Kenneth Moure, PhD

About

I am a historian of Modern France with research interests in economic policy and the politics and diplomacy of economic crises in twentieth-century Europe.

My main teaching and research interests are in Modern European history, with a focus on the twentieth century and France. My current courses include the history of capitalism, the history of Paris, and the global history of the Second World War. My background includes training in economics as well as history, and a strong interest in cultural representations of historical experience. My undergraduate courses use a combination of primary sources, historical analyses, and cultural representations, especially from literature and film.

Marché Noir: The Economy of Survival in Second World War France, in press (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

The Gold Standard Illusion: France, the Bank of France and the International Gold Standard, 1914-1939 (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Crisis and Renewal in France, 1918-1962, co-edited with Martin S. Alexander, (New York: Berghahn Books, 2002).

La politique du franc Poincaré: perception de l’économie et contraintes politiques dans la stratégie monétaire de la France, 1926-1936 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1998; revised and augmented ed. of CUP book, also published in Japanese translation by Koyo Shobo, 1997).

Managing the Franc Poincaré: Economic Understanding and Political Constraint in French Monetary Policy 1928-1936 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991; pbk ed. 2002).

My current research explores French experience with shortages, economic controls and black markets during and after World War II. I have explored some aspects of this topic area in published journal articles and chapters, including articles on food rationing, black market restaurants, consumer culture, the activity of "faux policiers" during the war (people claiming to be police, and use the enforcement of economic controls as a ruse for theft and extortion), and depictions of wartime economic survival in postwar fiction and film. I have just completed a book on the black market in France from 1939 to 1950. My current research looks at food supply in Occupied Europe and the postwar years of continuing shortages.

"Black Market Logic: Meat Supply in Vichy France," Global Food History 10, no. 3 (2024): 289-305.  [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20549547.2024.2313909]

"'Economic Tyranny' and Public Anger in France, 1945-1947," Contemporary European History 33, no. 2 (2024): 445-458. [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/contemporary-european-history/article/economic-tyranny-and-public-anger-in-france-19451947/4FB7CC320290C4168F1A0546ABEBF3C9#article]

“Spearhead Currency: Monetary Sovereignty and the Liberation of France,” International History Review 42, no. 2 (2020): 278-297.

"Soigner le thermomètre plutôt que le malade: L'échec du contrôle des prix en France (1940-1948), in Pour une histoire sociale et politique de l'économie, ed. by Danièle Fraboulet and Philippe Verheyde (Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2020), 267-280

“Capitalism’s Black Heart in Wartime France,” in Capitalism’s Hidden Worlds ed. by Kenneth Lipartito and Lisa Jacobson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), 139-156.

“Money in Wars,” Handbook of the History of Money and Currency, ed. by Stefano Battilossi, Youssef Cassis and Kazuhiko Yago (Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 2018), 26p. [https://doi.org/10.1007/978- 981-10-0622-7_39-1] 

“Ce roi devient valet: les consommateurs dans un marché contrôlé,” in “Les trames de l’histoire: entreprises, territoires, consommations, institutions: Mélanges en l'honneur de Jean-Claude Daumas, ed. by Jean-Paul Barrière, Régis Boulat, Alain Chatriot and Pierre Lamard (Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2017), 443-451.