The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France

by Philip Nord

France in the mid-nineteenth century was shaken by a surge of civic activism, the "resurrection of civil society." But unlike similar developments throughout Europe, this civic mobilization culminated in the establishment of democratic institutions. How, Philip Nord asks, did France effect a successful transition from Louis-Napoleon's authoritarian Second Empire to a functioning republic based on universal suffrage and governed by middle-class parliamentarians? How did French civic activism take this democratic turn?

Nord provides the answers in a multidimensional narrative that encompasses not only history and politics but also religion, philosophy, art, literature, and gender. He traces the advance of democratic sentiment and the consolidation of political dissent at its strategic institutional sites: the lodges of Freemasonry, the University, the Paris Chamber of Commerce, the Protestant and Jewish consistories, the Paris bar, and the arts. It was the particular character and unfolding of these struggles, Nord demonstrates, that made an awakening middle class receptive to democratic politics. The new republican elite was armed with a specific vision that rallied rural France—a vision of solidarity and civic-mindedness, of moral improvement, and of a socioeconomic order anchored in family enterprise.

Nord's trenchant analysis explains how and why the Third Republic (1870-1940) endured longer than any other regime since the 1789 revolution. The convergence of republican currents at midcentury bequeathed to the French nation a mature civil society, a political elite highly trained in the arts of democratic politics, and an agenda that encompassed not only constitutional reform but also a reformation of private life and public culture.

Genres: History, France

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Michael’ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very dry. Doesn’t explain worldviews, personalities or events. Nord set out to write an account of why the 3rd Republic survived whereas the others didn’t and why France democratised while other countries didn’t. He does this but not very well. He outlines some factors but he doesn’t create clear contrasts with 1789 or 1848 or with other countries. He doesn’t give an overview of the era either so it’s not clear what role the things he covers play.
And it are “things” he covers, not specifically events, people or ideologies but a rather random collection of names and anecdotes. As you don’t get a complete view of the relation between events or between ideologies, their significance is not clear. To illustrate, the first chapter is on Free Masonry. Here, Nord’s thesis is that Masonry was more radical than presented by the historians of the 3rd Republic. To do this, Nord lists a bunch of obscure folks whom were former Saint-Simonians or Fourierites or supported some particular women’s school in Paris or contributed to some long forgotten paper that ran for 14 months and had only 300 readers. At no point does Nord make it clear how this was relevant to the longevity of the 3rd Republic. In fact, Nord, at one point, makes the point that it survived longer because it was less radical. So why devote an entire chapter to proving the Free Masons were more radical than described, or at least that many of their members were former radicals?
The rest of the book focuses on a range of similarly niche topics. For example, the relation captain painters and republicanism. To make things worse, Nord frequently discusses people whom he never fully names. He’ll give only their last name and write like they’re household names. I looked one of them up, one Clamageran, and found it was Jean-Jules Clamageran, a politician almost as obscure in France as in the Anglo-sphere.
Similarly, Nord often uses abstract terms he doesn’t define. What, exactly, does it mean for someone to be rational and not scientific in outlook? Nord calls Cousin a rationalist so am I to assume any rationalist is a Cousinist? But Nord uses the term for people explicitly not Cousinist. Even worse, Nord doesn’t define or even describe what a “Liberal” is. Does he mean an exclusively the more moderate movement that arose in the early 18th century? Or does he include the Radicals? When he says that someone is a Liberal Protestant, does that mean a Liberal who happens to be Protestant or a Protestant who happens to more Liberal?
Finally, Nord has a strange thing for praising anything female-only while condemning anything male-only, even groups of men uniting to help Feminism. The one page, Nord praises a female-only group or someone looking for a female prophet, the next he’s shitting on male Feminists for being a Free Masons. Gendered spaces are very, very good except when men have them and then they’re very, very bad and inherently exclusionary.

Foucault once said that when you read a book, you read about its author, not its subject. Nord wrote a collection of mussing roughly related to the longevity of the 3rd Republic. The whole is confused and shows us as much about the author than his subject.

[Anthony Zupancic · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Republican Moment, Philip Nord attempted to explain why the Third Republic emerged in France in 1870 and why it was the first French republic to last. Nord’s answer differed from previous explanations offered by Furet, Hoffman, and Weber who focused on positivist ideology, political alliances, and republicanization, respectively. Rather than focusing on political ideology, Nord examined the emergence of a republican political culture. The Third Empire was the result, according to Nord, of the emergence of a civil society that was, by nature of its experiences under the Second Empire, inclined to republicanism.

During the Second Empire, the elite entrenched themselves in state institutions and universities subject to imperial authority, which sought to curtail free association and expression. As the empire grew economically so did the middle class, which could not be absorbed into the existing institutional political structure. Instead the emerging middle class chafed against the institutions that excluded them.
Nord tracked the “slow march” of republicanism through state institutions to identify the origin of the Third Republic’s elites, their peculiar zeal, and capacity to overcome resistance. He focused on the experience of groups within Paris: Freemasons, residents of the Latin Quarter, commercial interests, Jews, and Protestants.

Conflicts between the “new social strata” and existing institutions created and shaped a widespread republican political culture within these groups. Masonic dissident campaigns spilled over into republican opposition, shaping the republican movement by embracing science and pseudo-science as a weapon against Catholic theology. In the Latin Quarter, students threatened imperial order through critiques of religion and philosophy and resistance to conservative policies in the academy. The cult of science, developed by students and academics, became a secular religion for republicans and the university was reborn as a pillar or republicanism. The Union Nationale du Commerce et de l’Industrie (UNCI) turned to republicanism as the principle language of opposition as it undermined the Chambre de Commerce de Paris (CCP) and its monopoly on institutional power. The Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) embraced the democratic process to challenge the entrenched Jewish consistory while liberal Protestants campaigned against their own orthodox consistory. Even when these groups were unsuccessful, as the liberal Protestants were, the experience shaped an emerging elite – in the case of Protestants, they brought a diluted Protestantism to the educational campaigns of the Third Republic. The new elites, forged by conflict, were the reason the Third Republic lasted.

Nord’s explanation of the emergence of a republican elite during the Second Empire is convincing but his book raises a number of questions. Methodologically, Nord limited his study to groups within Paris but did not endorse the theories of Hoffman or Weber to account for rural France or other urban centers. Nord also denied that the emerging elite was overwhelmingly comprised of republican pragmatists, but only briefly discussed radical republicans during the section on Freemasons, and did not address the political nature of early Third Republic officials to successfully rebrand them. Finally, Nord attributed the educational program of the Third Republic to liberal Protestants, but provided only several examples of reforming Protestants. More evidence linking liberal Protestants to educational reform or evidence backing his interpretation of laicity would have been useful. Overall, Nord’s text presents an intriguing interpretation of the French Democratic transition and illuminates a number of avenues for further inquiry into the historical discussion.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nord argues that the Third Republic deserves more attention than historians have typically given it as his intriguing work sets the foundation for future scholarship on the politics of the Third Republic.