François Victor Alphonse Aulard [SEP] native language
François Victor Alphonse Aulard
François Victor Alphonse Aulard (19 July 1849 – 23 October 1928) was the first professional French historian of the French Revolution and of Napoleon. His major achievement was to institutionalise and professionalise the practice of history in France. He argued:
Career.
Aulard was born at Montbron in Charente. He entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1867 and obtained the degree of doctor of letters in 1877 with a thesis in Latin on Gaius Asinius Pollio and a French one on Giacomo Leopardi (whose works he
taught at a variety of local lycèes until he completed his doctorate which he wrote under the direction of François Victor Alphonse Aulard, then the leading historian of the Revolution, who admired Georges Danton. Mathiez was greatly influenced by Jean Jaurès, who propounded a more radical economic and social interpretation. At first a good friend of Aulard, he broke with his mentor in 1907, founding his own society, the Société des études robespierristes, with its journal, the "Annales révolutionnaires". He also moved up from the lycée to