Emmanuel Todd (born 16 May 1951) is a French historian, anthropologist, demographer, sociologist and political scientist at the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris.
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, which have received broad coverage in France.
Born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Yvelines, Emmanuel Todd is the son of journalist Olivier Todd (fr) and Anne-Marie Nizan.
Todd's paternal grandfather, Julius Oblatt, was of 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.
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 at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and went on to prepare a Ph.D. in history at Trinity College, the University of Cambridge, with Peter Laslett.
1976
In 1976 he defended his doctoral thesis on ''Seven peasant communities in pre-industrial Europe.
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 rates: La chute finale: Essais sur la décomposition de la sphère Soviétique (The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere).
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.
1983
He then worked for a time in the literary service of Le Monde daily, then returned to research, working on the hypothesis of a determination of ideologies and religious or political beliefs by familial systems (Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure & Social System, 1983).
In it, two analysts discuss in 1983 forecasts of the Soviet Union when from the outside, it was seen as a solid entity:
1990
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.
1992
Todd was opposed to the Maastricht Treaty in the 1992 referendum.
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.
1995
In 1995, he wrote a memo for the Fondation Saint-Simon, which became famous — the media thereafter attributed to him the paternity of the expression "fracture sociale" (social crack or social gap), used by Jacques Chirac during the 1995 electoral campaign in order to distinguish himself from his rival Édouard Balladur.
Todd, however, has rejected this paternity, and attributed the expression to Marcel Gauchet.
2001
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 has outlived its status as sole superpower, 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.
2007
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's thesis of a clash of civilizations, 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".
2011
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.
2015
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 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, Manuel Valls.
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.
The claim that the Empire is American is questioned as such by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their Empire.
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.
The idea that, under the pretext that a country is democratic, its citizens, after an internal debate, can legitimately decide to bomb the citizens of another country is an idea that will end up killing democracy.
The United States is a greater danger to peace than Iran.
2018
A comparative study of French, Italian and Swedish rural parishes (18th and early 19th century)''.
