Rambaud, Alfred

Born July 2, 1842, in Besançon; died Nov. 10, 1905, in Paris. French historian and statesman. Member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (1897).

Rambaud graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in 1864. He became a professor at the Sorbonne in 1881. He was a member of the Senate from 1895–1903 and minister of education from 1896 to 1898.

Rambaud was sent on several diplomatic missions to Russia. He was particularly interested in political history, mainly of Byzantium, Russia, and Germany, and the history of international relations. Rambaud was an adherent of rapprochement between France and Russia; his chief historical works, written from a viewpoint of moderate bourgeois liberalism, dealt with Russia’s history. With E. Lavisse, Rambaud edited the famous collectively authored Universal History From the Fourth Century to the Present (vols. 1–12, 1893–1901). The first eight volumes were published in Russian translation under the same title (1897–1903); the remaining volumes of the French edition were published in Russian as The History of the 19th Century (vols. 1–8, 1905–07).