After 1945 what happened was rather the opposite: with one major exception boundaries stayed broadly intact and people were moved instead.

My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books.

Unlike memory, which confirms and reinforces itself, history contributes to the disenchantment of the world.

If active or concerned citizens forfeit politics, they thereby abandon their society to its most mediocre and venal public servants

I'm not sure I've learned anything new about life; but I've had to think harder about death and what comes after for other people.

The 60s were a continuation of the 50s much more than people realized. Certainly in some countries, like Britain, there was still a culture of deference, whereas in the 70s we really are in a time of angry transition. The generation that came into young adulthood in the 70s couldn't find jobs; that wasn't true in my generation. They entered a time when two depressing things hit them both at the same time.

I started work on my first French history book in 1969; on 'Socialism in Provence' in 1974; and on the essays in Marxism and the French Left in 1978. Conversely, my first non-academic publication, a review in the 'TLS', did not come until the late 1980s, and it was not until 1993 that I published my first piece in the 'New York Review.'