Woloch, Isser

Biography

Isser Woloch, Moore Collegiate Professor Emeritus of History, specializes in the social and political history of 18th and 19th century France. His most recent publication is entitled The Postwar Moment: The Allied Democracies in the Aftermath of World War II. Using parallel narratives, this book examines "the postwar moment" in Britain, France, and the United States, when a progressive impetus for national transformation clashed with the inertial forces of "normalcy."

Education and Teaching

A.B., Columbia College, 1959 (summa cum laude); Ph.D., Princeton University, 1965
Taught at Indiana University, UCLA, and from 1969 at Columbia University.
Moore Collegiate Professor of History, Columbia University, 1998-2007.
Moore Collegiate Professor of History Emeritus, 2008-

Post-Doctoral fellowships include A.C.L.S; Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton) twice; National Endowment for the Humanities; Guggenheim Foundation; Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris); Center for the History of Freedom (Washington University, St. Louis)

Publications

Books

Jacobin Legacy: The Democratic Movement Under the Directory (Princeton U Press, 1970)

(ed.) The Peasantry in the Old Regime: Conditions and Protests (Holt-Rinehart, 1970)

(with M. Chambers, R. Grew, B. Hanawalt, T. Rabb, L. Tiersten), The Western Experience (Alfred Knopf/ McGraw Hill, 1974; 10th edition, 2010)

The French Veteran from the Revolution to the Restoration (U of North Carolina Press, 1979)

Eighteenth-Century Europe: Tradition and Progress, 1715-1789 (W.W. Norton, 1982)
       (2nd revised edition with co-author Gregory S. Brown (2012)

(ed. w/ R. Waldinger & P. Dawson), The French Revolution and the Meaning of Citizenship (Greenwood Press, 1993).

The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789-1820's (W. W.Norton, 1994)
       American Historical Association'ss Leo Gershoy Award

(ed.) Revolution and the Meanings of Freedom in the Nineteenth Century (Stanford U Press, 1996)

Napoleon and his Collaborators: the Making of a Dictatorship (W.W. Norton, 2001)
       Literary Award, Napoleonic Society of America

The Postwar Moment: Progressive Forces in Britain, France, and the United States After World War II (Yale U. Press, 2019)
In parallel narratives, I examine progressive forces in the1930s & 1940s in the three historic democracies, with a focus on the postwar moment, when an impetus for national transformation clashed with a drift back to normalcy. I explore the major progressive protagonists before, during and after the war, the issues that animated them, the changes accomplished, and the hopes dashed. In a final chapter (Three Scenarios, One Story?) I assess the commonalities and differences among progressive forces in the three nations, and suggest the domestic legacies of their postwar struggles.

Selected Articles

“French Economic and Social History,” J. of Interdisciplinary History, IV (Winter 1974), 435-57.

“Napoleonic Conscription: State Power and Civil Society,” Past & Present, No. 111 (May 1986), 101-29.

“From Charity to Welfare in Revolutionary Paris,” J. of Modern History, LVIII (Dec.1986), 779- 812.

“The Fall and Resurrection of the Civil Bar, 1789-1820s,” French Historical Studies XV (Fall 1987), 291-62.

“Review Article: On the Latent Illiberalism of the French Revolution,” American Historical Review, Vol. 95 (Dec.1990), 1452-70.

“Republican Institutions, 1797-1799,” in C. Lucas (ed.), The Political Culture of the French Revolution (Pergamon, 1988), 371-87.

“The Contraction and Expansion of Democratic Space during the Period of the Terror,” in K. Baker (ed), The Terror (Pergamon, 1994), 309-25.

“In the Aftermath of the French Revolution,” The History Teacher XXVIII (Nov. 1994), 7-11.

“Réflections sur les réactions à Brumaire dans les milieux républicains provinciaux, » in Mélanges Michel Vovelle : Sur La Révolution : Approches Plurielles (Paris, 1997), 309-18.

“Une Voix D’Outre-Tombe: Les Mémoires de Cambacérès, » in La Plume et le sabre. Hommages offerts à Jean-Paul Bertaud (Publications de la Sorbonne, 2002), 525-35.

« The French Revolution and the Empire,” in P. N. Stearns (ed.), The Encyclopedia of European Social History, Vol 1 (Scribner’s, 2001), 193-204.

« Les Dynamiques locales d’un Coup d’État: Rapport Introductif, » in Du Directoire au Consulat,3 : Brumaire dans l’histoire du lien politique et de l’État-nation (Rouen, 2002), 129-34.

“Foreword” to the Princeton Classic Edition of R.R. Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled: the Year of the Terror in the French Revolution (Princeton U. Press, 2005).

“A Revolution in Political Culture,” in P. McPhee (ed.) A Companion to the French Revolution (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 437-53.

“Lasting Political Structures,” in D. Andress (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution (Oxford, 2015), 590-606.

“The Napoleonic Elites,” in M. Broers & P. Dwyer (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars [General ed. A. Forrest] Vol I: Politics and Diplomacy (2022), 168-87.

Principal American advisor for David Grubin’s PBS documentary Napoleon