The article traces the genealogy of the writing of the book Les Luttes et les Rêves. Une histoire populaire de la France de 1685 à nos jours, published in 2016. This popular history focuses on the individual and collective experiences of subalterns (the everyday life, practices, conflicts, hopes, and cultures of men and women throughout the territory, including its peripheries and colonies). Even when dominated, individuals in their specific contexts are driven by the conviction of what is just and unjust. Writing a “history from below”, a history “against the grain” (Benjamin) that takes seriously the thoughts and actions of the protagonists, alongside the policies of the dominant ones, allows, in spite of failures, to recall the unfulfilled potentialities of the past, the hopes that did not come true embodied in struggles and dreams.