Magraw Roger. France, 1815-1914: The Bourgeois Century

Fontana Paperbacks, 1983. — 420 p.This new three-volume series takes in the mass of recent research into the political, economic and social history of France from the ancien régime to the present. Nineteenth-century France witnessed the protracted struggle of the victorious post-revolutionary bourgeoisie to consolidate and defend the gains made in 1789. In this lively and stimulating volume Roger Magraw examines the attempts of the bourgeoisie to remould France in its own image, and discusses the bourgeois strategy for overcoming the resistance which this met. The old aristocratic and clerical elites remained unreconciled to the revolution, and the popular classes sustained a prolonged rearguard defence of their threatened peasant culture and communities, artisanal skills and crafts. The author incorporates the most recent research on religion and anticlericalism, the development of the economy, the role of women in society (particularly in the labour force) and the education system, through which the bourgeoisie came to present itself as ‘progressive’, now offering a brave new world of upward mobility and opportunity in a classless society.