diplomatic history in the Recueil des Instructions données aux ambassadeurs (vols. vii. and ix., 1890 and 1891). He was not improbably moved by considerations of foreign policy to publish his Russes et Prussiens, guerre de Sept Ans (1895), a popular work, though based on solid research. After teaching history in the Faculties of Arts at Caen (1871) and Nancy (1873), he was called to the Sorbonne (1883), where he was the first to occupy the chair of contemporary history. By this time he had already entered into politics; he had been chef du cabinet of Jules Ferry (1879–1881), though this did not distract him from his literary work. It was under these conditions that he composed his Histoire de la civilisation française (2 vols., 1885, 1887; 9th ed., 1901) and his Histoire de la civilisation contemporaine en France (1888; new ed. entirely revised, 1906), and undertook the general editorship of the Histoire générale du IVe siècle jusqu'à nos jours. The plan of this great work had been drawn up with the aid of Ernest Lavisse, but the entire supervision of its execution was carried out by Rambaud. He contributed to it himself some interesting chapters on the history of the East, of which he had a thorough knowledge. In 1885 Rambaud published, in collaboration with J. B. Baille, a French translation of J.R. Seeley's Expansion of England, and in the preface he laid great emphasis on the enormous increase of power brought to England by the possession of her colonies, seeing in this a lesson for France. He was anxious to see the rise of a Greater France, on the model of Greater Britain, and it was with this idea that he undertook to present to the public a series of essays written by famous explorers or political men, under the title of La France coloniale, histoire, geographie, commerce (1886; 6th ed., 1893). Having become senator for the département of Doubs (1895–1902), Rambaud held the position of minister of Public Instruction from 29 April 1896 to 28 June 1898, and in that capacity endeavoured to carry on the educational work of Jules Ferry, to whose memory he always remained faithful. He dedicated to his former chief a book (Jules Ferry, 1903), which is a valuable testimony to the efforts made by France to organize public education and found a colonial empire; but this fidelity also won him some enemies, who