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ELECTION DAY is Tuesday, November 6
History B357-Spang
Modern France: Society, Culture,Politics
26 September 2012
Nation and Empire after 1848
Boulevard Sebastopol, Paris
(summer 2005)
The June Days (Paris, 22-26 June 1848)
Protests at closure of National Workshops,
lead to building of barricades and intense
street fighting
Both the National Guard and the Army fire
on the protesters (in February, National Guard
supported protests)
over 3000 protesters and 1500 soldiers/Guard
members killed; 12,000 protesters arrested
F.I. Bonhommé, “June 23, 1848” (lithograph)
state of siege (military government) imposed
until October; over 4000 protesters sent into
exile in North Africa (Algeria)
1848 in France is two revolutions: February and June
How do you know you’re having a revolution?
experience of 1830, stories and histories of 1789 combine to make other events
intelligible as “a revolution”
silk workers protests in Lyon (1831, 1834)
February 1848 in Paris
Tocqueville, for instance, made sense of his experiences of February-May 1848
by making regular references to what he thought he knew about 1789:
“The whole time I had the feeling we had staged a play about the French
Revolution, rather than that we were continuing it…. we tried without
success to warm ourselves at the hearth of our fathers’ passions; we imitated
their gestures and attitudes as seen on stage but we could not copy their
enthusiasm.”
1848 and the making of revolutionary tradition
1848 and how “revolutions” happen
Abstract and literary views on political subjects
are scattered throughout the works of that day;
from the ponderous treatise to the popular song,
none are wholly devoid of this feature. The political
systems of these writers were so varied that it
would be wholly impossible to reconcile them
together, and mould them all into a theory of government.
… Since they had no practical acquaintance
with the subject, their zeal was not constrained by
actual experience; they knew of no existing facts
which stood in the way of desirable reforms;
they were ignorant of the dangers inseparable
from any revolution.
F. Sorrieu, The Universal Democratic
Social Republic: Triumph (1848)
detail
Tocqueville, The Old
Regime and the French
Revolution (1856).
H.F.E. Philoppoteaux, Lamartine in front of Paris Hôtel de Ville, February 1848
Does 1789 help explain 1848? Or does 1848 explain 1789?
Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865): What is Property? (1840)
elected to the Constituent Assembly in June 1848 by-election
edited or contributed to four newspapers, 1848-1851
Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
worked for “utopian socialist” Saint Simon
1848 founded “Positivist Society” to promote
“religion of humanity”
Gustave Courbet, Portrait of
Proudhon (1865)
Three stages of social evolution
theological
metaphysical
positive (“scientific”)
Marx and Engels (1818-1883; 1820-1895)
in 1848, edit a newspaper in the Prussian Rhineland
when revolution fails there, they go to London
Communist Manifesto published December 1848
Marx and Engels statues in Berlin
1848 and the making of modern social and political theory
1848 and how revolutions happen: Marx
The workers were left no choice; they had to
starve or take action. They answered on June 22
with the tremendous insurrection in which the first
great battle was fought between the two classes
that split modern society. It was a fight for the
preservation or annihilation of the bourgeois order.
The veil that shrouded the republic was torn asunder.
Karl Marx, Class Struggles in France (1850).
E. Meissonier, The Barricade,
Souvenir of Civil War (1848)
How many revolutionary traditions are there? June Days as class warfare
Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
“Scientific” socialism based on how people really are, not how they ought to be;
people are produced by their circumstances (industry created the proletariat)
Class defined by relation to the means of production;
as forms of production change through time, so do classes
“We find…that the degree of intelligence of the various
workers is in direct proportion to their relation to manufacture,
and that the factory hands are the most enlightened … as the
eldest children of the industrial revolution, they have from the
beginning to the present formed the heart of the Labor Movement.”
“All hitherto existing history is the history of class struggle”
“dialectics”—change in history is not simple progress:
the bourgeoisie overthrows the aristocracy, but that is
not the end of class conflict; instead, the bourgeoisie
itself becomes a dominant class, oppressing the proletariat
“In every era, the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class”
How revolutions ought to happen, according to Marx and Engels
Marx in London, early 1850s
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)
“The tradition of dead generations weighs like a nightmare
on the brain of the living.”
“The small-holding peasants form a vast mass, the members
of which live in similar conditions but without entering into
relations with each other.”
How 1848 did happen, according to Marx
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-1873)
Napoleon’s nephew (his father was Napoleon’s brother, Louis)
1836 attempted armed invasion of France
1839 published Napoleonic Ideals
1840 attempted coup (life imprisonment—escaped by
trading clothes with a stone mason; went to London)
1848 elected in-absentia to Constituent Assembly
December 1848 presidential elections
Bonaparte
74%
Cavaignac
19%
Ledru-Rollin
5%
Raspail
0.5%
Lamartine
0.28%
Changarnier
0.06%
Napoleon’s Companions of Glory and the Second Empire
1857—390,000 medals
photo taken in the 1890s of Louis Baillot
(1793-1897), in Carisey (Yonne),
supposedly the last surviving veteran
of the Battle of Waterloo
François Bligny (1795-1878), former student of the Imperial Military School (1812)—
wounded at Waterloo, served in Spain (1823) and in North Africa (1830-1841)
Crimean War, 1854-1856
Sebastopol
Florence Nightingale
Congress of Paris, 1856
Crimea: the first modern war?
Léon Méhédin, “Courtyard in Sebastopol 1855”--from a
photo album given to Empress Eugénie
Méhédin and Langlois, “Trenches,” from Souvenirs of the
Crimean War—photo album given to Napoleon III
Third Napoleon and Second Empire: military glory in the 1850s
J-L Gérome, Napoleon III receives the Siamese Ambassadors, 1861 (1864)
Third Napoleon and Second Empire: imperial glory in the 1850s
French Intervention in Mexico, 1861-1867
1861 –on pretense that Mexico had suspended
payment on bonds, Napoleon III sends troops
(supported by British and Spanish forces)
1862 –Spanish and British withdraw
1863 Siege of Puebla; “Catholic Empire” proclaimed
in July; in October, Maximilian accepts the crown
1866 USA demands that France withdraw
1867 Victory of Mexican republican forces
“The Glories of the Empire: Crimea, Italy, Syria, Mexico, China”
Maximilian of Habsburg-Lorraine, 1834-1867
Third Napoleon and Second Empire: military glory in the 1860s
Edouard Manet, Execution of Maximilian (1868)
Third Napoleon and Second Empire: military glory in the 1860s