François Victor Alphonse Aulard

François Victor Alphonse Aulard (1849–1928) was a French historian who helped establish the French Revolution as a field of academic study and held France’s first university chair devoted to its history.

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French Revolution: A period of political and social upheaval in France from 1789 to 1799 that ended the monarchy and founded a republic. This was the subject Aulard made central to university history.
Historical method: The practices historians use to investigate, evaluate, and interpret evidence about the past. Aulard’s archival work exemplified professional methods applied to revolutionary history.
Hippolyte Taine: A French critic and historian whose multivolume history portrayed the Revolution as socially destructive and politically pathological. Aulard opposed Taine’s conservative interpretation and its treatment of revolutionary crowds.
French Revolution historiography: The scholarship that interprets the causes, events, and consequences of the French Revolution. Aulard’s work shaped this field’s methods and its debate over revolutionary democracy.
Third Republic: The French republican regime established in 1870 and lasting until the German invasion of 1940. Its republican institutions shaped the setting in which Aulard’s Revolution scholarship developed.
Archives nationales (France): France’s national archives, which preserve records produced by state institutions and individuals. Aulard drew on documentary collections to ground his accounts in primary sources.
Albert Mathiez: A French historian of the Revolution who succeeded Aulard’s generation and emphasized social and economic forces. Mathiez disputed Aulard’s account of revolutionary leaders and the origins of the Terror.
Aulard Chair of the History of the French Revolution: A university chair at the Sorbonne created for the academic study of the French Revolution. Aulard became its first holder, institutionalizing the subject in French higher education.
École normale supérieure: A French institution of higher education founded in 1794 to train teachers and scholars. Aulard studied there before building his academic career.
La Société des Jacobins: Aulard’s multivolume edition of records from the Jacobin Club, published between 1889 and 1897. This edition made revolutionary political debates available for systematic historical study.