The Third Republic from its Origins to the Great War, 1871–1914

by Jean-Marie Mayeur , Madeleine Rebirioux , Translated by J. R. Foster

• ISBN13: 9780521358576
• ISBN10: 0521358574
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1988-01-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book provides a detailed account of French history from the origins of the Third Republic, born out of the collapse of Napoleon III's Second Empire, to the coming of the Great War in 1914. The earlier years of the Republic were characterized by slow social change, yet French society managed to emancipate itself from the influence of the Church and acquire a more positively democratic outlook. Part I begins with the fall of the 'notables' and the victory of the republicans. Then follows a picture of the economy and society of late nineteenth-century France, and an examination of spiritual and cultural development under the increasing threat from nationalist and socialist forces. The moderate's brief ascendancy at the end of the century, followed by the extreme sentiments unleashed at the time of the Dreyfus affair, brings the story in Part II to a more passionately political period, when the Republic finally became established as a bulwark of bourgeois prosperity, witnessing the rise of the banks and big business, and the dangerous revival of colonial expansion.

Table of Contents

A note on the translation

Chronology

Part I. The Origins of the Third Republic, 1871-1898 Jean-Marie Mayeur

1. The end of the notables, 1871-1879

2. Economy and society

3. The period of Jules Ferry, 1879-1885

4. Beliefs and cultures

5. The Republic confronted by nationalism and socialism

6. The moderate Republic, 1889-1898

Part II. A Radical Republic? 1898-1914 Madeleine Reberioux: 7. The Dreyfus affair

8. The France of the left-wing Bloc and the rise of Radicalism

9. Crisis and death of the Bloc, 1904-1907

10. The days of Imperialism

11. The avant-garde movements

12. France in 1914

Notes

Bibliography

Index.