Daniel Roche (26 July 1935 – 19 February 2023) was a French social and cultural historian, widely recognized as one of the foremost experts of his generation on the cultural history of France during the later years of the Ancien Régime. Roche was elected an International member of the American Philosophical Society in 2009.
Death
Roche died on 19 February 2023, at the age of 87.
Historiography
Roche produced over two hundred publications covering a broad variety of subjects within the social and cultural history of France and Europe under the Old Regime.<ref>{ { cite news|first=Timothy|last=Tackett|title=Forum: The Work of Daniel Roche, Introduction," French Historical Studies|volume=27|issue=4|year=2004|page=723}}</ref>
Roche’s research had a significant impact on the historical study of the Enlightenment and 18th-century France in general. He has made significant use of hitherto ignored notarial archive sources such as post-mortem inventories, which have yielded insight into the basic material culture of Paris and the rise of consumerism during the 18th century. Roche has largely defined the study of ‘everyday items’ (les choses banales).
The social changes that took place over the course of the Enlightenment in France figured prominently in Roche’s research. The broad scope of Roche’s research into the Enlightenment included diverse areas such as public institutions and clothing worn by the popular classes.
Notable works
Le Siècle des Lumières en Province
Roche’s doctoral thesis was published in 1978 under the title Le Siècle des Lumières en Province: Académies et Académiciens Provinciaux, 1680–1789 (The Enlightenment in the Provinces: Provincial Academies and Academics, 1680–1789) and was quickly met with praise not only as a work of social cultural history, but also for its value as a study of the history of science. In Le Siècle des Lumières en Province, Roche conducts an in-depth examination of academic institutions outside of Paris from the late 17th century up to the onset of the French revolution. Roche argues that the provincial academies (under the patronage of the French monarchy) both protected and weakened the French state, demonstrating that the relationship between the Ancien Régime and the Enlightenment that took place over the course of the 18th century was complex as opposed to strictly oppositional.Le Siècle des Lumières en Province remains a highly influential work in the historiography of 18th-century intellectual trends. The French Enlightenment is shown to be complicated where the relationship between state and academy is concerned. The historian Isabel Knight notes that the academic movement that Roche details “both displayed and mediated the tension between established and emerging classes, between tradition and innovation, and between ideology and criticism.”
Le Peuple de ParisLe Peuple de Paris. Essai sur la Culture Populaire au XVIIIe Siècle (The People of Paris. Essay on Popular Culture in the Eighteenth Century) was published in 1981. It is a study of the everyday lives of the more ordinary people living in Paris during the Enlightenment who, despite living in poor conditions, underwent a degree of improvement over the course of the century in terms of material culture and consumption.
In Le Peuple de Paris, Roche presents an innovation in terms of source material by making extensive use of inventories (lists of belongings drawn upon a person’s death) to provide an accurate depiction of the state of material culture. The historian David Garrioch, a historian of revolutionary Paris, calls Le Peuple de Paris “an important book not only for the new information and insights if gave, but also for its innovative methodology and the new questions it posed.”