Republicanism in Nineteenth-Century France, 1814–1871

Book excerpt: This book is a fascinating survey of nineteenth-century republicanism, the first of its kind this century. It investigates why it was that although France was one of the first countries in modern Europe to become a republic in 1792, it was nearly a hundred years before a republic was acceptable to the majority. Pamela Pilbeam suggests that republicanism was a witch's brew of Enlightenment rationality, bloody memories and conflicting socialist expectations. The book concludes that the successful republic of 1871 used the rhetoric of democracy to conceal persistent elitism.