A Century of French Historiography on the Treaty of Versailles*
Résumé
This chapter discusses the French historiography of the Treaty. It proposes four broad scholarly moments. The first, centered on the work of Pierre Renouvin who situated the treaty within the history of international relations, occurred during the interwar period. The second built directly on Renouvin’s work and appeared in the immediate aftermath of World War II. In the 1970s and 1980s, a third group of scholars expanded the inquiry toward economic questions and public opinion. Finally, recent decades have seen the emergence of new transnational and global perspectives. While in many ways these approaches are specific to France, as we shall see, they also reflect broader trends in European historiography on the Great War and the Treaty that brought it to an end.