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History Notes France, 1851 - 1914 Notes

France Notes

Updated France Notes

France, 1851 - 1914 Notes

France, 1851 - 1914

Approximately 58 pages

Rigorous bullet point notes focusing on the Second Empire, but covering the Third Republic, the Commune, and the decline of the Second Republic. Complete with illustrations, quotes, maps, and timelines, they record the politics, society, economics, culture, and foreign policy of France in its golden age....

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The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our France, 1851 - 1914 Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

France

Contents

  • Past questions

  • Quotes

    • The Second Empire

    • The Third Republic

  • Maps

    • France in 1871

  • Chronology

    • The Second Empire

    • The Third Republic

  • The Second Empire

    • Bonapartism

    • Historiography

    • Development

    • Strategy

    • The court

    • Repression

    • Rural support

    • Opposition

    • Decline

    • The Liberal Empire

    • Foreign policy

    • Religion

    • Economic boom

    • Economic bust

    • The legacy of the Revolution

  • The Third Republic

    • Origins

    • Royalism

    • Thiers

    • MacMahon

    • Politics

    • Ideology

    • Boulangism

    • Nationalism

    • Class

    • Foreign policy

    • Religion

    • Economics

    • The right wing

    • The Paris Commune

    • The Dreyfus Affair

    • Imperialism

Past questions

  • Was class a significant factor in French politics?

    • Trinity 2013

  • When did the Bonapartist synthesis fail and why?

    • Tutorial essay

  • How far did Bonapartism overcome political and social polarisation?

    • Trinity 2012

  • How polarised was the French Third Republic?

    • Trinity 2011

  • How republican was the French Third Republic?

    • Trinity 2010

  • 'Economically backward; politically fermenting; culturally precocious.' Is this an accurate characterisation of France under Louis-Napoléon?

    • Trinity 2010

  • How important was foreign policy to Napoléon III's domestic rule?

    • Trinity 2009

  • What did the French Third Republic achieve by its pursuit of anti-clerical policies?

    • Trinity 2009

  • Did the French Third Republic undermine its influence by its pursuit of anti-clerical policies?

    • Trinity 2008

  • How great was the social transformation of France under Louis-Napoléon's rule?

    • Trinity 2008

  • How far did France’s republican élite succeed in turning ‘peasants into Frenchmen’ (EUGEN WEBER)?

    • Trinity 2007

  • Was Louis-Napoléon’s charisma an asset or a liability for France and the French?

    • Trinity 2007

  • Why did the case of Alfred Dreyfus become a cause célèbre in France??

    • Trinity 2006

  • How important was foreign policy to the domestic stability of Louis-Napoléon’s rule?

    • Trinity 2006

  • What troubled the opponents of the Third Republic more: secularism or democracy?

    • Trinity 2005

  • How far did Napoléon III transform the relationship between Church and state in France?

    • Trinity 2005

Quotes

The Second Empire

  • Napoléon III was a “cretin”.

    • Adolphe Thiers.

  • That “because he was nothing, Louis-Napoléon could appear to be everything”.

    • Karl Marx.

  • “L’Empire, c’est la paix.”

    • Napoléon III.

  • “My position and my name impose obligations on me of whose importance I am well aware.”

    • Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte whilst in Switzerland.

  • I submit my actions to the judgement of “the one sovereign that I recognise in France – the people!”

    • Napoléon III, December 1851.

  • “The peasant wanted to crown his legend and by his word he made the Empire.”

    • Jules Ferry.

  • “[W]e, who have our friends only down below, have abandoned parliament to the upper classes.”

    • The Duc de Persigny.

  • “It means a great deal to be one and the same time a national glory, a revolutionary guarantee, and a principle of authority”.

    • François Guizot summing up Napoléon’s appeal.

  • A “magnificent court”.

    • James Harris, 3rd Earl of Malmesbury.

  • “This unfortunate Empress has been so dragged through the mud one feels almost compelled to defend her”.

    • A Legitimist lady.

  • “We have immense tracts of uncultivated lands to clear, roads to open, ports to create, rivers to make navigable, canals to finish, our railway network to complete”.

    • Napoléon III.

  • For “the peasant supports the emperor, and does not wish to hear about a change. If you ask him why, he will say ‘we are selling our produce.’”

    • A Toulouse republican.

  • “Are you revolutionaries? Are you conservatives?”

    • Emile Keller on the Italian escapade, January 1861.

  • A ‘precarious fudge’.

    • Robert Tombs on the Liberal Empire.

  • To divert opinion from “irritating questions of internal politics”.

    • The procureur général of Toulouse on the desirability of a short war, 6th October 1868.

  • ‘“Era of revolutions’. Still open, for each new government promises to close it.”

    • Gustave Flaubert.

  • “I am back to my old score.”

    • Napoléon III on the Liberal Empire referendum.

The Third Republic

  • The “vile multitude”.

    • Adolphe Thiers on the people.

  • That the Republic: “seemed dishonoured for ever”.

    • Albert de Mun.

  • The “Republic will be conservative, or it will not exist”.

    • Adolphe Thiers.

  • I am “profoundly conservative and profoundly republican”.

    • Jules Simon.

  • “Clericalism, there is the enemy!”

    • Léon Gambetta.

  • From Vosges to Brittany, peasants were “indifferent to political debate and to issues that did not affect them directly”.

    • Eugen Weber.

  • That “anti-clericalism would not be an export item”.

    • On the new Indochinese Union.

  • ‘Orléanism was liberal and conservative simultaneously.’

    • Maurice Agulhon.

  • ‘France must be loved and served.’

    • Maurice Agulhon on the unifying thread of French politics.

  • “Why can’t we have our Whigs and Tories?”

    • Edgar Raoul-David, 1886.

  • The need to set up “a workers’ party that is not political but socialist”.

    • Jules Guesde.

  • The government needed all those dedicated to a “open, tolerant, and honest Republic”.

    • Jacques Pirot, in the Figaro, following the 1892 elections.

  • A “new spirit” regarding Catholic affairs.

    • Eugene Spuller, Education and Ecclesiastical Minister.

  • That “our policy is republican, clearly republican”.

    • Insistence of Jules Méline in 1896.

  • A commitment to “lay, democratic and social action”.

    • The founding principles of the Radical Party.

  • “Your means of action is disorder, my duty is to ensure order.”

    • Georges Clemenceau, 1906.

  • “France would not easily be content to count for no more in the world that a big Belgium.”

    • Jules Ferry, 1882.

  • That “anti-clericalism would not be an export item”.

    • France on the new Indochinese Union.

Maps

France in 1871

Chronology

The Second Empire

1792 – Original Paris Commune

1801 – Napoléon I’s Concordat

1830 – French take Algiers

1st December 1851 – President Bonaparte launches his coup d’état

January 1852 – New Bonapartist constitution

1857 – Cyclical slump headed off by...

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