Abstract
“Beneath the exterior of a man of the north,” Alexandre Ribot wrote late in life, “I have had something of the vivacity of the Midi.”1 In this characteristic statement of balance, he referred to family ancestry at Toulouse in the south of France which, by the eighteenth century, had been firmly transplanted to the Flanders lowland. Alexandre Ribot was born at Saint Omer on February 6, 1842 into the secure environment that a banking family can give. The origins of the family’s success, however, lay twenty miles northeast at Calais, the port city on the Strait of Dover. The Ribotte family — the spelling of the surname changed only in the 1840’s - had adapted well to the active commercial life of the city. It was Alexandre’s father who realized the potential of this family of wholesale merchants and aubergistes. In 1827 he and a first cousin pooled their capital to found a company for the manufacture of tulle, and the rising market for this Calaisian export commodity quickly made the partnership a successful one. Less than a decade later, Alexandre Joseph Ribotte invested his profits and moved to Saint Omer to begin a new career. There he married Zoé Leducq, a young woman half his age. Alexandre, their first child, was born three years later. Two daughters followed to complete the family.
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Notes
“Adolescence et jeunesse,” Ribot MSS.
Ibid.
Speech by Ribot at annual distribution of prizes, Lycée Condorcet, 30 July 1892, newspaper clipping, n.d., Ribot MSS.
An excellent analysis of Ribot’s youthful temperament is given in an eulogy by Henri Robert (Institut de France: Académie française, Discours prononcés … pour la réception de Henri Robert [No. 11; Paris: Firmin-Didot et Cie, 1924, pp. 7–13]).
Lycée Impérial Bonaparte, Distribution des prix Année 1860 (Paris: 1860).
Alexandre Ribot, Notice sur Eugène Boucher (Paris: Alcan-Lévy, 1888), p. 6.
Ibid., p. 1.
Ribot to Eugène Boucher, personal letter, 3 August 1873, Ribot MSS.
Memoir on Armand Demongeot, 15 March 1875, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 15 March 1875, Ribot MSS.
Charles Lyon-Caen, Notice sur la vie et les travaux de M. Alexandre Ribot (Institut de France: Académie des sciences morales et politiques, session publique, 20 décembre 1924), p. 38.
“Règlement,” 16 March 1871, fol. 1 recto, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 10–11 September [1864], Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 28 September 1861, typescript copy, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letters, 1 and 26 October 1862, Ribot MSS. Ernest Duvergier’s published account of his travels in the North during 1864–1865 drew similar contrasts between French and American experience (Albert Krebs [ed.], Les États-Unis pendant la guerre de sécession. Vus par un journaliste français: Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne [Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1966]).
Alexandre Ribot, Notice sur Eugène Boucher, pp. 7–8.
Pierre Sorlin, Waldeck-Rousseau (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1966), pp. 94–95.
“Adolescence et jeunesse,” Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 17 August 1866, Ribot MSS.
Alexandre Ribot, Biographie de lord Erskine (Paris: Armand Le Chevalier, 1866), pp. 5–14.
Pierre de la Gorce, “Le Barreau sous le Second Empire,” La Revue de Paris, XL (15 May 1933), 246.
“Adolescence et jeunesse,” Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 17 August 1866, Ribot MSS.
Émile Boutmy, Taine, Scherer, Laboulaye (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1901), pp. 117–118.
Bulletin de la société de législation comparée, No. 1, March 1869 (Paris: Cotillon et fils, 1872), pp. 2–6.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 16 September 1869, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 1 September 1866, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letters, 30 April and 11 May 1869, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 25 May 1869, typescript copy, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 28 March 1870, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letters, 24 April, 5 and 9 May 1870, Ribot MSS.
“Règlement,” fol. 1 verso, Ribot MSS.
Diary fragments, 8 September 1870–12 January 1871, Ribot MSS.
“Adolescence et jeunesse”; Jules Dufaure to Ribot, letter, 22 March 1871; Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 30 March 1871, Ribot MSS.
Memoir on Armand Demongeot, 15 March 1875, Ribot MSS.
Maurice Garçon, Histoire de la justice sous la IIIe République (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1957), 1, 76.
Ribot to Émile Acollas, personal letter, 23 November 1871, Ribot MSS.
“Règlement,” fol. 1, Ribot MSS.
Ibid., fol. 2.
Bulletin de la société de législation comparée, No. 1, January 1876 (Paris: Cotillon et fils, 1876), pp. 47–48.
Polybiblion, 2nd series, LXIII (January-June 1906), 174.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 25 April 1871; diary entry, 2 May 1871, Ribot MSS.
D. W. Brogan, The Development of Modern France, 1870–1939 (New York: Harper & Row [Torchbook edition], 1966) 1, 79.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letters, 12 May, 11 July, and 13 October 1872, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 26 May [1873], Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 23 November 1873, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 16 January 1874, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 2 June 1875, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letters, 2 and 13 June 1875, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 2 July 1875, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 25 October 1875, Ribot MSS.
Jules Favre to Ribot, personal letter, 28 October 1876; Jules Ferry to Ribot, personal letter, July 1876, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 8 August 1875, Ribot MSS.
“A propos de quelques réformes judiciaires, 1875–1876,” Revue critique de législation et de jurisprudence, XXVI (1877), 170–182.
Alexandre Ribot, Le Système pénitentiaire en Angleterre (Paris: Imprimerie de J. Claye, 1873), pp. 7–15 et passim; France, Ministère de la Justice, Compte général de l’administration de la justice criminelle en France … 1875 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1877), xviii-xxvii.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 24 February 1877, Ribot MSS.
Dufaure to Ribot, personal letter, 21 April 1877, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letters, 8 and 15 March 1875; Memoir on Armand Demongeot, 15 March 1875, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 22 March 1875, Ribot MSS.
Ibid.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letters, 18 and 27 May 1877, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Mme Demongeot, personal letter, 1 [sic] July 1877, typescript copy, Ribot MSS; Journal des Débats, 12 July 1877, p. 2, cols. 2–6.
L’Avenir (Arras), 3–4 December 1877, pp. 2–3.
Carlier to Ribot, personal letter, 5 December 1877, Ribot MSS.
Dufaure again took the portfolio of minister of justice and offered Ribot the post of under-secretary. But this was mere courtesy, for the minister wanted deputies at the lower posts to balance against the large senatorial membership of the cabinet (Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 7 December 1877, Ribot MSS). In any event, Ribot had already decided to run for political office.
Ribot to Francis Charmes, personal letter, 2 December 1877 cited in “La correspondance des frères Charmes: Lettres d’Alexandre Ribot à Francis Charmes,” Revue de la Haute-Auvergne, XXXIX (October-December 1964), 251–252.
Georges Foissey to Ribot, personal letter, 1 March 1878, Ribot MSS.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 1 April 1877, Ribot MSS.
L’Avenir, 7–8 April 1878, p. 1.
Ribot to Boucher, personal letter, 14 April 1878, Ribot MSS.
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© 1974 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Schmidt, M.E. (1974). Values and Career Choice, 1860–1878. In: Alexandre Ribot. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2067-1_1
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