This book examines public discussions around France's four most prominent royal women during the first and second Restoration and July Monarchy: the duchesse d’Angoulême, the duchesse de Berry, Queen of the French Marie-Amélie, and Adélaïde d’Orléans. These were the most powerful women of the last decades of the French monarchy, but the new roles women were assigned in post-revolutionary France did not permit them to openly exercise political influence. This book explores continuities and variations in narratives of royal legitimacy, and how historians, authors, and politicians used national history - particularly medieval and early modern history - to either legitimize or undermine the French monarchy, and to define women's social and political roles.
"The revolution of July 1830 brought Louis-Philippe to the throne as King of the French; eighteen years later he and his government were driven out by the revolution of 1848. The intervening period - "The July Monarch" - has been strangely neglected by historians, yet it is crucial to an understanding of the development of modern France, and its personalities, complexities and contradictions are of absorbing interest in their own right. This important new book is the only modern study in English to survey the whole period in detail. It centres on political and diplomatic history, but also offers thoughtful analyses of the society, culture and economy of the age; and it provides the necessary context for evaluating such important figures as Talleyrand, Lafayette, Guizot, Thiers, de Tocqueville, Lamartine, Hugo, Daumier, Delacroix, Berlioz and the King himself. The book begins by depicting the fragmentation of French society following the July Revolution itself. These divisions were to remain fundamental to the whole period. Even as they took up the task of revising their constitution, Frenchmen fell out over what the revolution had actually meant. During the July Monarchy all aspects of life seemed to emerge as battlegrounds: socialism arose to confront older loyalties like legitimism; economic development increased the gap between rich and poor; liberal Catholics clashed with the more orthodox. A fractious press heightened these antagonisms; and, above all else, the French came to believe in a 'mal du siecle', and conclude that life was better in the past." -- Book jacket
The "July Revolution" of 1830 in France overthrew the King, brought down the Bourbon dynasty, and ended the fifteen-year era known as the Restoration. lt established the "July Monarchy" of Louis-Philippe, citizen King of the Hause of Orleans, a regime also destined for extinction eighteen years later. Although the 1848 revolt is of somewhat greater domestic political importance and considerably greater in its European scope and its social implications, the July Revolution of 1830 should not be relegated to the lower Ievels of historical consciousness. Yet, in modern times, even in France, relatively few works have been published concerning either the Restoration or the revolution which terminated it. New interpretations, such as the excellent works of Bertier de Sauvigny and David Pinkney have awakened the enthusiasm of scholars; but in general, the intrinsic importance of this period has been slighted for nearly a century. There are reasons for this inattention: At first glance, the era seems retrograde, born of a conservative reaction; and placid - it falls between Napoleon's giant earthquake on one side, and on the other, the dynamics of European nationalism, imperialism, and the class struggle. But the Restoration was neither archaic nor calm. lt was, for all its manifest anachronisms, an age of rapid political, cultural, and social growth. France, during these years, was maturing and ripening toward nationhood - and toward the collision of many complex forces, culminating in revolution.
This book examines the politics of the French Revolutionary tradition in the early nineteenth century. The author argues that political struggle was not confined to the elite, and that the Restoration Liberal Opposition developed a reform tradition which was far more effective than the revolutionary tradition of conspiracy and insurrection.
Paris between 1814 and 1852 was the capital of Europe, a city of power and pleasure, a magnet for people of all nationalities that exerted an influence far beyond the reaches of France. Paris was the stage where the great conflicts of the age, between nationalism and cosmopolitanism, revolution and royalism, socialism and capitalism, atheism and Catholicism, were fought out before the audience of Europe. As Prince Metternich said: When Paris sneezes, Europe catches cold. Not since imperial Rome has one city so dominated European life. Paris Between Empires tells the story of this golden age, from the entry of the allies into Paris on March 31, 1814, after the defeat of Napoleon I, to the proclamation of his nephew Louis-Napoleon, as Napoleon III in the Hôtel de Ville on December 2, 1852. During those years, Paris, the seat of a new parliamentary government, was a truly cosmopolitan capital, home to Rossini, Heine, and Princess Lieven, as well as Berlioz, Chateaubriand, and Madame Recamier. Its salons were crowded with artisans and aristocrats from across Europe, attracted by the freedom from the political, social, and sexual restrictions that they endured at home. This was a time, too, of political turbulence and dynastic intrigue, of violence on the streets, and women manipulating men and events from their salons. In describing it Philip Mansel draws on the unpublished letters and diaries of some of the city's leading figures and of the foreigners who flocked there, among them Lady Holland, two British ambassadors, Lords Stuart de Rothesay and Normanby, and Charles de Flahaut, lover of Napoleon's step-daughter Queen Hortense. This fascinating book shows that the European ideal was as alive in the nineteenth century as it is today.
In Friendship and Politics in Post-Revolutionary France, Sarah Horowitz brings together the political and cultural history of post-revolutionary France to illuminate how French society responded to and recovered from the upheaval of the French Revolution. The Revolution led to a heightened sense of distrust and divided the nation along ideological lines. In the wake of the Terror, many began to express concerns about the atomization of French society. Friendship, though, was regarded as one bond that could restore trust and cohesion. Friends relied on each other to serve as confidants; men and women described friendship as a site of both pleasure and connection. Because trust and cohesion were necessary to the functioning of post-revolutionary parliamentary life, politicians turned to friends and ideas about friendship to create this solidarity. Relying on detailed analyses of politicians’ social networks, new tools arising from the digital humanities, and examinations of behind-the-scenes political transactions, Horowitz makes clear the connection between politics and emotions in the early nineteenth century, and she reevaluates the role of women in political life by showing the ways in which the personal was the political in the post-revolutionary era.
Historians in France assume that the restoration of Monarchy after the defeat of Napoleon was doomed. The first compact recent history of the period in English, this book reveals that although the French experimented with two Monarchies and a Republic (1814 - 48), there was substantial stability. The Institutional framework constructed during the Revolutionary years (1789 - 1814) remained intact, and the ruling elites retained basic control.
Sandy Petrey explores the factors accounting for such consequential innovations in so short a time, so restricted a space. In Petrey's view, these disparate events betoken a common recognition of society's capacity to make and unmake what it recognizes as real."--Jacket.
In the climactic part of his three-book series exploring the importance of public image in the Tudor and Stuart monarchies, Kevin Sharpe employs a remarkable interdisciplinary approach that draws on literary studies and art history as well as political, cultural, and social history to show how this preoccupation with public representation met the challenge of dealing with the aftermath of Cromwell's interregnum and Charles II's restoration, and how the irrevocably changed cultural landscape was navigated by the sometimes astute yet equally fallible Stuart monarchs and their successors.
Challenging many of the conclusions of recent historiography, including the depiction of salonnières as influential power brokers, French Salons offers an original, penetrating, and engaging analysis of elite culture and society in France before, during, and after the Revolution.
