Emmanuel Todd (; born 16 May 1951) is a French

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

, demographer, sociologist and

political scientist Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

at the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. His research examines the different family structures around the world and their relationship with beliefs, ideologies, political systems, and historical events. He has also published a number of political

essays An essay ( ) is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a Letter (message), letter, a term paper, paper, an article (publishing), article, a pamphlet, and a s ...

, which have received broad coverage in France.

Life and works

Born in

Saint-Germain-en-Laye Saint-Germain-en-Laye () is a Communes of France, commune in the Yvelines Departments of France, department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, from the Kilometre Zero, centre of Paris. ...

Yvelines Yvelines () is a department in the western part of the Île-de-France region in Northern France. In 2019, it had a population of 1,448,207.Austrian Jewish background, and his paternal grandmother, Helen Todd, was the illegitimate daughter of British magazine editor Dorothy Todd. Emmanuel Todd's maternal grandfather was the writer Paul Nizan. The historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, who pioneered microhistory, was a friend of the family and gave him his first history book. Aged 10, Todd wanted to become an

archeologist Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes. Archaeol ...

. He studied at the '' Lycée international de Saint-Germain-en-Laye'', where he was a member of the Communist Youth. He then studied

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

at the

Paris Institute of Political Studies Sciences Po () or Sciences Po Paris, also known as the Paris Institute of Political Studies (), is a public research university located in Paris, France, that holds the status of ''grande école'' and the legal status of . The university's unde ...

and went on to prepare a Ph.D. in

history History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

at Trinity College, the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

, with

Peter Laslett Thomas Peter Ruffell Laslett (18 December 1915 – 8 November 2001) was an English historian. Biography Laslett was the son of a Baptist minister and was born in Bedford on 18 December 1915. Although he spent much of his childhood in Oxford, h ...

. In 1976 he defended his doctoral thesis on ''Seven peasant communities in pre-industrial Europe. A comparative study of French, Italian and Swedish rural parishes (18th and early 19th century)''. Todd attracted attention in 1976 when, at age 25, he predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, based on indicators such as increasing

infant mortality Infant mortality is the death of an infant before the infant's first birthday. The occurrence of infant mortality in a population can be described by the infant mortality rate (IMR), which is the number of deaths of infants under one year of age ...

rates: ' (The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere). He then worked for a time in the literary service of ''

Le Monde (; ) is a mass media in France, French daily afternoon list of newspapers in France, newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average print circulation, circulation of 480,000 copies per issue in 2022, including ...

'' daily, then returned to research, working on the hypothesis of a determination of

ideologies An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...

and religious or political beliefs by familial systems (''Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure & Social System'', 1983). He then wrote, among other books, ''The Invention of Europe'' (1990) and ''The Fate of Immigrants'' (1994), in which he defended the "French model" of integration of immigrants. Emmanuel Todd-Scan-090129-0012c

Todd was opposed to the

Maastricht Treaty The Treaty on European Union, commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty, is the foundation treaty of the European Union (EU). Concluded in 1992 between the then-twelve Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Communities, ...

in the 1992 referendum. In 1995, he wrote a memo for the Fondation Saint-Simon, which became famous — the media thereafter attributed to him the coining of the expression "'" (social crack or social gap), used by

Jacques Chirac Jacques René Chirac (, ; ; 29 November 193226 September 2019) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He was previously Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and 1986 to 1988, as well as Mayor of Pari ...

during the 1995 electoral campaign in order to distinguish himself from his rival

Édouard Balladur Édouard Balladur (; born 2 May 1929) is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France under François Mitterrand from 29 March 1993 to 17 May 1995. He unsuccessfully ran for president in the 1995 French presidential election, co ...

. Todd, however, has rejected the phrase's attribution to him,Pour Todd, pas de "choc" mais un "rendez-vous des civilisations"
'' Rue 89'', 19 September 2007 and attributed the expression to Marcel Gauchet. In '' After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order'' (2001), Todd claims that many indices that he has examined (economic, demographic and ideological) show both that the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

has outlived its status as sole

superpower Superpower describes a sovereign state or supranational union that holds a dominant position characterized by the ability to Sphere of influence, exert influence and Power projection, project power on a global scale. This is done through the comb ...

, and that much of the rest of the world is becoming "modern" (declining birth rates etc.) far more rapidly than predicted. Controversially, he proposes that many US foreign policy moves are designed to mask what he sees as the redundancy of the United States. In his analysis, Putin's Russia emerges as probably a more trustworthy partner in today's world than the US. The book has been much read although many of its more original ideas have been received with scepticism. In spite of his opposition to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, Todd expressed himself in favour of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe in the referendum of 2005, advocating a protectionist framework at the European level for the future policies of the Union. In ''A Convergence of Civilizations: The Transformation of Muslim Societies Around the World '' (2007), written with fellow demographist Youssef Courbage, Todd criticized

Samuel P. Huntington Samuel Phillips Huntington (April 18, 1927December 24, 2008) was an American political scientist, adviser, and academic. He spent more than half a century at Harvard University, where he was director of Harvard's Center for International Affair ...

's thesis of a

clash of civilizations The "Clash of Civilizations" is a thesis that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post–Cold War world. The American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington argued that future wars would be ...

, pointing instead to indices of a convergence in styles of life and in values among civilisations. Throughout much of this time he was working on "The Origins of Family Systems", which he has described as "his life's work". The first volume was published in 2011. He describes how in researching the book he has, over 40 years, "read more anthropology monographs than most anthropologists." He has described the book as "completed", with only the stage of writing up its second and final volume remaining. His 2015 essay ''Qui est Charlie? Sociologie d'une crise religieuse'' ("Who is Charlie? Sociology of a Religious Crisis") became his most controversial and his most popular essay. In the essay, Todd claims that the 11 January 2015 marches to show solidarity with the ''

Charlie Hebdo ''Charlie Hebdo'' (; ) is a French satirical weekly magazine, featuring cartoons, reports, polemics, and jokes. The publication has been described as anti-racist, sceptical, secular, libertarian, and within the tradition of left-wing radicalism ...

'' staff who had been massacred by Muslim terrorists several days before were an expression not of French liberal values but of racist and reactionary currents in French society. The work has been accused by politicians of a seeming willingness to look aside from the reality of Islamist terrorism while some readers accuse it of a reliance on unsupported a priori arguments while failing to consider other, more relevant political factors. The book aroused copious and emotional hostility, including a critique by the

Prime Minister of France The prime minister of France (), officially the prime minister of the French Republic (''Premier ministre de la République française''), is the head of government of the French Republic and the leader of its Council of Ministers. The prime ...

Manuel Valls Manuel Carlos Valls Galfetti (born 13August 1962) is a French–Spanish politician who serves as Minister of the Overseas in the Bayrou government since 2024. He served as Prime Minister of France from 2014 until 2016 under president Françoi ...

. Todd claims to have written quickly, partly out of frustration and not in a purely academic style, though he defends his arguments' basis in his decades of French demographic research. Hi book ''Où en sont-elles? Une esquisse de l'histoire des femmes'' (translated in English as "''Lineages of the Feminine: An Outline of the History of Women''"), Todd argues that women have achieved emancipation and questions the existence of patriarchy in Western Europe. The book has been met with both praise and criticism. Emmanuel Todd - Europe at a Crossroads

In ''La défaite de l'Occident'' ("The defeat of the West"), Todd announces the victory of Putin's Russia against a deindustralised and

nihilist Nihilism () encompasses various views that reject certain aspects of existence. There have been different nihilist positions, including the views that life is meaningless, that moral values are baseless, and that knowledge is impossible. Thes ...

West, weakened by the decline of

Protestantism Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...

. The book was received negatively in the West, where Todd was accused of being "blinded by ideology", "ignorant on the subject" and relying on Russian propaganda and

conspiracy theories A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources: * ...

; he was, however, praised by Christopher Caldwell on ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

''. In Russia, the book was well received and praised by state and pro-government media.

Criticism

Emmanuel Todd criticizes Western policy, as opposed to that of

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...

, whose

propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...

he spreads, notably justifying

Russia's invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

by relying on false information originating from Russian disinformation. His use of

is subject to criticism. The claim that the Empire is American is questioned as such by

Michael Hardt Michael Hardt (born 1960) is an American political philosopher and literary theorist. Hardt is best known for his 2000 book ''Empire'', which was co-written with Antonio Negri. Hardt and Negri suggest that several forces which they see as do ...

and

Antonio Negri Antonio Negri (; ; 1 August 1933 – 16 December 2023) was an Italian political philosopher known as one of the most prominent theorists of autonomism, as well as for his co-authorship of ''Empire (Hardt and Negri book), Empire'' with Michae ...

in their ''

Empire An empire is a political unit made up of several territories, military outpost (military), outposts, and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a hegemony, dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the ...

''. They claim that the origins of the Empire are in Europe, not in the United States, based on the emigration of scientists from Europe to the United States, especially from Austria, during and around the Second World War.

Quotes

In popular culture

There is an implicit but clear reference to ''The Final Fall'' published in 1976, and its author, in Robert Littell's book '' The Company: A Novel of the CIA'', a fiction, but with heavy historical inputs, on the American intelligence agency. In it, two analysts discuss in 1983 forecasts of the Soviet Union when from the outside, it was seen as a solid entity:

"The Soviet Union," one of the independent economists was arguing, "is an Upper Volta with rockets." He waved a pamphlet in the air. "A French analyst has documented this. The number of women who die in childbirth in the Soviet Union has been decreasing since the Bolshevik Revolution. Suddenly, in the early seventies, the statistic bottomed out and then started to get worse each year until the Russians finally grasped how revealing this statistic was and stopped reporting it." — "What in God's name does a statistic about the number of women who die in childbirth have to do with analyzing Soviet military spending?" a Company analyst snarled across the table. — "If you people knew how to interpret statistics, you'd know that everything is related—"

Books

With an English translation

*
The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere
', 1979, Karz Publishers, translated by John Waggoner (''La chute finale: Essai sur la décomposition de la sphère Soviétique'', 1976) * ''The Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure & Social Systems'', 1985, Blackwell Publishers, translated by David Garrioch (''La Troisième planète'', 1983) * ''The Causes of Progress: Culture, Authority, and Change'', 1987, Blackwell Publishers, translated by Richard Boulind (''L'enfance du monde'', 1984) * ''The Making of Modern France: Ideology, Politics and Culture'', 1991, Blackwell Publishers, translated by Anthony C. Forster (''La Nouvelle France'', 1988) * '' After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order'', 2003, Columbia University Press, translated by Christopher Jon Delogu, foreword by

Michael Lind Michael Lind (born April 23, 1962) is an American writer and academic. He has explained and defended the tradition of American democratic nationalism in a number of books, beginning with ''The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fou ...

(''Après l’Empire : Essai sur la décomposition du système américain'', 2001) * ''A Convergence of Civilizations: The Transformation of Muslim Societies Around the World'' with Youssef Courbage, 2007, Columbia University Press, translated by George Holoch (''Le Rendez-vous des civilisations'', 2007) * ''Who is Charlie? Xenophobia and the New Middle Class'', 2015, Polity Press, translated by Andrew Brown (''Qui est Charlie? Sociologie d'une crise religieuse'', 2015) * ''Lineages of Modernity: A History of Humanity from the Stone Age to Homo Americanus'', 2019, Polity Press (''Où en sommes-nous ? Une esquisse de l'histoire humaine'', 2017) * ''Lineages of the Feminine: An Outline of the History of Women'', 2023, Wiley, translated by Andrew Brown (''Où en sont-elles? Une esquisse de l'histoire des femmes'', 2022)

Without an English translation

* ''The Fool And The Proletariat (Le Fou et le Prolétaire)'', Éditions Robert Laffont, Paris, 1979. On the pre-1914 elites of Europe, which led to World War I and totalitarianism. * ''The Invention Of France (L'Invention de la France)'', with Hervé Le Bras ( fr), Éditions Pluriel-Hachettes, Paris, 1981. * ''The Invention of Europe (L'invention de l'Europe)'', coll. « L'Histoire immédiate », 1990. * ''The Fate estinyof Immigrants (Le destin des immigrés)'', Paris, Éditions Le Seuil, 1994. * ''The Economic Illusion: Essay on the stagnation of developed societies (L'illusion économique. Essai sur la stagnation des sociétés développées)'', Paris, Éditions Gallimard, 1998. * ''The Diversity Of The World: Family and Modernity (La Diversité du monde : Famille et modernité)'', Éditions Le Seuil, coll. « L'histoire immédiate », Paris, 1999. * ''After Democracy (Après la démocratie)'', Paris, Éditions Gallimard, 2008. * ''Allah is not to blame! (Allah n'y est pour rien !)'', Paris, Éditions Le Publieur, coll. arretsurimages.net, 2011. * ''The Origin Of Family Systems, Volume One: Eurasia (L'origine des systèmes familiaux, Tome 1: L'Eurasie)'', Paris, Éditions Gallimard, 2011, of which the translated introduction is already availabl
online
* ''The French Mystery (Le mystère français)'', with Hervé Le Bras ( fr), Paris, Éditions Le Seuil, coll. « La République des idées », 2013. * ''The Defeat of the West (La Défaite de l'Occident)'', Paris: Gallimard, 2024.

Footnotes

External links

Charlie Rose, interview of Emmanuel Todd
- April 29, 2003
Interview with Emmanuel Todd on 'After the Empire', by Michael Monninger

Prospect Magazine ''Prospect'' is a monthly British general-interest magazine, specialising in politics, economics and current affairs. Topics covered include British and other European, as well as US politics, social issues, art, literature, cinema, science, th ...

- June 20, 2003
"The Conceited Empire", interview with Martin A. Senn & Felix Lautenschlager for ''The New Zuricher''
- July 26, 2003
"Emmanuel Todd: The Specter of a Soviet-Style Crisis"
translation of an interview with

Le Figaro () is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826. It was named after Figaro, a character in several plays by polymath Pierre Beaumarchais, Beaumarchais (1732–1799): ''Le Barbier de Séville'', ''The Guilty Mother, La Mère coupable'', ...

by Marie-Laure Germon and Alexis Lacroix - September 12, 2005
Emmanuel Todd interview on the 'French riots'
translation o

with

by Raphaëlle Bacqué, Jean-Michel Dumay and Sophie Gherardi - November 29, 2005
Protectionism and Democracy, Interview with Emmanuel Todd, by Karim Emile Bitar (French)
, published in L'ENA hors les murs, the ENA alumni magazine - July 12, 2009
''« @ux sources d'Emmanuel Todd - Quelles sont les sources d'un prophète ? »'' (in French)
Arrêt sur images - February 24, 2012
Interview with Oliver Berruyer, ''Germany’s Fast Hold on the European Continent'' - September 1, 2014
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20180318191816/http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201611180070.html Emmanuel Todd: "Trump was speaking the truth about state of U.S. society" - November 18, 2016br>‘World War 3 has already started’ between US and Russia/China, argues French scholar
- 2023 Interview {{DEFAULTSORT:Todd, Emmanuel 1951 births 20th-century French historians 21st-century French historians Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge French anthropologists French demographers French male non-fiction writers French people of Austrian-Jewish descent French political scientists French sociologists Living people People from Saint-Germain-en-Laye Sciences Po alumni