A History of Modern France: Volume 3: France of the Republics 1871-1962

The 3rd volume of Alfred Cobban's magisterial story of modern France is mainly the story of France's IIIrd republic. The 3rd republic saw the victory of the republicans over the monarchists and the Church, confirmed by the election of 1877. The whole 'noblesse' had become practising catholics because it identified the Church as the protector of the interests of birth, wealth and social status. Republicanism was now solidly anti-clerical, with a secret society (Freemasonry) exercizing considerable political influence. The battle of the Church and the State mainly ended with the law of Separation voted in 1905. Being republican, France still remained highly conservative at the end of the 19th century with nearly half the labour engaged in agriculture and half the population living in small communes. Political dominant were the small peasants who were opposed to social reform. The greatness of the 3rd republic in the 19th century was represented by arts (Rodin, impressionism, literature) and science (Pasteur). The 3rd republic survived the horrendous battles of World War I, but it took France a generation to recover from the onslaught. After the war, the labour movement became stronger, but internecine wars caused a split of the left in mainly three parties: Radicals, Socialists and Communists. The division of the left caused great political instability. And even when the left won the elections, the real power in France remained in the hands of the industry, finance, the professions and the administration, who opposed social reforms and taxes. The Popular Front under Leon Blum could force a breakthrough in 1936. But a new European disaster followed: WW II. In 1940, France was again humiliatingly defeated by the Germans. Those installed a puppet regime in Vichy with the support of the Church. The State was organized on a corporatist basis. The end of the war sealed the end of the 3rd republic with the referendum of 1945. A strong man, General de Gaulle, made France a free, united and independent state by containing the victors of WW II, the communists. Another man with a vision was Robert Schuman, who stood at the birth of the European Union with his Coal and Steel Plan. Alfred Cobban ends his masterly summary with France entangled, politically, in the Algerian question and, economically, in huge inflation. This book reads like a thriller and is highly recommended, not only for historians.

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.

This book is a highly readable overview of French history from the establishment of the Third Republic in 1871 to the presidency of Charles De Gaulle. Cobban's focus is on political history; while he does address social, economic, and cultural developments, the majority of the text relates the twists and turns of French politics over one of the most tumultuous centuries in that country's history. Yet Cobban refuses to be buried by the minutiae of political developments. His main argument is that the Third Republic - the existence of which occupies most of his attention - was not as untenable as many people have argued. While many of its creators believed that it would be only a temporary regime (to be replaced, most likely, by a restored monarchy) and plagued by numerous political tensions, by 1914 it had successfully solved most of these problems and established itself on a solid footing. What undermined the Republic, in Cobban's view, was the First World War, which devastated France and left it to live, as he puts it, "in the shadow of war and rumors of war." With a Left increasingly fractured by the political consequences of the Russian Revolution and a right increasingly disaffected with a system they were never enthusiastic about to begin with, the fall of France in June 1940 signaled the demise of the Third Republic and its replacement by a new rightist regime located at Vichy. Its degeneration into a Nazi puppet government discredited the political right, however, leaving the center-left to form a new Republic in 1945. While Cobban credits this government with success in solving many of France's postwar problems, the crisis created by the war in Algeria led to its demise and replacement by a new system with a centralized presidency, which would be occupied until 1970 by the legendary figure of De Gaulle. While Cobban's death prevented him from updating the story beyond this point, this book is nonetheless useful still as an introduction to modern French history.

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.

This is a well-written but easy to read book on the subject of the history of modern France. I think this would be a good supplimental work for an advanced 8th grade history course or a standand high school history course. It is, however, a little below standard fair for college students.