List of French historians

[a] Other major French chroniclers, annalists, philosophers, or other writers are included if they have important historical output.

Red links below with a suffixed language code in brackets indicate articles available only at French Wikipedia.

Before that, it was exercised as a literary pursuit by amateurs such as Voltaire, Jules Michelet, and François Guizot.

The transition to an academic discipline first occurred in Germany under historian Leopold von Ranke who began offering his university seminar in history in 1833.

Historians active in France at the time such as Henri Sée [fr] inherited the principles of a new academic discipline from Ranke and earlier mentors including Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges.