“Si la France le savait...”: uses of the state of siege in France (1791-1918)

Authors

  • Antonio Gasparetto Júnior Instituto Federal do Sudeste de Minas Gerais

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4013/hist.2021.251.02

Abstract

The state of siege as an institution is a French legal creation of the late eighteenth century and it lies in the field of exception. With the French regulation, the measure reaffirmed the transitional sense of the institute, because the state of siege flirts with authoritarianism by hypertrophying power in the Executive and allowing more severe measures of repression. The article works with French sources (military, legislative and juridical documents) to, after presenting the notions of constitutional formulation of the institute, analyze its use in France from the French Revolution to the First World War. The measure, which was not a cold letter of the law, was present in the political regimes following the revolutionary phase and gained great repercussion in other legislations.
Methodologically, the normative perspective is used to define the state of siege institute, evaluating its development as well as promoting quantitative and qualitative analyses. The data are put into dialog with the most recent international historiography, especially the French one, about the matter. The article concludes that its transposition from a
military notion of battlefield to a fictitious notion applied in a political context was full of applications enabling a significant use of arbitrariness by legal means.

Author Biography

Antonio Gasparetto Júnior, Instituto Federal do Sudeste de Minas Gerais

Antonio Gasparetto Júnior é pós-doutorando em História pela Universidade de São Paulo (USP), professor substituto no Instituto Federal do Sudeste de Minas Gerais (IF Sudeste MG – Campus Juiz de Fora), professor formador na Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF) e professor efetivo de Educação Básica no estado de Minas Gerais (SEE/MG). Doutor (2018), Mestre (2014), Bacharel e Licenciado em História (2010) e Bacharel em Administração Pública (2017) pela Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF), com estágio de doutoramento (Chercheur Invité) na École Doctorale d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine da Université Paris IV – Sorbonne (2015-2016). Pesquisador integrado ao Laboratório de História Política e Social (LAHPS) e do Laboratório de Estudos e Pesquisas da Contemporaneidade (LEPCON). Membro da Associação Nacional de História (ANPUH), da Association des Jeunes Chercheurs en Histoire (AJCH) e da Association Française des Jeunes Historiens du Droit (AFJHD). É secretário geral da rede internacional de pesquisa “Direitas, História e Memória” (https://direitashistoria.net/) e coordenador do respectivo Grupo de Trabalho (GT/ANPUH) nacional. Conquistou o segundo lugar do Premio de Investigación Doctoral en Historia del Derecho en América Latina (Valência/ESP, 2019). É autor de Atmósfera de Plomo (Tirant lo Blanch, 2019), História Constitucional Brasileira: usos e abusos das normas (Multifoco, 2017) e Direitos Sociais em Perspectiva (Fino Traço, 2014). Desenvolve pesquisas sobre história do direito, estado de exceção, autoritarismo e administração pública no Brasil República.

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Published

2021-01-04

Issue

Vol. 25 No. 1 (2021): Janeiro/Abril

Section

Articles

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