Marc Cholvy

- Member of the Société Archéologique, scientifique et littéraire de Béziers (founded in 1834)

- Member of the Société Archéologique et Historique des Hauts-Cantons de l'Hérault (founded in 1978)

- Author of a history’s thesis entitled :

Savings banks and society : from the birth of an institution in France, to its spreading in Languedoc-Roussillon (in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries).

under the direction of the Professor Geneviève Gavignaud-Fontaine, presented and supported on March 7, 2002 at the University Paul-Valéry Montpellier III

Savings banks and society : from the birth of an institution in France, to its spreading in Languedoc-Roussillon (in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries).

This thesis takes place to the interlinking field of the mentalities’history and the quantitative history : it recalls the genesis of the savings banks’idea and institution’s beginning in the economic social and political context. It exploits multiple unpublished or manuscript documents, mainly of contemporary sources of the period studied.
The first part strives to show the conjunction of the different factors that have given birth to the idea of Savings Banks : scientific and philosophical factors, with L’Encyclopedie and some mathematic or economic works ; religious factors with the calvinist favorable view on the work and the enrichment, specially by swiss Protestants. This perspective reachs gradually the french liberal spheres.
The second part describes the translation of the new currents : birth of the national legal framework and modifications of savings banks’statutes, in an atmosphere of innumerable parliamentary debates where different points of view are exposed.
To analyze the new legislation on the terrain, a particular study of the Languedoc-Roussillon constitutes the third part : description of the progressive implantation of the system in the urban and rural environment, and statistical analyses (financials and humans) of the informations offered by bankbooks. Local informations are put in look of the national situation, the economic conjuncture and political events that lined the history of France.
After having studied their pedagogical mission for the working classes and in schools, the last part underlines a specificity of Savings Banks, the social action. Shower baths, council flats and other bread coupons, in the philanthropic perspective spirit of precursors, spread despite obstacles. A chapter about the architecture of savings banks monuments and to their place in the city closes the study.
Annexes deliver number original documents giving the reader the period’atmosphere. The ambition of this work is to show that the social and economic political life of the country reflects in the life of savings banks, so they represent a real mirror of the society.

Participation in collective books  :

- « Les Caisses d’épargne, baromètres de la crise viticole de 1907 », in La révolte du Midi viticole cent ans après 1907-2007. Sous la direction de Jean Sagnes. Actes des XVIIIe Rencontres de Béziers organisées par URBI (Université et recherche en Biterrois) les 12 et 13 octobre 2007 au Palais des Congrès de Béziers. Perpignan, Presses Universitaires de Perpignan, Collection Études, 2008, pp. 237-252.

- « Les débuts difficiles d’une Caisse d’épargne pionnière : Nîmes », in Autour de Nîmes et de sa région, textes réunis sous la direction de Catherine Bernié-Boissard et Danièle Julien, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2004, p. 225-250.

- « Les Caisses d’épargne du Languedoc-Roussillon et la révolution de 1848 », in De la révolution au coup d’État (1848-1851) : les répercussions des événements parisiens entre Alpes et Pyrénées, Actes du colloque des 18 et 19 septembre 1998, recueillis par Roland Andréani et Marianne Leulliez, Montpellier, Université Paul-Valéry, 1999, p. 129-138.


Articles :

- « L’originalité de la première Caisse d’épargne héraultaise à Béziers (1834-1835) », in Bulletin de la Société archéologique, scientifique et littéraire de Béziers, dixième série, volume II, 2005 - 2006, p. 93-106.

- « Perspectives européennes sur le rôle des Protestants dans la fondation des premières Caisses d’épargne (XVIIIe- début XIXe siècles) », in Bulletin de la Société d’Histoire du Protestantisme de Nîmes et du Gard, 2005, p. 87-98.

- « Un hôtel pour la Caisse d’épargne de Montpellier», in Les Cahiers pour l’histoire de l’épargne, n°6, juin 2002, p. 81-94.