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Projet d’histoire publique réalisé dans le cadre du cours HST6406 Histoire de l’enfance : Jeunesse de papier, une analyse de revues jeunesse québécoises des années 1950 et 1960.

Un article de la revue Cap-aux-Diamants, diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

The influenza pandemic of 1918–1920, which killed 50 000 Canadians, spurred the creation of a federal department of public health. But in the intervening century, public health at all levels has remained, as Marc Lalonde put it in 1988, the “poor cousin” in the health care system (Lalonde 1988, p. 77). Punctuated by sporadic investment during infectious disease crises, such as polio in the early 1950s, public health is less of a priority as the cost of tertiary health interventions rises. While public health potentially involves a broad range of interventions, this paper focuses on the history of public health interventions around infectious disease. COVID-19 has forced us to relearn the importance of maintaining basic infectious/communicable disease control capacity and revealed the cost of our failure to do so. It has also drawn our attention to the intersection between social inequality, racism, and colonialism and vulnerability to disease. In addition to investing in our capacity to contain disease outbreaks as they occur, we must plan now for how to achieve greater health equity in the future by addressing underlying economic and social conditions and providing meaningful access to preventive care for all. This is how we build a truly resilient society. Governments at all levels have recognized the importance of social factors in shaping health and illness for decades. But greater health equity will result only from genuine action on this knowledge. Action will arise from public advocacy in support of prevention, and a new level of engagement and collaboration between affected individuals and communities, public health experts, and governments.

This chapter examines the impact of colonialism on the “invention” of Vietnamese medicine (VM) in the first half of the twentieth century. It focuses more specifically on the legal framework dealing with VM in the interwar period, when Vietnamese nationalism was on the rise and French colonial authorities were assessing the “successes” and “failures” of the Assistance Médicale Indigène (AMI), the colonial health care system established in 1905. I argue that this invention was at the same time pragmatic, programmatic, and ideological; it aimed at “naturalizing” the AMI to adapt it to local medical needs within the imperial framework and French budgetary constraints. Bridging political, institutional, professional, and therapeutic spaces, this article brings into focus the process whereby VM was not only domesticated, but legally defined for the first time and given specific roles within the colonial health care system. Analysing the discourses framing VM as a “traditional,” “complementary,” and “natural” medicine, I explore the different meanings of science, toxicity, and tradition in this context, as well as the issue of accessibility to essential care. I emphasize the participation of the Vietnamese population, especially Vietnamese doctors and healers, in this process. In so doing, this article helps to reconsider the historiography of traditional medicine worldwide and underlines the importance of a postcolonial approach to a much-needed history of so-called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Last but not least, it highlights the impact of colonialism on the framing of a “national medicine” that would play a crucial role in post-1954 Vietnam medicalization and nation building.

À la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et durant l’occupation militaire de l’Allemagne, les femmes allemandes ont été victimes de violence sexuelle perpétrée par les troupes alliées. Bien que les crimes commis par les soldats soviétiques et américains soient maintenant bien documentés, nul n’a à ce jour tenté de brosser un portrait des cas perpétrés par les soldats britanniques. Ce mémoire propose donc d’analyser la réaction des autorités militaires britanniques face aux cas de viol perpétrés par leurs soldats. Il cherche à comprendre dans quelle mesure la criminalité a été prise en charge par les autorités et comment les soldats ont réagi aux crimes commis par leurs compatriotes. À l’aide non seulement de sources juridiques et administratives, mais également de récits d’histoire orale, ce mémoire traite des facteurs menant à la dissimulation et l’ignorance de certains crimes de violence sexuelle. Au-delà des difficultés propres à l’enquête des crimes de viol rencontrées par la police militaire, notamment le faible taux de dénonciation et le manque de preuve matérielle, les autorités militaires choisissent également de ne pas examiner certains crimes ou de ne pas punir les agresseurs. Ce mémoire démontre que les autorités militaires sont influencées entre autres par les circonstances spécifiques de l’occupation d’un pays ennemi, par exemple la perception de la population allemande, et plus spécifiquement des femmes, comme étant manipulatrices, hypocrites et indignes de confiance. Les valeurs et les perceptions véhiculées par l’armée au sujet des femmes et de la sexualité, de même que l’ancrage des mythes du viol chez les soldats et les autorités judiciaires affectent la gestion de la criminalité. Ce mémoire propose également d’analyser le traitement de la violence sexuelle dans la mémoire des vétérans britanniques et démontre que leur volonté de protéger leur réputation et plus largement celle de l’armée britannique les poussent à traiter essentiellement des crimes commis par les autres Alliés ou de se décrire en héros protégeant ou rendant justice aux victimes allemandes. _____________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Allemagne, Armée britannique, Justice militaire, occupation militaire, Seconde Guerre mondiale, Violence sexuelle

So much has happened since the NiCHE New Scholars discussion on Animal History last May. Who would have known just how relevant the discussions we that day had would become? The initiative to discuss this topic was undertaken by Hannah Palsa, PhD student at Kansas State University. The main objectiv

Migratory movements from Quebec between the mid-19th century and 1930 led to the establishment of Francophone communities in various regions of North America, thus creating contexts favourable to the formulation of historical discourse. In the course of this dissertation, we analyze whether this discourse contributed to the great historical narrative of the French-Canadian nation, or if it proposed a region-specific narrative. The dissertation compares the historiography produced in Quebec to that emerging in the periphery, in Ontario, Western Canada and New England, examining more specifically the representations of historical territory and the development of a discours d’enracinement (or a sense of rootedness). This comparative study provides a better understanding of the dynamics between regions and nation that influence historical narrative in French Canadian history. Spanning more than a century, the study focuses on certain key moments in historical production in Quebec and in the selected regions we study. By drawing parallels between historical production in Quebec and in various minority settings, we examine the points of convergence and divergences between historical work in the regions and in Quebec. This dissertation therefore examines the place of the nation and the region in historical discourse, through the analysis of the discours d’enracinement or sense of rootedness, in order to understand the role it plays in Quebec’s historiography and in historical work being produced in the French Canadian diaspora until the 1960s. The objective here is to highlight regional experiences and the similarities and contrasts that have generally escaped researchers.

In 1917, the Bolshevik party seized power in Russia, repudiated state debt, nationalized private enterprises and imposed early forms of Soviet management to the economy. France, whose economic ties with Russia had largely grown during the three previous decades, saw her huge investments in the country compromised. The French private sector, by far the most affected of all Allied powers, reacted strongly to this regime change. This memoir focuses on the subsequent actions of the private sector, and seeks to understand how they reacted to the Bolshevik’s coming to power. Did they play a role in the process of decision-making towards military intervention? Did they have any impact on the ground in Russia? How did they react to the ultimate failure of the intervention and the loss of their assets? We demonstrate that the economic factor was central in the adoption of an interventionist policy. We also examine how the French government discreetly tried to support the private sector, but mostly used it to advance its own interests in Russia. Finally, we demonstrate that the failure of the private sector to defend its interests has many common causes with the failure of the military intervention itself.

A direct access to the foundational texts of the Christian faith in vernacular languages was part of the basic demands of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. The French linguistic domaine was no exception in this regard. Henri Estienne, in his Apologie pour Hérodote, alludes to a specific anonymous literature dedicated to this question in response to biblical censorship in the 1540’s. Our investigations in these primary sources lead our attention on two pamphlets which have remained almost unknown to most bibliographers: 1) TRAICTE AUQUEL / est deduict s’il est loisible de / lire la saincte Escriture en / langue Vulgaire, & / du fruict qui en peult sortir. (s.l.n.d. , 80, italique, 94 p., signé a-f8, marginales, titres courants, 2 initiales ornées (a 2r0; 3v0). 2) TRAITE, / QU’IL EST NECESSAIRE / QUE TOUTES GENS DE QUEL- / que qualité, sexe, ou aage, qu’ils / soient, lisent les Saintes Escri- / tures : Et du moyen qu’on / y peut tenir. (s.l., s.n., 1561, avec une marque aux palmes du martyr couronnées), 80, italique, 36 ff., signé A-D8, E4, marginales, titres courants, 1 initiale (Aii ro). These two treatises clearly disclose a protestant and reformed content. Moreover, the numerous biblical, literary and patristic quotations they contain, more specificaly the 1561 edition, show that they where penned by master’s and not by disciples. Many candidates to their authorship have been considered and among these it is the religious work of Pierre Viret that offers the most ressemblances with the two pamphlets. The observations summed up to this day have convinced us that the first booklet, published in 1544 and mentioned for the first time in 1549 in the Parisian catalogue of prohibited books (Index de Paris, with the notice 1543) forms the editio princeps of an unprecedented work of the Swiss Reformer. It is part of our thesis that this booklet was later completely rewritten by Pierre Viret and published in Paris in 1561 under a new title. The Viretian paternity of these two tracts will be proven in the present research with the help of quotations, textual connections and other arguments based on the internal and external criticism of primary sources. Here follows a brief summary of our demonstration. The analysis of the first booklet (henceforth: T1) reveals a tight relationship with the style and ideas of Pierre Viret as can be seen in his works printed between 1542 and 1555. Among the reminiscent passages, one must point out many borrowings from De la difference qui est entre les superstitions et idolatries des anciens gentilz et payens… (Geneva, 1542), an important work which Viret has often reused in his subsequent writings. We also found a brief extract of T1 in the Dialogues du desordre qui est a present au monde (Geneva, 1545) and in the Métamorphose chrestienne (1561), which prove a later reuse of this source by Viret. A carefull reading of T1 also reveals an import from Marie Dentière’s Epistre tresutile (1539) and Calvin’s Epistre monstrant comment Christ est la fin de la loi (1543). Our findings have also allowed us to put forward plausible and instructive suggestions, which still need to be validated, regarding the immediate editorial context of T1. On this matter, one will note that T1 was released when editions of the Bible, the Psalter and the New Testament were regularly and largely printed both in Geneva and Lyon. These geographical area were two biblical publishing centers following very similar patterns of eristic and religious discourses. Several issues were parts of confessional polarization on both sides. Our research on T1 was extended with the discovery of the 1561 treatise mentioned earlier (henceforth: T2). A carefull comparison of the two treatises suggests that latter is a profoundly reviewed reedition of the former. We are the first to have made this connexion. Viret’s well known literary habits, specially since the mid 1550’s, confirm this hypothesis. However a meticulous comparative study between T2 and Viret’s contemporary writings had to be undertaken before drawing any conclusion. The results of the inquiry are eloquent: T2 overlaps with most of his books published between 1559 and 1565 (strict textual kinship of ideas and style, verbatim recoveries, paraphrases). T2 even picks up a short extract from an important work De la difference qui est entre les supersitions (1542), a book we have underscored, with other historians, the value in Viret's bibliographical and literary repertoire. In short, our findings can be summarized as follows: T1 borrows from Viret, Viret borrows from T1 and T2, and the latter draws from T1 and Viret. Viret probably composed T2 shortly after he left Geneva for France (at the end of September 1561). Nîmes is the most likely location where he wrote this tract. Internal indications, to which external testimonies can be added, lead us to think that Viret wrote this short pamphlet with the intention of rallying the King of Navarre, his court and the nobility to the Reformed faith that is at a key moment when the Huguenots where largely increasing in numbers accross the kingdom, especially in the Southern cities where highly ranked families and many intellectuals enthousiastically clinged to the protestant theses. Hence, in the beginning of the 1560’s, Hugenots where forming a genuine political strength capable to inflect the Kingdom’s destiny in its most sensitive center: the monarchy. T2's context falls in line with the colloque de Poissy, an important event that took place in Paris between September 9 and October 14, 1561. There are reasons to believe that Viret's second treatise was largely disseminated in the French capital city since the printed typographical characters match those used by Nicolas Edoard and Charles Pesnot, namely two protestant printers active at the time of the Poissy colloquium. Differing on this particular point from T1, T2 was thus produced at a time when the process of "confession-building" of religious discourses was making it all the more evident that two conflictual and irreconcilable ecclesiologies were at stake within the same kingdom. In short, the religious debates where now deploying under a political spin. Hence, T2 appeared at a very critical moment when religious debates revolved around the political implications of the decline of the Catholic Valois and the rise of the Protestant Bourbons. Less than a year after the publishing of T2, on 2 April 1562, Condé and his Protestant followers seized the city of Orléans. Their example was soon followed by Protestant groups across the realm. The same year saw the outbreak of the first of the eight religious wars that would plague the kingdom during the rest of the century. By his immense literary input, to which our thesis now adds two new primary sources (which the reader will find herein with scientific annotations), and by his intensive fieldwork as a reformer – both in the Genevan-Swiss milieu and in France since the early 1560’s up until his death in 1571 (one year before the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre) – Pierre Viret will have not only been an important witness but a leading protagonist of the debate over the democratization of the Bible in the vernacular and the theological evolution surrounding this major controversy of the Reformation and post-Reformation era.

The main objective of this dissertation is to offer a social analysis of the classicizing historians of late antiquity. It aims to underline the interactions between history-writing and society. The first part presents the biographies of late antique classicising historians, from Eunapius of Sardis to Theophylact Simocatta. It describes the social profile of those historians, while insisting on the interactions between professional career and literary endeavours. The second part explains why most historians were lawyers and analyzes the place history-writing occupies in their social life. The third part deals with the social foundations of history writing. It focuses on the role of rhetorical education in the formation of future historians and shows how the virtues of the historian mirrored the social virtues of late antique elites.

This master’s thesis analyses the place that the dead occupied in the rivalries that took place between Catholics and Protestants in France under the Edict of Nantes. It will be studied through the 3,660 pages of pastor Élie Benoist’s L’Histoire de l’édit de Nantes contenant les choses les plus remarquables qui se sont passées en France avant et après sa publication, à l’occasion de la diversité des Religions : Et principalement les Contraventions, Inexecutions, Chicanes, Artifices, Violences, & autres Injustices, que les Réformez se plaignent d’y avoir souffertes, jusques à l’édit de révocation en Octobre 1685. Avec ce qui a suivi ce nouvel Édit jusques à présent aux attaques perpétrées par les catholiques (1693-1695). This research will thus investigate a subject which has only been superficially studied by the historians of death: the treatment of Protestant dead and cemeteries by the Catholics during the period of application of the Edict of Nantes. In the first chapter, the historiographic assessment of the history of death gives a better understanding of the intellectual and emotional context of Benoist’s references to the dead and to cemeteries. At first glance, they seem to be lost in the overabundance of details that Benoist puts forward to condemn the persecutions that the French Protestants had to suffer between the Wars of Religion and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. But in chapter two, we discover that these testimonies are part of a larger plan that allows the pastor to build his argument on solid evidence. In order to fully grasp the construction of Benoist’s story and the methods he uses to communicate his thoughts, we decided to divide his work in ten periods, separated by events that led to a change in the application of the Edict. We will then be able to understand that, by using a rigorous historic methodology, though marked by rhetorical process that tended toward generalisations, Élie Benoist managed to offer his personal vision of the period, and to defend it through traces of history. Based on this information, we will be able, in chapter three, to study in depth the different aggressions inflicted to Huguenot dead and to show the difference between the aggressions committed by the state, the church and the population. In doing so, we will see that Benoist’s will was not only to promote the value of confessional coexistence, but also, by the litany of the complaints against the Catholic treatment of Huguenot dead, to maybe call his Protestant contemporaries to resistance.

Divination in ancient Greece is a well-known phenomenon, often associated with the emblematic character of the delphic Pythia. Inspired by Apollo, this prophetess delivered her oracles by answering the questions asked to her, and in many ancient texts the oracular consultations are summarized in the form of two complementary statements: "a man asked" and "The god has answered". However, the practices that took place in the oracular sanctuaries can’t be reduced to a tête-à-tête. Far from being limited to an inspired agent, the priestly staff of the oracular sanctuaries was numerous and took part in complex rites to enable the world of men to be put in communication with the gods. This work studies the diversity of these agents and the way in which their interactions allowed the divine word to come out. In the first part, we study the agents who participated in the rites of the seven oracular sanctuaries best attested in the Greek world in the Hellenistic and Roman times: the shrine of Zeus in Dodona, Apollo in Didyma, Claros and Delphi, Trophonios in Lebadeia, Amphiaraos in Oropos and Glykon in Abonoteichos. Each sanctuary is the subject of a chapter in which all the agents, human or not, who took part in the ritual are taken into consideration, in order to reconstitute the rites of questioning the god in their specificity. In a second part, this practice is thought more broadly as an institutional process who associated distinct actors at three different levels: the ceremony, the rite and the verbal exchange.

Communications between France and Canada, in the 18th century, were defined by an annual rhythm marked by the seasons and the dangers of crossing the Atlantic. Louis-Guillaume Verrier was the king’s attorney-general at the Conseil supérieur of Québec between 1728 and 1758. Born in France, he moved to Québec to join the Conseil supérieur at the age of 37. He left us around 200 letters that he received during those 30 years. By reading these documents, we understand the importance of a good organization to make sure that the letters reach their addressee efficiently. All kinds of people write to Verrier, from close members of his family to mere acquaintances who wish to obtain services for a relative in New France. Family and friends of the attorney-general send news of their health and hope that their addressee’s is good too. Verrier also receives a lot of news concerning European politics and administrative or judiciary matters. This reflects (indirectly) Verrier’s desire to be kept informed of what goes on in the world that he left behind, pointing to his attachment to his motherland and the people that he no longer saw, but also a desire to return someday to continue his career. Living in an Atlantic world, Louis-Guillaume Verrier belongs at the same time to Canada, where he lives, and to France, where his relatives’ letters take him each year.

In 1346, Philip VI of Valois enacted the Ordinance of Brunoy. This lengthy document aimed at reorganizing the kingdom’s forest administration in order to ensure that royal forests remained sufficiently profitables and adequately managed. For most of the past century, historians have believed the Ordinance of Brunoy to be the first true expression of the forest policies of the French crown. In reality, Philip VI benefited from a wealth of regulations already in place which had been developped by his predecessors since the beginning of the XIIIth century. It can be argued that the reign of Philip Augustus, and especially his conquest of Normandy in 1204, truly marks the inception of the first forest policies by the French royal government. From that time on, royal forests in Normandy were managed according to a set of strict regulations aiming at limiting usage rights and guaranteeing a steady contribution to the kingdom’s finances. Forests during the Middle Ages served multiple purposes : beside their input in royal finances, they were vital to rural economy, and formed a space over which medieval princes exercised their justice, authority, power and generosity. The study of administrative sources from XIIIth and XIVth Normandy gives a better understanding of the development of these early policies, which revolved around the creation of a new administration headed by the masters of « Eaux et Forêts » and the formulation, under the auspices of common good, of a set of rules and regulations aiming at maintaining a balance between conservation, exploitation and usages. In truth, the forests of medieval Normandy were far from the archetypal woodlands of medieval litterature : they appear as a well delimited and rationalized space, managed and monitered by the king’s officers, and formed an area of contact and conflict between the royal government and the forests’ users.

Ab Herbst 1944 wurden schätzungsweise 12 Millionen Deutsche aus den östlichen Provinzen des Reiches oder aus verschiedenen zentral- und osteuropäischen Ländern Flüchtlinge oder Vertriebene. Dennoch fand die Behandlung dieser Personen nach ihrer Ankunft in den Westzonen in der Historiographie außerhalb Deutschlands bisher kaum Beachtung. Anhand der Untersuchung eines Flüchtlingslagers im oberfränkischen Bamberg, widmet sich diese Masterarbeit dem Ziel, die verschiedenen Gruppen innerhalb der Flüchtlingsbevölkerung zu identifizieren und die komplexen Entscheidungsprozesse der Stadt, der Diözese und der deutschen Hilfsorganisationen bezüglich der Integration der Neuankömmlinge zu analysieren. Vor dem Hintergrund der prekären Wohnungsnot, dem Fehlen von Basisgütern und der Politisierung der humanitären Hilfen, hebt diese Studie die Unterschiede, sowie die Bevorzugung einzelner Flüchtlingsgruppen zum Nachteil anderer hervor. Diese Arbeit widmet sich in besonderem Maße der Geschlechter- und Sozialgeschichte, um die in der traditionellen Geschichtsschreibung häufig vernachlässigten historischen Analysekategorien miteinzubeziehen. Weiterhin liegt der Fokus auf den deutschen Nachkriegsdebatten zur Entwicklung einer neuen Ordnung von Politik, Ökonomie, Gesellschaft und Geschlecht. Ich werde daher versuchen, im Kontext der aufkommenden Viktimisierung im Zuge der Gestaltung einer westdeutschen Identität und Erinnerungskultur, zu verstehen wie und warum manche Gruppen eher Zugang zu Nahrung, Wohnraum, Arbeit und medizinischer Versorgung erhielten als andere.

Charles the Bald’s reign was a period of political and ideological transformations for the carolingian royalty. The troubles with the Breton and Spanish march along with the external raids are probably the sources of tension which have captured the most attention from medievalists. The so-called armorican emancipatory quest or the personal and familial ambitions of the septimanian and iberian magnates are still cited as evidences of the weakening of Carolingian political power following the 843 treaty of Verdun. By focusing on the king’s conflict resolution policies in these two territories, apparently hostile to his power, this study wants to establish wheter the tensions in the marches were as complex and irremediable as the primary sources suggested. By comparing the field policies visible in the royal charters, we noticed that theses troubles were not fundamentally different from those present elsewhere in the kingdom. The strategies employed by the king shows that the royalty had the means to overcome these obstacles and to affirm his political supremacy. Noticeably, these oppositions do not seem to be so particular. The political and economic issues that they were impliying were reflecting the main political concerns of the Carolingian kings following the 840-843 civil war. It was important to them to promote their divine legitimacy as well as appearing as the only political choice for the kingdom’s elites.

From 1635 onward, Tokugawa Japan closed itself to any type of foreign trade, with the establishment of the isolationist policy of sakoku, and only merchants operating on behalf of the Dutch East India Company were permitted to trade in the country, on a limited basis. It was in this context that the True Description of the Mighty Kingdoms of Japan and Siam was written, in 1636, by a Protestant Dutch merchant known as François Caron. The work, a brief administrative document, which was not initially intended for publication, was a great success from its first publication in 1661, and was translated into several languages. As part of this thesis, we will study the impact of the True Description on perceptions of the Japanese in 17th century France, through the rich descriptions made by its author of the society and culture of Edo Japan. To do this, we will first analyze the writings of the Jesuits, who were the first to build a particular image of the Japanese and to have a lasting influence on the way they were described and perceived. Secondly, we will analyze in detail the content of the True Description in order to determine the image that a Dutch merchant of the 17th century may have had of Japan and its people. As a conclusion, we will examine the influence of the True Description on the way French authors wrote about Japan from the end of the 17th century to the beginning of the Enlightenment.

Known to the scholarly milieu of historians, Roman history reached the general public during the 20th century in various forms: cinema, literature, schools and museum exhibitions. The emperor Augustus is important in Roman history for his transformative role of the Roman world. Born in 63 BC and died in 14 AD, Augustus became the founder of a new political regime, the Principate, replacing the Roman Republic, and making Augustus the first Emperor. He thus marks the history of the Roman Empire until its fall, and will still influence the entire European and Western world twenty centuries later. In 1937, the Mostra Augustea della Romanità is an Italian exhibition organized under the fascist regime celebrating the “idea of Rome” – the Romanità –, and wanting to amalgamate Augustus with Mussolini. This exhibition is analyzed in comparison with two other exhibitions (Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik, Berlin, 1988; and Augusto/Moi, Auguste, Empereur de Rome, Rome/Paris, 2013/2014). The research focuses on the museum representation of Augustus and on the relation of the historiography still evolving with each exhibition. The exhibition catalogs are the main source for exhibited artifacts, themes, research, and storytelling. Each exhibition is put in its context and compared to their contemporary historiography, centered on outstanding works of their time. Thus, these exhibitions are tinted by their time, but in turn influence contemporary and future popular historical culture and as for academia. Museological work is not only popularization of historical discourse for the general public, but also participatory work in historiography.

This thesis analyses the women that came before the judiciary system in Montreal for a question of honour between 1698 and 1756. The analysis focuses on the power dynamics experience by these women. Seduction, rape, prostitution and slander trial archives serve as the basis for this study. In eighteenth-century Montreal, honour an essential capital to possess because without it women could experience marginalization within the society. Female honour essentially linked to their sexuality and the justice system going to either help or harm the women depending on the transgression of the sexual norms in place in the society. The analysis will focus on the litigants, on the power dynamics between the women and the men and between the women themselves. On the one hand, this study accords an extreme importance to the agency of the principal actors in the trials. On the other hand, this study focuses on the intersectional power dynamics. In this thesis, we ask: how does gender, race and social status influence the course of justice? Does justice play the same role for every woman in a trial linked to her honour? Which factors influence the differential treatment of the women during a trial? I will answer these questions by analyzing the litigants, the power dynamics between the men and the women and between the women themselves and the relations between the women, their family and the society.

While Caesar and his writings have been thoroughly studied for the past two centuries, it is time to make use of a new approach pioneered by Arthur M. Eckstein to study him. In his Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome Eckstein argues that Rome opportunistically conquered Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean through a series of defensive wars or “invitations”. What is novel about this approach is its use of political science paradigms, with a heavy emphasis on the concept of the realist anarchy. As such, using Eckstein’s framework and applying it to Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum this thesis shows that Caesar, contrarily to traditional historiography, did not conquer Gaul out of sheer bellicosity and personal ambition, but rather, as a result of a direct invitation from Rome’s Gallic allies to defensively interfere on their behalf in an act of bellum iustum. To do so, we will demonstrate that a state of anarchy exists in Gaul in accordance to Eckstein’s wider Mediterranean system. After which, a detailed analysis of Caesar’s De Bello Gallico will outline the specific instances in which Caesar opportunistically used this pre-existing anarchy to his advantage, before finally delving into the specificities of the “invitations” along with an analysis of Caesar’s use of aggressive diplomacy. To achieve this, we used first and foremost, Caesar’s commentaries as the primary sources, while Eckstein’s aforementioned work gave us the interpretative concepts and theoretical basis we needed; additionally, we drew on multiple supplementary primary sources and the surrounding relevant scholarship. After we demonstrated that Gaul was an anarchic system, we successfully applied Eckstein’s model, and its results clearly showed that the Gauls’ bellicosity against each other blinded them to the Roman danger, which Caesar used to systematically intervene, filling the power vacua left behind in his wake. This model is important because it provides us with an alternate explanation to the Roman conquest of Gaul, using one of history’s sister disciplines, political science. With this approach’s viability proven, it opens the door for vast other studies, in this as of yet, unexplored direction.