History of Modern France: Volume 2: From the First Empire to the Second Empire, 1799-1871

Alfred Cobban succeeds in explaining the essence of 70 years of French history in a small book. Those years were dominated, first, by the ambition of one man, and after, by 'the interest of property'. 'The men who ruled France were not economically minded, and their electorate was largely one of landed proprietors.' The 'raison d'etre' of the Napoleonic state was war. Napoleon's policies ended in a catastrophe for France, after making 860.000 victims, of which half under 28. He was replaced by those who represented the 'pays legal': only 9.000 people out of a population of 26 million ('le pays reel') could vote. The chasm between the two 'pays' was immense, but only very visible in the capital Paris. It lead to the Revolution of 1848, where the few wealthy crushed the unemployed and starving masses, and in 1971, to the Paris Commune, again abolished in blood (20.000 victims). In the meantime, France under the unscrupulous Napoleon III suffered a humiliating defeat by the Prussians. This period was also characterized by the power struggle between the Church and the State, between the priest and the teacher, who had to spread the republican faith of anticlericalism. The Church clearly chose the cause of the oligarchy. In the papal Encyclical 'Mirari vos', the Pope attacked the abolition of censorship, freedom of education, universal suffrage and the separation of Church and State. This period also posed the essential dilemma of the universal suffrage: has the sovereign people the right to repudiate democracy? The great mass of electors were illiterate peasants likely to follow the lead of their clergy, local landowners and notables. On the theoretical and revolutionary front, we meet Proudhon (property is theft), Fourier (the evils of civilization are traced to property), Louis Blanc (the right to work), Saint-Simon (the first Keynesian) and Lamennais ('They have said you were a flock and that they were your shepherds; you the beasts, they the men. Theirs, therefore, your fleece, your milk, your flesh']. Alfred Cobban comments also the ongoing revolution in arts. With his ironic style, he wrote a book that reads like a thriller. Highly recommended, not only for historians.

If you want to learn how Napoleon I conquered Europe, you should find another book. If you want to know how Napoleon III changed European balance of power, this book would not help you very much. But if you are curious about why French political history was so unstable in the 19th century, if you want to learn something about class struggle between the rich & the poor and struggle between clericalism & anti-clericalism, if you want to study the changes of electoral system and electoral management and if you want to know something about the struggle between church and state for control over education, this book will be your best choice.A small problem in this book is that Alfred Cobban frequently used French words without English interpretation thereby making me buy an otherwise unnecessary French dictionary.I'd like to recommend this book and A.J.P. Taylor's "Bismarck, the man and the statesman" at the same time. It would be wonderful to compare Alfred Cobban's orthodox view on Napoleon III's neutrality to Austro-Prussian War with A.J.P. Taylor's unorthodox view on it.