The Cambridge History of Modern France – serie

The Republic of De Gaulle offers a comprehensive account - the fullest yet available in English - of the eleven years that followed the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1958. Serge Berstein analyses the new constitutional and political system that emerged under De Gaulle, and shows how France was able to disengage from the ruinous Algerian War. He then conducts a detailed analysis of the socio-economic changes wrought during this period, and discusses the aims of De Gaulle's highly individualistic foreign policy. In the final section Professor Berstein traces the decline of De Gaulle's ascendancy up to his eventual resignation in 1969. In conclusion the author assesses the contribution of a remarkable political leader to the not less remarkable changes that took place in France during his presidency. This volume, lucidly translated by Peter Morris, features all those student aids now associated with the series.

The Republic of De Gaulle offers a comprehensive account - the fullest yet available in English - of the eleven years that followed the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1958. Serge Berstein analyses the new constitutional and political system that emerged under De Gaulle, and shows how France was able to disengage from the ruinous Algerian War. He then conducts a detailed analysis of the socio-economic changes wrought during this period, and discusses the aims of De Gaulle's highly individualistic foreign policy. In the final section Professor Berstein traces the decline of De Gaulle's ascendancy up to his eventual resignation in 1969. In conclusion the author assesses the contribution of a remarkable political leader to the not less remarkable changes that took place in France during his presidency. This volume, lucidly translated by Peter Morris, features all those student aids now associated with the series.

The Second Empire lasted longer than any French regime since 1789, yet most historical accounts of the government of Napoleon III have been overshadowed by knowledge of its disastrous and tragic end. As Professor Plessis shows in this detailed thematic study, such an approach ignores the major social, economic and political developments of a period which witnessed the gradual acceptance of universal suffrage, the establishment of large-scale industrial capitalism, a massive improvement in communications and the birth of impressionism in art. The transition of French society from that familiar to Honoré de Balzac to that dissected by Emile Zola was nonetheless a fitful process, spasmodic and irregular, and the role of the imperial government in that process of modernization equally uncertain. The paradox, emphasized by Professor Plessis, of a dictatorship that progressively liberalized itself, and was indeed resoundingly endorsed by the electorate only months before its fall, is not the least perplexing phenomenon of an age in which stagnation and innovation were constantly juxtaposed.

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.