A library-museum specializing in contemporary history and international relations of the 20th and 21st centuries, La contemporaine is under the supervision of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.
Founded in 1918 to understand the causes of the First World War, its mission from the outset has been to gather all materials and traces of events that can be used to interpret and write the history of our time, and it places a scientific approach at the center of its institutional structure. It is a “history laboratory” based on the “methods of scientific scholarship.”
A second mission of “popular education”—and “dissemination of research results”—is added to this primary objective. The contribution of historians will be crucial to the Library’s organization and activities, beginning with the establishment and intellectual structuring of the collections. The remarkable thematic classification framework developed in 1918 by Camille Bloch (1865-1949), the first director of the Bibliothèque-Musée de la Guerre, and his deputy, Pierre Renouvin (1893-1974), founder of the French school of international relations history, remains a lasting tool in the service of historical research.
In 1919, the Société d’Histoire de la Guerre was created with the aim of strengthening the activities of the new institution. It published the Revue d’Histoire de la Guerre and was recognized as a public utility in 1924. Its president, Senator André Honnorat, later became Minister of Public Instruction. In this capacity, he provided unwavering support to the new institution throughout his term.
Today an inter-university library affiliated with the University of Paris Nanterre, La Contemporaine is the only institution in France to collect, preserve, and disseminate collections covering the entirety of contemporary European history. La Contemporaine is renowned as much for its wealth in the field of international relations as for the original composition of its collections, systematically combining written and visual material.
In 2021, La Contemporaine has opened a new building to the public on the University of Paris Nanterre campus, bringing together the library’s three million documents (books, press, leaflets, archives, films) and a million and a half iconographic collections (artworks, photographs, posters, press cartoons). Exhibition rooms welcome the general public, making La Contemporaine, in addition to a scientific institution recognized by researchers worldwide, one of the major cultural centers in western Paris.
except where stated otherwise.