The official statistical system is regularly called upon to provide long-term background data: to compare the France of today and yesterday, to take a step back and put recent changes into perspective, to learn from the past… INSEE has always striven to provide historical depth. Indeed, France is the only European country to provide national accounting data backcast from 1949. On five occasions between 1926 and 1990, it has also published a retrospective directory of France, bringing together a large amount of long-term data. This new title in the “Insee Références” collection follows on from these directories, but with the intention of doing more than simply gathering figures together. Through reports and information sheets it sheds light on the major economic and social changes that have affected France since 1980.