Professor David Hopkin
Professor of European Social History
Hertford College
01865 (2)79459
I'm a social and cultural historian of modern Western Europe (c.1760-c.1914), working primarily with oral and popular cultural sources -- the kind of sources left by people who are otherwise underrepresented in the archive. My first monograph Soldier and Peasant in French Popular Culture 1766-1870(Gladstone Prize 2002) concentrated on popular prints, my second Voices of the People in Nineteenth-Century France (Katharine Briggs Award 2012) used sources such as ballads, folktales, religious legends and riddles to reconstruct social interactions in rural and maritime communities. I've also written on the history of the human sciences – how our predecessors in anthropology, folklore and philology have tried to make sense of the relationship between society and culture. I used to edit the journal Cultural and Social History and currently edit the Manchester University Press series Studies in Modern French History.
Featured Publication
Rhythms of Revolt: European Traditions and Memories of Social Conflict in Oral Culture (Routledge, 2017)
The culture of insurgents in early modern Europe was primarily an oral one; memories of social conflicts in the communities affected were passed on through oral forms such as songs and legends. This popular history continued to influence political choices and actions through and after the early modern period. The chapters in this book examine numerous examples from across Europe of how memories of revolt were perpetuated in oral cultures, and they analyse how traditions were used. From the German Peasants’ War of 1525 to the counter-revolutionary guerrillas of the 1790s, oral traditions can offer radically different interpretations of familiar events. This is a ‘history from below’, and a history from song, which challenges existing historiographies of early modern revolts.
Voices of the People in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge University Press, 2012)
This innovative study of the lives of ordinary people – peasants, fishermen, textile workers – in nineteenth-century France demonstrates how folklore collections can be used to shed new light on the socially marginalized. David Hopkin explores the ways in which people used traditional genres such as stories, songs and riddles to highlight problems in their daily lives and give vent to their desires without undermining the two key institutions of their social world – the family and the community. The book addresses recognized problems in social history such as the division of power within the peasant family, the maintenance of communal bonds in competitive environments, and marriage strategies in unequal societies, showing how social and cultural history can be reconnected through the study of individual voices recorded by folklorists. Above all, it reveals how oral culture provided mechanisms for the poor to assert some control over their own destinies.
Folklore and Nationalism in Europe during the Long Nineteenth Century
The growth of nations, national ideologies and the accompanying quest for the authentic among the people has been a subject of enquiry for many disciplines. Building upon wide-ranging scholarship, this interdisciplinary study seeks to analyse the place of folklore in the long nineteenth century throughout Europe as an important symbol in the growth and development of nations and nationalism, and in particular to see how combining perspectives from History, Literary Studies, Music and Architecture can help provide enhanced and refreshing perspectives on the complex process of nation-building. With a range of detailed case studies drawing upon archival, literary, visual and musical sources as well as material culture, it raises questions about individual countries but also about links and similarities across Europe.
Soldier and Peasant in French Popular Culture, 1766-1870 (Boydell Press, 2002)
Revolutionary France gave the modern world the concept of the "nation-in-arms", a potent combination of nationalism, militarism and republicanism embodied in the figure of the conscript. But it was not a concept shared by those most affected by conscription, the peasantry, who regarded the soldier as representative of an entirely different way of life. Concentrating on the militarised borderlands of eastern France, this book examines the disjuncture between the patriotic expectations of elites and the sentiments expressed in popular songs, folktales and imagery. Hopkin follows the soldier through his life-cycle to show how the peasant recruit was separated from his previous life and re-educated in military mores; and he demonstrates how the state-sponsored rituals of conscription and the popular imagery aimed at adolescent males portrayed the army as a place where young men could indulge in adventure far from parental and communal restraints. The popular idea of moustachioed military folk-heroes contributed more to the process of turning "peasants into Frenchmen" than the mythology of the "nation-in-arms". WINNER OF THE 2002 RHS GLADSTONE PRIZE. David M. Hopkin is tutor and fellow in history at Hertford College, Oxford University.
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