Daniel Roche (historian)

[5] Roche produced over two hundred publications covering a broad variety of subjects within the social and cultural history of France and Europe under the Old Regime.

He has made significant use of hitherto ignored notarial archive sources such as post-mortem inventories, which have yielded insight into the basic material culture of Paris and the rise of consumerism during the 18th century.

[8] In Le Siècle des Lumières en Province, Roche conducts an in-depth examination of academic institutions outside of Paris from the late 17th century up to the onset of the French Revolution.

The historian Isabel Knight notes that the academic movement that Roche details “both displayed and mediated the tension between established and emerging classes, between tradition and innovation, and between ideology and criticism.”[10] Le Peuple de Paris.

[13] La Culture des Apparences has been praised for its inherent value as a study of clothing in history, as well as for building upon the innovative use of inventories as sources first seen in Le Peuple de Paris.

[15] Roche argues that the cultural history of the 18th century as a complex period of progress divided between “those who favored a broadening of cultural opportunities...and those who favored limiting such opportunities.”[16] Also central to the La France des Lumières is the establishment of certain preconditions for the progressive social transformation that took place during the Enlightenment, specifically that criticisms of all aspects of human behavior arose, the symbols of monarchy were gradually eroded, and a space formed for political activity in spite of French society’s nature and traditions as a monarchical state.

[19] However, such a criticism neglects the fact that Roche did indeed devote considerable attention to the material world of the urban poor in his classic, Le Peuple de Paris (1981).

[22] Such a criticism overlooks the fact that Roche did indeed devote considerable attention to the "two worlds of Paris" in the Enlightenment – that of the impoverished masses from which many of Darnton's Grub Street came – and that of the wealthy elites.