This article focuses on the issues related to the integration of history in French Applied Linguistics curricula. Hence, the objective of this present study is to evaluate how the historical component of those curricula may have reinforced the legitimacy of French Applied Linguistics as an independant discipline, and how this common heritage is now perceveided by its members. The analysis of the historical corpus, relaying on the archives of the former “École de préparation des professeurs de français à l’étranger”, is articulated to a study of the actual Applied Linguistics Masters’ degree curricula. The results shows that beyond a theoritical knowledge or the transmission of a common inheritance, teaching the history of or in Applied French Linguistics contributes to the acquisition of a cultural capital among the members of the French teaching field.