Lecturers > Robert Tombs

Name
Prof. Robert Tombs

College
St John’s College

What is your field of history?
My main area of research has been nineteenth-century French political history in a broad sense, and especially popular political culture. I have been particularly concerned with the Paris Commune of 1871 and with French nationalism from the 1830s to 1914. My most recent work has been on the history of the relationship between the French and the British, from the end of the seventeenth century to the present day, including the cultural and economic as well as the political and military spheres.

I am beginning a new book on the English and their past, but will continue to work and publish on French history and on French attitudes to Britain.

How did you come to specialise in this area?
I became interested as a student in the Paris Commune, and went on from there.

What sort of source material do you tend to use, and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
The kind of source I have used most intensively are court records, especially those of French military courts in the 19th century, which include documents from police investigations, interrogations of prisoners, and witness statements. Their strengths are their closeness to the words and actions of invididuals; their ‘weakness’ (if it is a weakness) is that they are always trying to put a case – for the prosecution or the defence.

Which individuals, events or forces are especially important in your area of history?
Individuals – too many to list; though I wrote a biography of a tricky French politician, Adolphe Thiers; events – revolutions and wars from 1789 onwards; forces – nationalism, democratic struggles, fear of and desire for radical change.

How has your field developed over the course of your career?
It has changed from being excessively influenced by social and economic explanations (especially Marxism) to being – some would say excessively – based on ideas about ‘culture’.

Which areas of your field most urgently need further exploration?
What ordinary people really wanted from politics, behind the big slogans.

What characterises good history?
The willingness to ‘listen’ to what people in the past are saying, and the desire to write about it clearly and vividly.

How did your understanding of history change during your time as a university student?
The best lesson I was taught: that people in the past were at least as intelligent as we are.

Where should somebody interested in your area of history go for further information?
I won’t say read my books; but anyone interested in grass-roots history of nineteenth-century France should dip into the following: Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen or Alain Corbin, The Village of Cannibals.