France 1815-1914: The Bourgeois Century

Description

This new three-volume series takes in the mass of recent research into the political, economic and social history of France from the ancien régime to the present. Nineteenth-century France witnessed the protracted struggle of the victorious post-revolutionary bourgeoisie to consolidate and defend the gains made in 1789. In this lively and stimulating volume Roger Magraw examines the attempts of the bourgeoisie to remould France in its own image, and discusses the bourgeois strategy for overcoming the resistance which this met. The old aristocratic and clerical elites remained unreconciled to the revolution, and the popular classes sustained a prolonged rearguard defence of their threatened peasant culture and communities, artisanal skills and crafts. The author incorporates the most recent research on religion and anticlericalism, the development of the economy, the role of women in society (particularly in the labour force) and the education system, through which the bourgeoisie came to present itself as ‘progressive’, now offering a brave new world of upward mobility and opportunity in a classless society. Cover illustration by De Nittis shows the Races at Auteuil (Paris) Contents Acknowledgements Editor’s Preface Introduction PART ONE: The France of the Notables 1. The Indian Summer of the Aristocracy (1815-30) I The Survival of the Aristocracy II The Politics of Reaction (1814-30) III The Revolution of 1830 2. The Triumph of the Grande Bourgeoisie? (1830-48) I The Debate on the Nature of the Orleanist Regime II Orleanism and Capitalism III Orleanist Ideology IV Orleanist Politics V Divisions Within the Elites PART TWO: The Challenge from Below 3. The Growth of Popular Protest I The Making of the French Working Class? II The Crisis of Peasant France? 4. Revolution and Reaction (1848-51) I The Elites and the Advent of the Republic II The Republic and the Workers III The Resurgence of the Right (June 1848-51) IV The Republic of the Peasants (1849-51) PART THREE: An Authoritarian Interlude (1848-71) 5. Bonapartism — a Modernizing Dictatorship? I The Political Economy of Bonapartism II The Bonapartist State and the Elites III The Nature and Limits of Bonapartist Populism IV Decline and Fall (1868-70) V The Paris Commune — a Socialist Revolution? PART FOUR: The Bourgeois Republic (1871-1914) 6. Republican France I The Making of the Conservative Republic (1871-98) II Capitalist Development and the French Bourgeoisie (1870-1914) III Economics and Empire? IV The Radical Republic? (1898-1914) 7. An Intransigent Right (1871-1914) I The Decline of Royalism II From Nationalism to Proto-fascism? 8. Integrating the Workers? I The Workers and the Republic: Alienation or Integration? II The Search for Socialist Unity (1879-1905) III Strikers and Syndicalists IV From Socialist Unity to the Union Sacrée (1905-14) 9. Peasants into Frenchmen? I The ‘Modernization’ of Rural France? II Agricultural Development and the Great Depression III Education in the Countryside: ‘Progress’ or Cultural Genocide? IV Rural Anticlericalism V Class Conflict in the Countryside? VI The ‘Révolte du Midi’ VII The Peasantry and the Bourgeois Republic Conclusion I The Path to War II The Consolidation of Bourgeois Hegemony? Bibliography Index