This book explores a neglected aspect of the history of education in France. By questioning the recent transnational turn of historical research, it highlights the wide range of exchanges, circulations and borrowings beyond national borders that accompanied the setting up of the French modern school system between 1870 and 1914, and especially the reforms of primary and secondary education. The ambition is to rethink the history of the republican school by examining the relation that the French school – and more generally the process of « nationalization » of the school system – maintained with on-going experiences in the Western countries. The book questions the traditional boundaries of historical analysis, too often confined to the national sphere, and thus replaces hexagonal debates within the European and global circuits of nineteenth century educational debates.