Napoleon III and the French Second Empire by Roger D. Price Page B
Authors: Roger D. Price
Tags: History
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power between established elites and up-and-coming bourgeois groups. In the industrial centres of Reims and Saint-Etienne, this occurred between the old-established merchant capitalists and the more enterprising among the new manufacturers and members of the liberal
professions. These men were prepared to finance newspapers, organise
committees, select candidates from within their own ranks and offer leadership, and generally to encourage the diffusion of democratic ideas through the network of workshops, cafés and mutual aid societies. Urban workers also increasingly came to support republican electoral candidates. Even if every manifestation of discontent, such as the strike waves of 1869–70, should not necessarily be taken to represent opposition to the regime, as opposed to support for professional demands or a protest against the rising cost of living, support for republicanism tended to be generated by such conflict which frequently brought strikers up against the legal and military representatives of the regime. Although living standards undoubtedly had improved for most workers during the late 1850s and 1860s, they remained more aware of cramped and often squalid housing, rising rents, and constant insecurity of employment, with even the most highly skilled conscious of the intensifying threat to their craft skills and status as industrial mechanisation and the re-organisation of work processes continued. Perceptions matter far more than realities in determining political behaviour.
The rural vote
The rural population as a whole was much less likely to vote for republican candidates. Any exercise in historical political sociology is, however, difficult.
Generalisations are hazardous in the extreme. A complex of factors ensured that particular regions adopted one form of political identity or another. These included 51
existing social relationships, the products of daily social intercourse, as well as the formative influence of memories of past conflict during the ancien régime and the revolution, and more recently during the Second Republic. The development of regular and intensifying links with urban centres and especially with the artisans and professional men resident in the small market centres, as well as factors such as levels of literacy, the forms of habitat structure and established patterns of popular sociability, were other relevant factors facilitating or obstructing the diffusion of ideas and political organisation. The regions of northern France with the most advanced agriculture, prosperous farms and social systems closely
controlled by large-scale commercial and mainly tenant farmers, and from which the most disaffected could migrate with relative ease, tended to support official candidates. In the east, in the Côte d’Or studied in such detail by Lévêque (1983), both the Châtillonais (a society dominated by peasant landowners and where social tension was limited) and the Brionnais (in which large landowners in close alliance with the clergy were dominant) voted for the regime. In contrast, it was the areas of vine cultivation and of predominantly cereal-producing plains around Châlons and Dijon – open societies engaged in commerce, subject to the alcohol tax and
intensifying competitive pressures and especially susceptible to outside influences
– which provided substantial support for republicans. Indeed, this usually appears to have been found in areas in which commercial farming and rural manufacture coexisted as well as in places of passage, in the east of Côte d’Or, the south of Doubs, Northern Jura, along the Rhône-Saône corridor and in the coastal regions of Provence and Languedoc and in the Garonne valley. In all these places, strong republican minorities existed by 1869. In the Limousin, cantons susceptible to Parisian influence because of the practice of migratory labour began to record 20–
30 per cent support for republican candidates (Corbin 1975). In the
professions. These men were prepared to finance newspapers, organise
committees, select candidates from within their own ranks and offer leadership, and generally to encourage the diffusion of democratic ideas through the network of workshops, cafés and mutual aid societies. Urban workers also increasingly came to support republican electoral candidates. Even if every manifestation of discontent, such as the strike waves of 1869–70, should not necessarily be taken to represent opposition to the regime, as opposed to support for professional demands or a protest against the rising cost of living, support for republicanism tended to be generated by such conflict which frequently brought strikers up against the legal and military representatives of the regime. Although living standards undoubtedly had improved for most workers during the late 1850s and 1860s, they remained more aware of cramped and often squalid housing, rising rents, and constant insecurity of employment, with even the most highly skilled conscious of the intensifying threat to their craft skills and status as industrial mechanisation and the re-organisation of work processes continued. Perceptions matter far more than realities in determining political behaviour.
The rural vote
The rural population as a whole was much less likely to vote for republican candidates. Any exercise in historical political sociology is, however, difficult.
Generalisations are hazardous in the extreme. A complex of factors ensured that particular regions adopted one form of political identity or another. These included 51
existing social relationships, the products of daily social intercourse, as well as the formative influence of memories of past conflict during the ancien régime and the revolution, and more recently during the Second Republic. The development of regular and intensifying links with urban centres and especially with the artisans and professional men resident in the small market centres, as well as factors such as levels of literacy, the forms of habitat structure and established patterns of popular sociability, were other relevant factors facilitating or obstructing the diffusion of ideas and political organisation. The regions of northern France with the most advanced agriculture, prosperous farms and social systems closely
controlled by large-scale commercial and mainly tenant farmers, and from which the most disaffected could migrate with relative ease, tended to support official candidates. In the east, in the Côte d’Or studied in such detail by Lévêque (1983), both the Châtillonais (a society dominated by peasant landowners and where social tension was limited) and the Brionnais (in which large landowners in close alliance with the clergy were dominant) voted for the regime. In contrast, it was the areas of vine cultivation and of predominantly cereal-producing plains around Châlons and Dijon – open societies engaged in commerce, subject to the alcohol tax and
intensifying competitive pressures and especially susceptible to outside influences
– which provided substantial support for republicans. Indeed, this usually appears to have been found in areas in which commercial farming and rural manufacture coexisted as well as in places of passage, in the east of Côte d’Or, the south of Doubs, Northern Jura, along the Rhône-Saône corridor and in the coastal regions of Provence and Languedoc and in the Garonne valley. In all these places, strong republican minorities existed by 1869. In the Limousin, cantons susceptible to Parisian influence because of the practice of migratory labour began to record 20–
30 per cent support for republican candidates (Corbin 1975). In the
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