Roland Mousnier (1907–1993)

Roland Mousnier was born in Paris, France, and attended the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly and Lycée Condorcet. He studied at the Sorbonne and the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes and received the agrégation (civil service exam) to teach history and geography in 1931. Between 1932 and 1947, he was a teacher at the Lycées Corneille in Rouen, and Janson-de-Sailly and Saint-Louis in Paris. In 1934, he married Jeanne Lecacheur. During World War II, he joined the Resistance. According to American historian Sharon Kettering, Prof. Mousnier was arrested by the Gestapo in Rouen and narrowly escaped deportation to Germany. After earning his doctorate in 1945, he became first a lecturer and then a professor at the University of Strasbourg and at the Sorbonne. Taking a keen interest in social history, he went to the USA to study sociology and anthropology. He became a well-known intellectual of the Catholic right in France, and a historian of the early modern period and of comparative studies of different civilizations. He was elected in 1977 to the Académie des sciences morales et politiques (Academy of Moral and Political Sciences). Following the events of May 1968, he agreed to teach at the free Faculté libre internationale pluridisciplinaire (Multidisciplinary International Free Faculty or FACLIP). He served as chairman of the French National Committee of Historians from 1971 to 1975.