Marianne Cornevin

Marianne Cornevin (; 19 June 1918 – 9 November 2010) was a French historian and physician, specialising in the history of Africa. She also wrote a biography of Manon Roland, a major figure in the French Revolution.

Life Education She was born in Royan, the fourth daughter of the art historian Louis Réau and his wife Madeleine Staehling. She was a Unionist Guide in the Fédération française des éclaireuses, attended the lycée Molière and then studied medicine despite her parents' opposition, gaining her diploma in 1942 with a thesis on Paget's disease.

Resistance and Africa She joined the French Resistance as part of the group producing and distributing the Défense de la France newspaper In March 1942, at the Reformed church in Passy in Paris, she married fellow Défense de la France member Robert Cornevin - they had six children between 1943 and 1953.

The couple settled in Africa later in 1942 when Robert was made a colonial administrator in French Dahomey, later moving to French Algeria and French Cambodia. Marianne set up a school doctor service and trained midwives, both in Cambodia, and worked as a physician herself during all her husband's postings. From 1948 to 1956 they were in Togo, his last posting before they returned to Paris.

Writing and death After returning to mainland France she became a school doctor in Montrouge and assisted with the research for her husband's 1960 doctoral thesis. In 1966 she became an author in her own right as sole writer of volume 2 of Histoire de l'Afrique, a three-volume series of which her husband wrote the other two volumes. She was particularly interested in South Africa and produced three volumes in 1977 on apartheid in which she dismantled the ideological theories on which it was based. She also produced a volume on South Africa for the Que sais-je ? collection in 1982.

She took stock of the past twenty years' advances in African archaeology in her 1993 Secrets du continent noir révélés par l'archéologie, which focusses on the cultural differences across that continent. Also in 1993 she was awarded the prix Monsieur et Madame Louis-Marin by the Académie des sciences d'outre-mer. In 1995, the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres awarded her the prix Jean-Reynaud. She outlived her husband by twenty-two years but like him died in the 13th arrondissement of Paris.

Publications L'Afrique précoloniale (1500-1900), 1966, 621 p., volume 2 of the Histoire de l'Afrique series . L'Afrique du Sud en sursis, Hachette, 1977, p. 287 L'Apartheid, pouvoir et falsification historique, Unesco, 1979 La République sud-africaine, Puf, Que sais-je ? collection, 1982 La Véritable madame Roland, 1989, republished as Liberté, que de crimes on commet en ton nom. Vie de madame Roland, guillotinée le 8 novembre 1793, Maisonneuve et Larose, 2002, p. 342 Secrets du continent noir révélés par l'archéologie, Maisonneuve et Larose, 1993, p. 270