HistoriQA-ThirdRepublic: Multi-Hop Question Answering Corpus for Historical Research, Parliamentary Debates from the French Third Republic (1870-1940)

arXiv cs.AI Papers

Summary

This paper presents HistoriQA-ThirdRepublic, a French-language multi-hop question answering dataset derived from historical documents of the French Third Republic, designed to evaluate retrieval-augmented and LLM systems in historical research contexts.

arXiv:2606.31325v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We present HistoriQA-ThirdRepublic: a French-language dataset of multi-hop historical questions derived from parliamentary debates and newspapers of the French Third Republic. Designed in collaboration with a historian, the corpus captures complex reasoning patterns typical of historical inquiry, including cross-source synthesis, temporal reasoning, and the integration of sparse evidence. The dataset is made of 1782 questions and emphasizes multi-hop connections across heterogeneous historical documents, providing a resource for evaluating retrieval-augmented and large language model systems in domain-specific contexts. We describe the methodology for constructing the corpus, including the selection and alignment of sources, question validation, and metadata integration. While the dataset focuses on French historical documents, our methodology can be readily adapted to other languages and national corpora. Finally, we demonstrate how the corpus can support realistic evaluation scenarios for multi-hop question answering, bridging the gap between NLP benchmarks and the needs of historical scholarship.
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# HistoriQA-ThirdRepublic: Multi-Hop Question Answering Corpus for Historical Research, Parliamentary Debates from the French Third Republic (1870-1940)
Source: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.31325](https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.31325)
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> Abstract:We present HistoriQA\-ThirdRepublic: a French\-language dataset of multi\-hop historical questions derived from parliamentary debates and newspapers of the French Third Republic\. Designed in collaboration with a historian, the corpus captures complex reasoning patterns typical of historical inquiry, including cross\-source synthesis, temporal reasoning, and the integration of sparse evidence\. The dataset is made of 1782 questions and emphasizes multi\-hop connections across heterogeneous historical documents, providing a resource for evaluating retrieval\-augmented and large language model systems in domain\-specific contexts\. We describe the methodology for constructing the corpus, including the selection and alignment of sources, question validation, and metadata integration\. While the dataset focuses on French historical documents, our methodology can be readily adapted to other languages and national corpora\. Finally, we demonstrate how the corpus can support realistic evaluation scenarios for multi\-hop question answering, bridging the gap between NLP benchmarks and the needs of historical scholarship\.

## Submission history

From: Aurelien PELLET \[[view email](https://arxiv.org/show-email/c2557c8f/2606.31325)\] \[via CCSD proxy\] **\[v1\]**Tue, 30 Jun 2026 08:28:42 UTC \(5,043 KB\)

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