François Bédarida

François Bédarida, (14 march 1926 in Lyon - 16 September 2001 in Fontaine-le-Port) was a French academic historian. His work centred on Victorian England and France in WWII. He was a director of the Maison française in Oxford.

Life

François Bédarida was born into a family of intellectuals. His father, Henri Bédarida, was a a specialist in Italian studies and professor at the Sorbonne. François attended theLycée Montaigne (Paris) and the lycée Louis-le-Grand where he was a brilliant student.

WWII Resistance

During the Occupation of France, his father gave sanctuary to the Catholic priest, Pierre Chaillet. The youthful Bédarida was actively involved in the French Resistance and joined the Témoignage chrétien movement where he met his future wife, Renée Bédarida.

Academic career

In 1946 he resumed his education and entered the École normale supérieure in Paris and in 1949 graduated in History after a brief stint teaching at the lycée Thiers in Marseilles. François Bédarida then left for London to carry out research at the French Institute during 1950-1956. In 1956 on his return to France, he became an associate of the CNRS (1956-1959). Then followed a period of five years as lecturer at the Sorbonne. In 1966 he was appointed head of the Maison Française in Oxford. Between 1971 and 1978 he was master of conferences at the Institut d'etudes politiques de Paris. He was a founder and first director of the Institut d'histoire du temps présent, from 1978 to 1990, and between 1990 and 2000 he held the post of General Secretary of the Comité international des sciences historiques.

Historian of Victorian England and France under Vichy

François Bédarida's first studies were into Victorian England. In the 1970s he changed tack and researched Vichy France and its antidemocratic political philosophy. Beside the work of the American historian, Robert Paxton among a few others, he exposed the nature and ideology of the régime of Pétain. Prior to that, for thirty years the Vichy administration was seen merely as an adjunct of the Third Reich. He thereby locked into the two responsibilities of the historian in relation to that particular period, to perpetuate the role of the Resistance movement, and to establish scientifically the truth about events in order to avoid the creation of myths about that time.

Works

• La Grande-Bretagne - L'Angleterre triomphante (1832-1914), Hatier, coll. « Histoire Contemporaine », Paris, 1974
• La stratégie secrète de la « drôle de guerre ", le Conseil suprême interallié de 1939. {{cite book}}: no-break space character in |title= at position 29 (help)- avril 1940 |publisher=Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques / Éditions du CNRS |location=Paris |date=1979 |pages=573 |isbn1=2-7246-0428-8 |isbn2=2-222-02535-4 |url=https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k18368j/f214.image}}, Template:On-line, Template:On-line.
• La Politique nazie d'extermination, Albin Michel, Paris, 1989.
• La Société anglaise du milieu du 19th century à nos jours (1851-1975), Seuil, Paris, 1990.
• Le Nazisme et le génocide – Histoire et enjeux, Nathan, Paris, 1991.
• Le Nazisme et le génocide – Histoire et témoignage, Pocket, Paris, 1992.
• La France des années noires, sous la direction de Jean Pierre Azéma et François Bédarida, Seuil, Paris, 1993.
• L'Histoire et le métier d'historien en France 1945-1995, Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, Paris, 1995.
• Churchill, Fayard, Paris, 1999,
• Histoire, critique et responsabilité, IHTP-CNRS/Complexe, coll. « Histoire du temps présent », Paris/Bruxelles, 2003, 358 p.
• Preface to Les Témoins de Jéhovah face à Hitler by Guy Canonici Éditions Albin Michel S.A. 1998.

Awards

• Prix Mémoire de la Shoah 1992*
• Officier du Mérite (1999)
• Prix de la Fondation Pierre-Lafue, 2000

Legacy

• The collected papers of François Bédarida are stored at the Archives nationales, on the site of Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, sous la cote 673AP

External links

• inventaire du fonds.
• Nécrologie du CISH