France
Introduction
The French collection is among the larger national collections at the IISH. Materials date back to the emergence of the revolutionary ideology in the second half of the eighteenth century. Since the Revolution, French political and social history throughout the nineteenth century has been characterized by alternating authoritarian and enlightened regimes that resulted from the revolutionary movements. The collections trace the ups and downs of these movements and the people who either led them or advanced ideas for building a new, more equitable world. The IISH has an impressive collection on utopian socialist thinkers including Cabet, Fourier, Saint-Simon and Proudhon. The twentieth-century French collections focus on anarchism, neo-Malthusianism and student and workers' struggles, but materials on left-wing political parties and individuals are also abundant. Microfilms of collections held in other archival institutions (e.g., Babeuf, Blanqui, Elisée Reclus in Moscow) complete the IISH collections.
The collection may be accessed in various ways. The archives index contains individual archival descriptions and a list of all archives by country (browse: France).
Books, periodicals, and image and audio materials are retrievable via the library catalogue. In addition, the archives index, library catalogue, and other data collections may be consulted via a single search.
Full text of the description of the collections on France is also available as a pdf-file (97Kb).