Henri Hauser

French academic (1866–1946)

Henri Hauser (19 July 1866 – 27 May 1946) was a French historian, geographer, and economist. A pioneer in the study of the economic history of the early modern period, he also wrote on contemporary economic issues and held the first chair in economic history to be established at a French university. He was born in Oran into a middle class Jewish family who had moved to French Algeria for health reasons but returned to France when Hauser was four years old. Hauser was educated at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris and then at the École Normale Supérieure where he came first in both the entrance and leaving examinations. He initially taught in provincial lycées before taking his doctorate in 1892 with a thesis on the 16th century Huguenot leader, François de la Noue. Hauser went on to become a professor of ancient and medieval history at the University of Clermont Ferrand, modern history and geography at the University of Dijon, and finally a professor of history and economic history at the Sorbonne from 1919 to 1936. His 1905 book L'impérialisme américain predicted the decline of Europe and the dominance of the United States, while his 1915 Méthodes allemandes d'expansion économique analyzed the role played by German industry in the outbreak of World War I. His doctoral dissertation, supervised by Gabriel Monod, was on the 16th century Huguenot leader, François de la Noue. It was published by Hachette that same year and reviewed by Jean Réville in the Revue de l'histoire des religions. Réville noted the dissertation's erudition and the new light shed on de la Noue's reputation by Hauser's study.

Hauser's first university appointment was as a lecturer (chargé de cours) in ancient and medieval history at the University of Clermont Ferrand in 1893. There he published several studies which continued to shed new light on the religious and economic history of the 16th century, including Voyage du Levant. Hauser had discovered Philippe Canaye's hitherto unpublished account of his 1573 voyage to Constantinople in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. He translated the Italian manuscript and published it in 1897 with extensive notes and a biography of Canaye which corrected many errors in previous accounts of his life. Hauser was promoted to Professor of History at Clermont Ferrand in 1896 and remained at the university until 1899 when the Dreyfus Affair made his position untenable. During that year he established a section of the Ligue des droits de l'homme at Clermont Ferrand and gave a series of public lectures attacking the conviction of Dreyfus for treason as "illegal". Hauser wrote, "I want a France great and noble, a France faithful to its mission of justice and truth." Antisemitic students at the university and the right wing press attacked him as a "traitor" and a "Prussian". in 1921, and in 1927 was given the university's first chair in economic history. According to cultural historian Pim den Boer, Hauser was "exceptionally knowledgeable about a wide range of subjects" which was reflected in his scholarship. Throughout his career Hauser's approach was a multidisciplinary one and emphasized the roles played by both economics and geography in historical scholarship, views expressed as early as his 1903 L'enseignement des sciences sociales and his influential 1906 essay "La Géographie humaine et l'histoire économique". He also co authored two books on the geography of France and its colonies with Joseph Fèvre: Régions et pays de France (1909) and Notre Empire colonial (1910). During World War I Hauser worked as an advisor to Étienne Clémentel, France's Minister of Commerce and later sat on the economic committee at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Henri Hauser and Henri Hitier co directed a major inquiry into French manufacturing in 1915–16 for the National Association of Economic Expansion. The inquiry was supervised by Paul de Rousiers. Hauser's Méthodes allemandes d'expansion économique in which he analyzed the role played by German industry in the outbreak of the war had been published in 1915. The book was translated into English by Manfred Emanuel and Hauser and was published in London in 1917 and New York in 1918 as Germany's Commercial Grip on the World. The American edition came out as Germany's defeat seemed imminent and the allied powers were contemplating the terms of an eventual peace treaty. In his preface to that edition James Laurence Laughlin wrote:

I know of no other available authority who has so fully and so intelligently explained the methods by which Germany has gained her remarkable position in the markets of the world. [ ] This volume is as necessary to us as to the French. After World War I ended, Hauser returned to his primary specialty, the history of the early modern period, but continued to publish on many contemporary historical, economic and geographical subjects. According to den Boer, one of Hauser's finest historical works from this period was his 1933 La prépondérance espagnole (1559 1660) which he characterised as "rightly considered a masterly and original synthesis." It echoes the view of Augustin Renaudet in a paper read at a meeting of the Société d'Histoire Moderne shortly after Hauser's death. In the interwar period Hauser had an increasingly international presence. Between 1918 and 1920, he regularly visited Alfred Zimmern in Oxford University and Zimmern was also frequently in Paris to work on the post war diplomatic conditions. In 1923, Hauser was invited by Edwin F. Gay to be an exchange professor at Harvard University where he taught an economics course and gave various lectures both at the university and in other American cities. In 1929 he was invited to give conferences and lectures at King's College London and the London School of Economics where he became one of the founder members of the International scientific committee on price history led by William Beveridge. At his encouragement, Pierre Monbeig focused his doctoral dissertation on the first settlements in Brazil. Hauser was also a pillar of the Alliance Française. He and his brother Félix Paul had become members in the late 1880s, only a few years after its founding. He was appointed to its administrative council in 1912, contributed numerous articles on French historical figures to its publications, and was elected its vice president in 1933.

Hauser retired from the University of Paris in 1936 at the age of 70 with Marc Bloch succeeding him in the chair of economic history, but he continued his scholarly work and publication in the ensuing years. Amongst the works he produced after his retirement was La naissance du Protestantisme which won the 1941 Prix Eugène Carrière of the Académie française. In June 1942 Hauser was warned that his name was on a list of persons to be arrested the following day. efn|Hauser was warned of his impending arrest by a university student who had been requisitioned as a translator for the German military command in Rennes. With the liberation of France in 1944 Hauser and his family moved to Montpellier, hoping to return to Paris once an apartment could be found. However, Hauser's health began to fail and he died in Montpellier on 27 May 1946, shortly before his 80th birthday. His funeral, like his wedding, was a non religious ceremony. According to Hauser, he had lost his religious faith when preparing for his Bar Mitzvah and "everything in the synagogue seemed dead". Hauser married Thérèse Franck on 3 September 1888 in a non religious wedding ceremony, which drew disapproval from their Jewish families and from his Catholic classmates at the École Normale. Alice married Jean Dabert, a lawyer from Metz, in 1922. The following year their daughter Françoise was born. Hauser's elder brother, Félix Paul, died in 1916. He had a long career in the French civil service, primarily in French Indochina, and was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1909 for his role in the Colonial Exhibition of Marseille. Henri Hauser's great grandson, Denis Crouzet, followed in his footsteps and became a specialist in the history of the Reformation and a professor at the Sorbonne. He is the son of the historian François Crouzet and Hauser's granddaughter Françoise Dabert Hauser. Hauser's account of his childhood and youth and his family's history appears in his unfinished memoirs, Souvenirs d'un vieux grand père à sa petite fille (Memories of an Old Grandfather for his Granddaughter). The draft of the memoirs was amongst the papers Hauser had to leave behind in Rennes in his flight from the city in 1942. One of the professors at the university there hid the papers in his own house for the remainder of the war and was later able to return the draft to Hauser's widow. Extracts from the memoirs were published in 2006 in Henri Hauser (1866 1946): humaniste, historien, républicain. The book is a collection of papers delivered at a two day international colloquium on the life and work of Hauser held in January 2003 at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.