2019, Vol., No.41

Korean Review of French History 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.67

pISSN : 1229-702X
https://journal.kci.go.kr/krfh

Twenty years ago, Korean Review of French History(KRFH) was born with the creation of the Korean Association of French History. The history of the KRFH shows the itinerary of research development on French history in South Korea. The research on French history that began with the first topics around the old regime and the French Revolution, the labor movement and socialism. develop through KRFH in various fields of research: business history, urban history, feminist history, history of cinema, history of migration etc. By including the period of the Vichy government and movement 68 as the new subject, and with the development of research on medieval history, its dimension is expanding and the new generation of researchers interested in colonialism and racism gives attention to new territories such as Africa and Indo-China with geographical expansion.

Histoire mondiale de la France, published just a few months before the 2017 presidential election, sparked lively academic and political debates. The collective work of 122 young historians, directed by Patrick Boucheron, presents a prototype of national history rewritten with transnational and global perspectives. In this cross-border and multucultural world, history aims to be oriented in more global spaces beyond national borders. Some have thought that this rise in global history would be a risk of abandoning national history. Yet, global history, instead of replacing ‘the national’ with ‘the global’, aims at a new form of historiography that involves the local, national and global scales. Histoire mondiale de la France must be considered as an ambitious work to write a history of France ‘by the world and with the world’.

After the establishment of the protectorate in Tonkin in 1883, the French worked to “exploit” its mineral resources. Thus began the exploitation of the coal mines of Hòn Gai and Kế Bào in 1888, but its development quickly proved more difficult than the French had originally thought. In fact, mine operators had to create not only a new economic activity, but also the entire environment for its operation. The colonial authorities energetically favored French companies, but this could not ensure their success. The means of action of the colonial authorities remained clearly limited for solving problems such as the financing of the costs of first settlements, the mobilization of the labor force in large numbers and the conquest of new markets, which faced the mining companies.