This is an important book on a topic that fills a gap much in need of filling in our knowledge of early modern France. Strangely, however, most historians have been completely unaware that local history writing even was a topic, never mind such an important one. And this is because, as the author notes, “local historians and their works remained largely invisible” in the works of the major writers of the Republic of Letters in the period, as well as among the works of national historians of France (350). Thus, in the historical writings of nationally and internationally known figures such as Joseph Scaliger, Jacques-Auguste de Thou, and Pierre Bayle, the voluminous writings of local historians play very little part. As a result, the local histories of the sixteenth and seventeenth century have also been largely invisible in the works of contemporary historians of until very recently. Hilary Bernstein's Historical Communities contributes to a growing list of works by scholars in the last twenty-five years or so who have taken the work of local historians seriously. They have provided a new and overlooked dimension to what we know about historical writing in early modern France. Thus, the work of Bernstein and others has complemented, supplemented, and significantly updated older works by Donald Kelley, George Huppert, and Orest Ranum. What is different about Historical Communities and makes it stand out from all the other work done on local history in the last few decades is that most of the latter work is based on one city or region. Bernstein has chosen a much more comprehensive approach, analyzing local histories written all over France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it is based on an impressive amount of research among scores of local histories and unpublished sources in several dozen national and local archives.

The main argument of the book is that local historians writing from the mid-sixteenth to late seventeenth century in France played a vital and significant role in the Republic of Letters and in national history writing, even though they were largely invisible in the writings of the major national writers and historians of the period. The author clearly shows that they were in contact with them, however, and not only provided many of the sources for their work but also made available to them many of the local archives to which they might otherwise not have had access. At the same time, the book illustrates how many of these local historians also advanced the methodology of writing history based on a more critical evaluation of sources a century before Jean Mabillon, who is usually credited with this achievement. In short, what is most successful about Historical Communities is how the author makes a very convincing case for why local histories are very important to the national narrative of the history of early modern France, and she clearly makes them visible where up until now they have been invisible. Indeed, Bernstein makes it clear that the work of the national historians and august figures who dominated the Republic of Letters in France would have been much poorer without the contributions of local historians. This is no mean achievement.

But, as readers of this journal might rightly ask, in what sense is Historical Communities a book about the history of religion in general and church history in particular? In fact, Bernstein shows explicitly that religion was central to local history writing in early modern France. At the end of the civil wars, national historians, both Catholic and Protestant, chose to present a France that was reunited in peace after the confessional violence of the Wars of Religion. Thus, in the seventeenth century, national histories eschewed the ideological and confessional polemics of the civil wars and portrayed a France with a strong Catholic monarch who ruled a kingdom in which both Catholics and Huguenots were loyal subjects of the king. In other words, they took seriously the Edict of Nantes's command to forget past troubles. Local historians, on the other hand, especially on the Catholic side, continued the polemics of the civil wars and persisted in referring to Huguenots as heretics and enemies of the state. At the local level, at least, some historians chose not to forget the troubled past and perpetuated confessional divisions long after 1598.

But there were also divisions among Catholic local historians over how best to narrate their past. In Reims, for example, there were competing historical narratives between the royal historiographer, André Duchesne, who wanted to write a history of Reims stressing the independence of the bourgeois of the town extending back to Gallic times. This narrative was in direct tension with the history of Reims written by the canon of the cathedral, which stressed the prestige of the archbishops and their authority over the city since the twelfth century as dukes and first peers of the realm. And there were also competing histories of the civil wars in Le Mans and Orléans, where Catholic historians Claude Blondeau and François Le Maire, respectively, were harshly criticized by some of their Catholic readers for giving even-handed and unbiased accounts of the civil wars, for not endorsing local superstitions about the role of local saints and miracles, and even for being willing to use some Huguenot sources. Thus, religion figured heavily in these local histories.

In summary, this is a book as erudite as the many local histories that Bernstein has analyzed. She shows that historians mattered in early modern France. They “helped to channel important civic debates about how competing claims for authority should be weighed and legitimized” (363). This is still our job today, which we ignore at our peril.