The Cambridge Illustrated History of France is a fairly comprehensive journey through French history stretching from early prehistoric art through the Gaullish and Roman times and up to the early nineteen-nineties and the fifth republic. Despite the wide parameters of this daunting task, Jones was able to keep all the standards of a French history intact, as well as to include the token smatterings of the currently popular ‘modern’ studies of the average lives of the average people. And as the title implies, there are lots of beautiful full color photos, complimented with dozens of maps depicting the demographic trends throughout the history of France.

The basic structure of the book doesn’t take too new a turn, but follows the predictable and possibly necessary pattern of becoming more complex in chapter structure as time moves on. This gives the effect, like most general history books, of more and more information squeezed into each paragraph with each following chapter, and needless to say, the middle of history is not in the middle of the book. But each chapter is nicely divided into semi-random segments dealing with major events, major figures, cultural nuances, and standards of living. I would not be surprised if this book was found to be similar to an upper level French high school history book. Except it does smack of being written by other than a Frenchman. The historical figures lack personality, albeit this is a result of the author’s lack of bias, good for a study, it does take away some of the sense of the French people. Bias is a part of history, and how the people color their history says a lot about them. At least a bit more of a mention of French attitudes to the past would have helped me put the book in perspective.

The one great error of the book was the breaking of a promise the author made in the introduction. He promised to discuss and reflect upon the overall general demographic movements within the country, north-south splits, mini-cultures within France, etc. Although he did this in the beginning of the book, giving a much more interesting feel as being the study of the history of the migrations, mutations in language and beliefs of groups of people within a geographical range, as the book progresses he fell more and more into the traditional dates and names. And no overview of the history as a whole was given, there was no reflection, summation of movement, he never attempted to describe the effects of the history on the people. Once again, peut-etre because he’s not French.

The Cambridge Illustrated History of France would make a nice textbook for a college class. Which is probably what it was written for. It has that space for humanity requiring a teacher to fill. It is well written, wonderfully illustrated, and thoroughly modern in its basic interpretations. But I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone but a Francophone, or a Francophile.

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