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2c. French Nationalism: Making Peasants into Citizens
 | Napoleon III led the Second Empire of France from 1852 until 1870. During his rule, he attempted to reshape French economic life by promoting trade and industrialization.
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Like uncle, like nephew.
It's All in a Name
LOUIS NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, the nephew of Naopleon I, became the first elected president of the Second Republic of France in December 1848, just after the June Days of the 1848 revolution. His mythic name spurred his overwhelming victory against his opponents. He quickly secured support among the army, the Catholic Church, and the bourgeoisie. But in 1851 a crisis brewed when monarchist forces prevented him from seeking a second term.
On December 2, 1851, the anniversary of his uncle's coronation as emperor, Louis Bonaparte staged a bloody coup d'état. He dissolved the Assembly and declared universal suffrage for all adult men. One hundred fifty people were killed in Paris during his coup, but a national vote offered him resounding support as president for another 10 years. A year later, Louis Napoleon expanded his powers as President for life and became Napoleon III.
Life in the Empire
 | During the Paris Commune, the column commemorating Napoleon I's victory at Austerlitz was toppled at the order of the Commune, the provisional government of Paris after the Franco-Prussian War. The Commune proved to be an efficient government that enacted numerous reforms before being brutally crushed by Thiers during the "Week of Blood."
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Napoleon's reign was marked by the curbing of individual liberties and the simultaneous enactment of many social programs to enhance French life and culture. He censored the press, controlled the legislature, and prohibited political opposition. At the same time, he implemented social welfare programs and public works initiatives.
Napoleon strove to improve the industrial and economic bases of France and sought to expand France's overseas empire. He initiated the urban renewal of Paris, clearing slums to make room for new parks as well as new sewer and water systems. Tax incentives and investment funds supported entrepreneurs, who had typically been shunned in France (but welcomed in Britain).
 | The monarchist Adolphe Thiers negotiated the treaty ending the Franco-Prussian war and suppressed the Paris Commune. He then reorganized the government and became the first president of the Third Republic of France.
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France's involvement in the CRIMEAN WAR (1854-1856) and in Italian schemes to create a war with Austria in order to liberate the region of Piedmont for Italy (1859) kept France at the center of European diplomacy. But Napoleon's blunders in the 1860s destabilized his regime.
Free-trade policies allowed Britain to flood France with cheaper goods, angering conservative economic sectors, and the Catholic Church resented the state's involvement in charity work. Napoleon III was soon criticized for his foreign policy as the formation of a united Italy and a united Germany threatened France's dominant position on the continent.
France's disasterous defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 finally ended the Second Empire. Prussian forces at the Battle of Sedan captured Napoleon himself, and Paris was besieged. France lost the border region of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany and was forced to pay the Germans stiff war reparations.
Commune Sense
As if this wasn't enough, the Franco-Prussian war also led to a short but bitter civil war over France's identity in the wake of the collapse of the Second Empire. After waging a fierce campaign to keep Paris from falling to Prussian forces, Parisians of various political stripes — republicans, socialists, and anarchists — formed the PARIS COMMUNE, an elected city council that rejected both Prussian demands and the French provisional government of Versailles that agreed to them.
 | The Dreyfus Affair sent France into yet another crisis. Writers everywhere began to speak out against the wrongful conviction of the Jewish captain and divided France into two political camps: Dreyfusards and Anti-Dreyfusards.
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MONARCHISTS, led by ADOLPHE THIERS, vowed to crush what one radical Frenchwoman called "the Social revolution." Two months of bloody fighting culminated in May 1871 in <I>LA SEMAINE SANGLANTEI> ("the week of blood"). An invasion by Thiers' army waged hand-to-hand combat with COMMUNARDS, both men and women. As parts of Paris burned, over 17,000 Communards were executed without a trial; another 10,000 were tried and convicted of insurrection and sent to prison camps or executed. Democratic socialism in France ended — at least for the time being.
A Secure Republic?
Although political conflict continued, republicans prevailed over monarchist forces to establish the THIRD REPUBLIC in 1875, which centered government authority in a bicameral parliament rather than in a powerful chief executive. In 1879, republicans won control of both houses, thus solidifying their victory. The system proved unstable, because competing political parties were forced to scramble to form coalition cabinets. But democracy had won out over dictatorship and monarchy.
In 1894, France was beset with a divisive conflict that split the country into two main political camps. CAPTAIN ALFRED DREYFUS was convicted of leaking French military secrets to their German archrivals. Evidence was presented that brought Dreyfus's guilt into doubt.
Many writers and intellectuals believed that Dreyfus was falsely accused because of his Jewish background. Novelist ÉMILE ZOLA published a letter called "J'ACCUSE" that blamed the army for the entire matter. All of France soon categorized themselves politically as either DREYFUSARDS (those on the left) or ANTI-DREYFUSARDS (those on the right). Eventually, Dreyfus was cleared of all charges in 1906.
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You Accuse: "J'accuse" was revolutionary for a number of reasons. At the very least it proved the power of journalism. |
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The French political identity took shape in the 1870s, but the problem of French cultural identity remained, especially because France now faced a stronger Germany and a reunified Italy. France in the early and mid-1800s was, in some ways, a bipolar world. At one extreme were the nationalist residents of Paris; at the other extreme were rural peasants, who embraced regional identities and languages. Under Louis Napoleon, France had begun a process of incorporating France's rural provinces into the new nation, in part by conscripting peasants into the French army.
France became a modern nation in the 1870s and 1880s as state bureaucratic efforts to produce cultural assimilation succeeded in raising the level of awareness of French culture in rural areas of the country. Railway construction and road building in outlying regions was accelerated to create new economic opportunities. The rapid spread of schools in the 1880s helped indoctrinate a new generation of peasant children into the ways of the French.
Nationalism was thus a philosophy as well as a process conceived and directed by leaders of a political state wishing to expand territorial and demographic sovereignty. Moreover, nationalism made peasants want to fight for France and learn the French language, thus transforming them into citizens of a republic.
| | It's more than just fries and toast! |  Instructions:
Answer the questions. For each correct answer you give, your car moves ahead one space. Each wrong answer advances your opponent's car one space. Do you know enough to win the race? Happy racing!
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