Alan Forrest
Professor Emeritus in History

Profile

Biography

MA (Aberdeen), DPhil (Oxon), FRHS

Alan Forrest was Professor of Modern History at York from 1989 until his retirement from the University in 2012. During that time he served as Head of Department, as Director of the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, and as Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research).  Between 2005 and 2009 he led a research project on ‘The Experience of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board (today the AHRC).

His principal research interests lie in history of the French Revolution and Napoleon, the history of war, and the study of experience and memory; he is also increasingly interested in France’s global links with the rest of the world.

Since retiring from York Alan Forrest has remained active researching and publishing in these areas. Recent books include Waterloo, in Oxford’s ‘Great Battles’ series, which examines the different ways in which the battle was remembered and commemorated in the nations represented on the battlefield; and The Death of the French Atlantic, also for Oxford University Press, which discusses the importance of trade, war and slavery in the crisis afflicting France’s Atlantic ports in the Age of Revolution. In 2016, he co-edited, with Matthias Middell (University of Leipzig), The Routledge Companion to the French Revolution in World History.

He is currently preparing, as general editor, a three-volume Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars for Cambridge University Press. This is expected to be published in 2022.

In 2010-11 he was awarded a six-month fellowship at the Institut d’Etudes Avancées in Nantes, He also held a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship between 2015 and 2017.

Between 2018 to 2020, with colleagues at the State Academic University for the Humanities in Moscow (GAUGN), he led a research project on ‘The spread of liberal ideas from France in the Age of Revolution and the contrasting responses of regions of traditional culture’. The project brought together academics, young researchers and graduate students, and was funded by a Mega-grant from the Russian Ministry of Education and Science.

Since retirement Alan Forrest continues to work with the International Commission on the History of the French Revolution, a commission of the World Historical Congress (CISH), serving as president from 2005-15 and vice-president between 2000-05 and 2015-20.  He also serves on the editorial board of the journal War in History and on the comité scientifique of the Annales historiques de la Révolution Française.

With Rafe Blaufarb (Florida State University, Tallahassee) and Karen Hagemann (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), he is a series editor for Palgrave-Macmillan for works on War, Culture and Society, 1750-1850. To date the series contains over 40 volumes, both monographs and edited collections; further volumes are under contract or in preparation.

And since 2019 he has served as a trustee on the British Napoleonic Bicentenary Trust, which aims to promote public education on, and preservation of, the heritage of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena with a particular emphasis on sites related to the incarceration of Napoleon Bonaparte on the island.

Publications

Selected publications

Authored books

Edited Books

(with Peter Jones), Reshaping France: Town, Country and Region during the French Revolution (258pp. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 1991)

(with Malcolm Crook and William Doyle), Enlightenment and Revolution. Essays in Honour of Norman Hampson (223pp., Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).

(with Philip G. Dwyer), Napoleon and his Empire. Europe, 1804-1814 (248pp., Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

(with Karen Hagemann and Jane Rendall), Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians: Experiences and Perceptions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1790-1820 (251pp. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)

(with Peter H. Wilson), The Bee and the Eagle: Napoleonic France and the End of the Holy Roman Empire, 1806 (295pp. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)

(with Etienne François and Karen Hagemann), War Memories: The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in Modern European Culture (414pp. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)

(with Matthias Middell), The Routledge Companion to the French Revolution in World History (349pp. London: Routledge, 2016)

(with Karen Hagemann and Michael Rowe), War, Demobilization and Memory: The Legacy of War in the Era of Atlantic Revolution (416pp. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)