Return of the spirits, or the birth of spiritism under the Second Empire

For several years, in France and abroad, researches on spiritualism have multiplied. The bibliographic quivering is real and is of interest to specialists coming from very diverse horizons: historians, anthropologists, psychologists, specialists in the history of death, religion, women, urban cultures and social representations. As a consequence each specialist approaches the subject in its own specific Perspectives without underlining in which cultural, social and political context arose the phenomenon. Born in the first years of the Second Empire, theorized by Allan Kardec, writer in 1857 of the famous Book of the Spirits, it took in France a very peculiar form, funerary and religious, without any real equivalent in the anglo-saxon world. This article intends to contribute to the clarification of the origins and forms, as well as the sociology and meaning, of this first great "moment" in the history of spiritualism.