Legitimacy/Legitimation/Delegitimation: France in the Dark Years, a Textbook Case
2004; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 13; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1017/s0960777304001870
ISSN1469-2171
Autores Tópico(s)French Historical and Cultural Studies
ResumoThe history of France's defeat, occupation and subsequent liberation may be read, and written, as a constant struggle for legitimacy. Here the diverse candidates for legitimacy are analysed (Pétain, de Gaulle and the internal Resistance) as well as the agents of legitimation, and the arbiters of that process of legitimation (French society, the German occupier, Britain and the United States). Four successive configurations are distinguished within that struggle for legitimacy: summer 1940 to spring 1941, the time of the defeat; summer and autumn 1941, when French society called into question the legitimacy of the Vichy French State; the crossroads of greatest legitimacy between late 1942 and mid-1943, which also marked the period of greatest fragility for de Gaulle; and spring to autumn 1944, when the key question was which state should be rebuilt.
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