»Les Maires en France du Consulat à nos jours« im Spiegel der aktuellen Geschichtsforschung

The volume »Les Maires en France du Consulat à nos jours«, published in France in 1986, was the first historical work to open long-term perspectives on French mayors in the 19th and 20th century. On the one hand, these perspectives resulted from the data obtained within the framework of a quantitative long-term analysis; on the other hand, they relied on qualitative explorations of selected administrative units or regions. In re-reading »Les Maires en France du Consulat à nos jours«, this article shows that the volume has remained a reference work for the history of French municipalities until today, even though it does not always allow answering current research questions.