Abstract
Between the September laws of 1835, which muzzled the republican press, and the February Revolution of 1848, those who continued to hold out against Orleanism were divided and marginalized, by their own actions as much as by government manoeuvres. Three main strands of radical opposition — insurrectionary, reformist and socialist — can be discerned for the purposes of the historian’s urge to tidy up the past (individuals might, of course, be a mixture of these). A tiny minority maintained the belief that a republic could emerge from a popular rising; the remainder were irresolute. Should energy be consolidated around an attempt to develop parliamentary institutions, in which case electoral and suffrage reform had priority, or did the visible social problems of an industrializing society dictate that social reform should dominate the agenda? If so, should this be piecemeal, radical, revolutionary or Utopian? All republicans were certainly not socialist, socialists tended to favour a republic, but as a means, not as an end in itself. The two issues of electoral and social reform came to dominate debates among a quarrelsome and largely middle-class minority, few of whose adherents believed that the creation of a republic was possible or likely, and certainly not at the beginning of 1848.
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Notes
A. Blanqui, Manuscripts Blanqui. BN. 1850 quoted in S. Molinier, Blanqui (Paris, 1984), p. 31. All translations from the French are my own.
W. Sewell, ‘Beyond 1783: Babeuf, Louis Blanc and the Genealogy of “Social Revolution”’ in F. Furet and M. Ozouf, The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture (Oxford, 1989), pp. 509–526.
Cf. M. Agulhon (ed.), Blanqui et les Blanquistes (Paris, 1986);
M. Dommanget, Les Idées politiques et sociales d’Auguste Blanqui (Paris, 1957);
S. Bernstein, Auguste Blanqui and the Art of Insurrection (London, 1971);
A. Spitzer, The Revolutionary Theories of Louis-Auguste Blanqui (New York, 1957).
D. B. Weiner, Raspail, Scientist and Reformer (New York, 1968).
I.-A. Chernov (Tchernoff), Le Parti républicain sous la Monarchie de Juillet. Fondation et évolution de la doctrine républicaine (Paris, 1901), p. 343.
M. Dommanget, Auguste Blanqui. Des Origines à la Révolution de 1848, premiers combats et premières prisons (Paris, 1969), pp. 178–238.
D. C. McKay, The National Workshops. A Study in the French Revolution of 1848 (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), p. xx.
A. Blanqui, ‘Instruction pour une prise d’armes’ in S. Molinier, Blanqui (Paris, 1948), p. 32.
J. J. Baughman, ‘The French Banquet Campaign of 1847–8’, Journal of Modern History, XXXI, 1 (1959), 1–15.
An excellent account of Guizot’s final government in R. L. Koepke, ‘The failure of parliamentary government in France, 1840–48’, European Studies Review, 9 (1979), 433–55.
A. Gourvitch, ‘Le Mouvement pour la réforme électorale’, La Révolution de 1848, vols XI–XIV (1914–18). See also A.J. Tudesq, Les Grands Notables en France 1840–1849. Etude historique d’une psychologie sociale (Paris, 1964), vol. 1, pp. 516–27.
C. F. M. de Remusat (ed. C. H. Pouthas), Mémoires de ma vie (Paris, 1959), vol. III, p. 416.
Koepke, ‘The failure’. Figures are taken from the Guizot-inspired Paul Thureau-Dangin, Histoire de la Monarchie de Juillet, 7 vols (Paris, 1884–92).
See also D. W. Johnson, Guizot, Aspects of French History 1787–1874 (London, 1963).
H. A. C. Collingham, The July Monarchy. A Political History of France, 1830–1848 (London, 1988), pp. 289–302.
Journal des Débats, 16 February 1842. All of his speeches reprinted in F. P. G. Guizot, Historie parlementaire de la France, 5 vols (Paris, 1863–4).
R. Schnerb, Ledru-Rollin (Paris, 1948).
A. Jardin and A. J. Tudesq, Restoration and Reaction 1815–1848 (Cambridge, 1983), p. 104.
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R. L. Koepke, ‘The short, unhappy history of progressive conservatism in France, 1840–1848’, Canadian Journal of History, XVIII (1983), 189–90.
P. Duvergier de Hauranne, De la Réforme parlementaire et de la réforme électorale (Paris, 1847).
L. Chevalier, La Formation de la population Parisienne au XIXe. siècle (Paris, 1950), p. 40.
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A. Jardin and A. J. Tudesq, La France des notables 1815–48 (Paris, 1973), vol. 1, p. 246.
J. Bruhat, Les Journées de Février 1848 (Paris, 1948), p. 6.
Daumier, ‘Voyage à travers les populations empressées’, La Caricature, 14 August 1834, reproduced in C. F. Ramus, Daumier. 120 Great Lithographs (New York, 1979).
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© 1995 Pamela M. Pilbeam
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Pilbeam, P.M. (1995). The Republic Outlawed: Insurrection and Reform 1835–1848. In: Republicanism in Nineteenth-Century France, 1814–1871. European Studies Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23860-6_6
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