IN the preface to his selection of extracts from the Greek and Latin
historians, Dr. M. I. Finley reminded us that 'history in its root
sense means inquiry'. All historical writing is, or ought to be, directed
to the elucidation of a problem. It is in a way a high-class roman policier.
It is comparatively simple if it is limited to a short period or an incident
from which nothing came. But an inquest on the body of a society is
more difficult than an inquest on a human being. Evidence of substance
is hard to collect, harder to verify and harder still to interpret. The
problem to which this history is directed is the discovery and dissection
of the events in France that led to the defeat and downfall of the Third
French Republic in 1940.

This is not a straightforward narrative history of France over seventy
years, though that will come later. It is neither economic nor political
nor social history, but all three are drawn on. It attempts an explanation
by synthesis. In every country, in every society, there are new things
and old things. Renan said that nothing that happened in his day was
unrelated to the Revolution. But one must go back further. Anyone
who has studied Les caractères originaux de l'histoire rurale française by
Marc Bloch, published thirty years ago, will know how deep are the
roots. My friend and partner, the late Hamish Miles, drew from M.
André Maurois the story of how he contested the rights of his local
villagers to fish certain waters on his land, which is in the Dordogne.
The village deputation said that they had the right. 'From whom did
you get it?' asked M. Maurois. 'The English gave it to us', they cried.
By the year 1500 the English had gone for ever, but the rights they had
granted remained. Writing soon after the war of 1914-18 the great
geographer, Vidal de la Blache, wrote: 'Le régime politique actuel met en
jeu, non seulement des passions et des intérêts, mais des réminiscences plus
ou moins défigurées, des préjugés, des légendes.'

It appears to me that in this dark epoch, the nineteenth century, in
spite of more abundant evidence (it may not be reliable) than ever
existed before (it may never exist again: the telephone is an enemy to
the historian), we are faced by problems of historical writing that did
not appear when the powers could dismiss a gang of Diggers with a few
smacks over the buttocks with the flat of the sword, or reduce Levellers
with a touch of decimation. Such minor incidents are unimportant

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