Republican Experiment, 1848-1852

The history of modern France has tended to ignore the sad and brief tale of the Second Republic. Lasting only 4 years, it has not persisted in contemporary imagination to the same extent as the Revolution or the series of Napoleonic Wars which followed it. In part perhaps, as this book shows, it might have been because the Second Republic lacked such a bloody pedigree. Here in 1848-52, there was no Thermidor, no Reign of Terror and above all, no Napoleon that emerged to plunge France and Europe into cataclysmic wars. In this sense, the book is sleepy. It describes many worth reforms instituted by the republicans. Like a more representative franchise, and better treatment of natives under their empire. But modern readers can see that the reforms had their limits. There was still an underlying tension between the noble ideals of the Revolution and the realities of the empire, where a minority of (white) French lorded over many (non-white) natives.