sportifs, et en particulier les champions, sont rarement associés aux décisions concernant l’organisation sportive locale, l’influence des édiles rouennais et des dirigeants sportifs s’accroit dans l’entre-deux-guerres et de leur coopération naît un service public du sport.
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