This blog will be brief. My master’s thesis is now complete and I wish to share it with the world. My supervisor will probably emphasize the unscientific nature of my work. Perhaps I could have chosen sources systematically rather than in the hap-hazard nature that I did, going from one archive to the next in search of this or that missing document to complete the story I wanted to tell. Perhaps I could have included more theory. Perhaps I could have read more books, cited more contemporary scholars, or demonstrated my fealty to the tax haven by including a digital methodology.
Instead, I wrote my master’s thesis for myself and those who I wish to share my love of history with. They are my friends and my friends, family, and mentors who have guided my intellectual growth over the course of a decade as well as you, the reader. But they are not my supervisor.
In my acknowledgments, I write that “…we do not, and ought not to, write for ourselves or our careers. We write, and we ought to write, because sharing our love of the world – our very being – is the essence of our shared humanity.” I stand by this statement. I cannot imagine it would be well-received in certain quarters of the tax haven, but, fortunately, those quarters will have to read the acknowledgments to know that they should be offended.
The story of the répartition came to me while I was working the night shift at the Hampton Inn in Carol Stream, Illinois in the summer of 2021. Newly single and saving money for my impending move to Luxembourg, I passed the night by reading. Not much, but what I did read still influences me.
One of those books with R.D. Anderson’s France, 1870-1914: Politics and Society. It came to me by way of H-France, the listserv for French historians and other academics. The political scientist Mildred Saks Schlesinger had died and her son was clearing out her library. Posting her unclaimed collection on the listserv, I replied offering to donate to her memorial scholarship fund and pay for shipping in exchange for a few books. They had arrived while I was living in Angers, but back in the U.S., I was finally able to open the books I had been sent a year earlier.
Anderson’s book is a lovely and readable text from the late 70s, full of great and interesting material about a world I have become hopelessly attached to. And there, on page 42, was the story of the répartition that has come to dominate my life these past two years. I fell in love with this little story (which Anderson accidentally dated to 1910) and spent the rest of the summer looking for more information. I did not find much, but this thesis grew out of that moment of historical joy in the back office of the Hampton Inn in Carol Stream, Illinois.
A historian’s joy is an interesting thing. It is not scientific. It is inherently irrational. I am drawn to this story by the forces that define me and not because it will benefit my career. Indeed, I have already been critiqued for my use of older sources. But I did not write my thesis for the sake of novelty. I wrote this thesis because it was a story I needed to tell.
This is why I am not remotely concerned about my final grade or my supervisor’s opinion. I have not written to share this story with them because, simply put, they do not care to read French history written by an American communist. That is okay. This thesis is written for those who are interested in a strange and distant land known as the French Third Republic. It is written for those who believe that words have meanings, so why the hell are they using those words like that? It is written for those for whom the sun shines and the sky is blue, but only if they are interested in looking up. This thesis is written for me and for you, the reader, with whom I have the joy and pleasure of sharing my love of history, the Left, and the French Third Republic.
Signed,
Andrew (Pfannkuche)
Normal Thoughts 