France in the long nineteenth century

A map of France in 1843 under the July Monarchy

By the French Revolution, the Kingdom of France had expanded to nearly the modern territorial limits. The 19th century would complete the process by the annexation of the Duchy of Savoy and the County of Nice (first during the First Empire, and then definitively in 1860) and some small papal (like Avignon) and foreign possessions. France's territorial limits were greatly extended during the Empire through Revolutionary and Napoleonic military conquests and re-organization of Europe, but these were reversed by the Vienna Congress. Savoy and Nice were definitively annexed following France's victory in the Franco-Austrian War in 1859.

In 1830, France invaded Algeria, and in 1848 this north African country was fully integrated into France as a département. The late 19th century saw France embark on a massive program of overseas imperialism — including French Indochina (modern day Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos) and Africa (the Scramble for Africa brought France most of North-West and Central Africa) — which brought it in direct competition with British interests.

With the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, France lost her provinces of Alsace and portions of Lorraine to Germany (see Alsace-Lorraine); these lost provinces would only be regained at the end of World War I.

French peasants depicted in Fin du travail (1887)

Between 1795 and 1866, metropolitan France (that is, without overseas or colonial possessions) was the second most populous country of Europe, behind Russia, and the fourth most populous country in the world (behind China, India, and Russia); between 1866 and 1911, metropolitan France was the third most populous country of Europe, behind Russia and Germany. Unlike other European countries, France did not experience a strong population growth from the middle of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century. The French population in 1789 is estimated at 28 million; by 1850, it was 36 million and in 1880 it was around 39 million.[1] Slow growth was a major political issue, as arch-rival Germany continued to gain an advantage in terms of population and industry. Ways to reverse the trend became a major political issue.[2]

Until 1850, population growth was mainly in the countryside, but a period of slow urbanization began under the Second Empire. Unlike in England, industrialization was a late phenomenon in France. France's economy in the 1830s had a limited iron industry, under-developed coal supplies, and the great majority lived on farms. The systematic establishment of primary education and the creation of new engineering schools prepared an industrial expansion which would blossom in the following decades. French rail transport only began hesitantly in the 1830s, and would not truly develop until the 1840s, using imported British engineers. By the revolution of 1848, a growing industrial workforce began to participate actively in French politics, but their hopes were largely betrayed by the policies of the Second Empire. The loss of the important coal, steel and glass production regions of Alsace and Lorraine would cause further problems. The industrial worker population increased from 23% in 1870 to 39% in 1914. Nevertheless, France remained a rather rural country in the early 1900s with 40% of the population still farmers in 1914. While exhibiting a similar urbanization rate to the U.S. (50% of the population in the U.S. was engaged in agriculture in the early 1900s), the urbanization rate of France was still well behind that of the UK (80% urbanization rate in the early 1900s).[3]

Wealthy Parisians in an urban café or patisserie, 1889

In the 19th century, France was a country of immigration for peoples and political refugees from Eastern Europe (Germany, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Ashkenazi Jews) and from the Mediterranean (Italy, Spanish Sephardic Jews and North-African Mizrahi Jews). Large numbers of Belgian migrant workers laboured in French factories, particularly in the textile industry in the Nord.

France was the first country in Europe to emancipate its Jewish population during the French Revolution. The Crémieux Decree of 1870 gave full citizenship for the Jews in French Algeria. By 1872, there were an estimated 86,000 Jews living in France (by 1945 this would increase to 300,000), many of whom integrated (or attempted to integrate) into French society, although the Dreyfus affair would reveal antisemitism in certain classes of French society (see History of the Jews in France).

Alsace and Lorraine were lost to Germany in 1871. Some French refugees moved to France. France suffered massive losses during World War I — roughly estimated at 1.4 million French dead including civilians (see World War I casualties) (or nearly 10% of the active adult male population) and four times as many wounded (see World War I Aftermath).

Linguistically, France was a patchwork. People in the countryside spoke various languages. France would only become a linguistically unified country by the end of the 19th century, and in particular through the educational policies of Jules Ferry during the French Third Republic. From an illiteracy rate of 33% among peasants in 1870, by 1914 almost all French could read and understand the national language, although 50% still understood or spoke a regional language of France (in today's France, only an estimated 10% still understand a regional language).[4]

Through the educational, social and military policies of the Third Republic, by 1914 the French had been converted (as the historian Eugen Weber has put it) from a "country of peasants into a nation of Frenchmen". By 1914, most French could read French and the use of regional languages had greatly decreased; the role of the Catholic Church in public life had been radically diminished; a sense of national identity and pride was actively taught. The anti-clericalism of the Third Republic profoundly changed French religious habits: in one case study for the city of Limoges comparing the years 1899 with 1914, it was found that baptisms decreased from 98% to 60%, and civil marriages before a town official increased from 14% to 60%.

French economic history since its late-18th century Revolution was tied to three major events and trends: the Napoleonic Era, the competition with Britain and its other neighbors in regards to 'industrialization', and the 'total wars' of the late-19th and early 20th centuries. Quantitative analysis of output data shows the French per capita growth rates were slightly smaller than Britain. However the British population tripled in size, while France grew by only third — so the overall British economy grew much faster. François Crouzet has summarized the cycles of French per capita economic growth in 1815–1913 as:[5]

• 1815–1840: irregular, but sometimes fast growth;
• 1840–1860: fast growth;
• 1860–1882: slowing down;
• 1882–1896: stagnation; and
• 1896–1913: fast growth.

For the 1870-1913 era, Angus Maddison gives growth rates for 12 Western advanced countries — 10 in Europe plus the United States and Canada.[6] In terms of per capita growth, France was about average. However again its population growth was very slow, so as far as the growth rate in total size of the economy France was in next to the last place, just ahead of Italy. The 12 countries averaged 2.7% growth per year in total output, but France only averaged 1.6% growth.[7] Crouzet concludes that the:

average size of industrial undertakings was smaller in France than in other advanced countries; that machinery was generally less up to date, productivity lower, costs higher. The domestic system and handicraft production long persisted, while big modern factories were for long exceptional. Large lumps of the Ancien Régime economy survived....On the whole, the qualitative lag between the British and French economy...persisted during the whole period under consideration, and later on a similar lag developed between France and some other countries—Belgium, Germany, the United States. France did not succeed in catching up with Britain, but was overtaken by several of her rivals.[8]

Storming of the Bastille in 1789

The reign of Louis XVI (1774–1792) had seen a temporary revival of French fortunes, but the over-ambitious projects and military campaigns of the 18th century had produced chronic financial problems. Deteriorating economic conditions, popular resentment against the complicated system of privileges granted the nobility and clerics, and a lack of alternate avenues for change were among the principal causes for convoking the Estates-General which convened in Versailles in 1789. On May 28, 1789, the Abbé Sieyès moved that the Third Estate proceed with verification of its own powers and invite the other two estates to take part, but not to wait for them. They proceeded to do so, and then voted a measure far more radical, declaring themselves the National Assembly, an assembly not of the Estates but of "the People".[9]

Louis XVI shut the Salle des États where the Assembly met. The Assembly moved their deliberations to the king's tennis court, where they proceeded to swear the Tennis Court Oath (June 20, 1789), under which they agreed not to separate until they had given France a constitution. A majority of the representatives of the clergy soon joined them, as did 47 members of the nobility. By June 27 the royal party had overtly given in, although the military began to arrive in large numbers around Paris and Versailles. On July 9 the Assembly reconstituted itself as the National Constituent Assembly.[10]

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789

On July 11, 1789, King Louis, acting under the influence of the conservative nobles, as well as his wife, Marie Antoinette, and brother, the Comte d'Artois, banished the reformist minister Necker and completely reconstructed the ministry. Much of Paris, presuming this to be the start of a royal coup, moved into open rebellion. Some of the military joined the mob; others remained neutral. On July 14, 1789, after four hours of combat, the insurgents seized the Bastille fortress, killing its governor and several of his guards. The king and his military supporters backed down, at least for a short time.

After this violence, nobles started to flee the country as émigrés, some of whom began plotting civil war within the kingdom and agitating for a European coalition against France. Insurrection and the spirit of popular sovereignty spread throughout France. In rural areas, many went beyond this: some burned title-deeds and no small number of châteaux, as part of a general agrarian insurrection known as "la Grande Peur" (the Great Fear).

On August 4, 1789, the National Assembly abolished feudalism, sweeping away both the seigneurial rights of the Second Estate and the tithes gathered by the First Estate. In the course of a few hours, nobles, clergy, towns, provinces, companies, and cities lost their special privileges. The revolution also brought about a massive shifting of powers from the Catholic Church to the State. Legislation enacted in 1790 abolished the Church's authority to levy a tax on crops known as the dîme, cancelled special privileges for the clergy, and confiscated Church property: under the Ancien Régime, the Church had been the largest landowner in the country. Further legislation abolished monastic vows. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, passed on July 12, 1790, turned the remaining clergy into employees of the State and required that they take an oath of loyalty to the constitution. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy also made the Catholic Church an arm of the secular state.[11]

Looking to the United States Declaration of Independence for a model, on August 26, 1789, the Assembly published the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Like the U.S. Declaration, it comprised a statement of principles rather than a constitution with legal effect. The Assembly replaced the historic provinces with eighty-three départements, uniformly administered and approximately equal to one another in extent and population; it also abolished the symbolic paraphernalia of the Ancien Régime — armorial bearings, liveries, etc. — which further alienated the more conservative nobles, and added to the ranks of the émigrés.

Louis XVI opposed the course of the revolution and on the night of June 20, 1791 the royal family fled the Tuileries. However, the king was recognised at Varennes in the Meuse late on June 21 and he and his family were brought back to Paris under guard. With most of the Assembly still favouring a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic, the various groupings reached a compromise which left Louis XVI little more than a figurehead: he had perforce to swear an oath to the constitution, and a decree declared that retracting the oath, heading an army for the purpose of making war upon the nation, or permitting anyone to do so in his name would amount to de facto abdication.

The French Revolutionary Army at the battle of Jemappes (1792) during the French Revolutionary Wars

Meanwhile, a renewed threat from abroad arose: Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick William II of Prussia, and the king's brother Charles-Phillipe, comte d'Artois issued the Declaration of Pillnitz which considered the cause of Louis XVI as their own, demanded his total liberty and the dissolution of the Assembly, and promised an invasion of France on his behalf if the revolutionary authorities refused its conditions. The politics of the period inevitably drove France towards war with Austria and its allies. France declared war on Austria (April 20, 1792) and Prussia joined on the Austrian side a few weeks later. The French Revolutionary Wars had begun.[12]

Comité Central de Salut public, An II (Committee of Public Safety)

The execution of Robespierre marked the end of the Reign of Terror

The first half of 1793 went badly for the new French Republic, with the French armies being driven out of Germany and the Austrian Netherlands. In this situation, prices rose and the sans-culottes (poor labourers and radical Jacobins) rioted; counter-revolutionary activities began in some regions. This encouraged the Jacobins to seize power through a parliamentary coup, backed up by force effected by mobilising public support against the Girondist faction, and by utilising the mob power of the Parisian sans-culottes. An alliance of Jacobin and sans-culottes elements thus became the effective centre of the new government. Policy became considerably more radical. The government instituted the "levy-en-masse", where all able-bodied men 18 and older were liable for military service. This allowed France to field much larger armies than its enemies, and soon the tide of war was reversed.

The Committee of Public Safety came under the control of Maximilien Robespierre, and the Jacobins unleashed the Reign of Terror. At least 1200 people met their deaths under the guillotine — or otherwise — after accusations of counter-revolutionary activities. In October, the queen was beheaded, further antagonizing Austria. In 1794 Robespierre had ultra-radicals and moderate Jacobins executed; in consequence, however, his own popular support eroded markedly. Georges Danton was beheaded for arguing that there were too many beheadings. There were attempts to do away with organized religion in France entirely and replace it with a Festival of Reason. The primary leader of this movement, Jacques Hébert, held such a festival in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, with an actress playing the Goddess of Reason. But Robespierre was unmoved by Hébert and had him and all his followers beheaded.

On July 27, 1794, the French people revolted against the excesses of the Reign of Terror in what became known as the Thermidorian Reaction. It resulted in moderate Convention members deposing Robespierre and several other leading members of the Committee of Public Safety. All of them were beheaded without trial. With that, the extreme, radical phase of the Revolution ended. The Convention approved the new Constitution of the Year III on August 17, 1795. A plebiscite ratified it in September and it took effect on September 26, 1795.

The army arrests General Jean-Charles Pichegru at the Tuileries Palace (4 September 1797)

Napoleon Bonaparte seizes power and establishes the Consulate in 1799.

The new constitution installed the Directoire and created France's bicameral legislature. It was markedly more conservative, dominated by the bourgeoise, and sought to restore order and exclude the sans-culottes and other members of the lower classes from political life.

By 1795, the French had once again conquered the Austrian Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine, annexing them directly into France. The Dutch Republic and Spain were both defeated and made into French satellites. At sea however, the French navy proved no match for the British, and was badly beaten off the coast of Ireland in June 1794.

Napoleon Bonaparte was given command of an army in 1796 that was to invade Italy. The young general defeated the Austrian and Sardinian forces and he negotiated the Treaty of Campo Formio without the input of the Directory. The French annexation of the Austrian Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine was recognized, as were the satellite republics they created in northern Italy.

Although the War of the First Coalition ended in 1797, a second coalition was formed in May 1798 when France invaded the Swiss Confederation, the Kingdom of Naples, and the Papal States. Napoleon convinced the Directory to approve an expedition to Egypt, with the purpose of cutting off Britain's supply route to India. He got approval for this, and set off in May 1798 for Egypt with 40,000 men. But the expedition foundered when the British fleet of Horatio Nelson caught and destroyed most of the French ships in the Battle of the Nile. The army had no way to return to France and faced the hostility of the Ottoman Empire.

Napoleon himself escaped back to France, where he led the coup d'état of November 1799, making himself First Consul (his hapless troops remained in Egypt until they surrendered to a British expedition in 1801 and were repatriated to France).

By that point, the War of the Second Coalition was in progress. The French suffered a string of defeats in 1799, seeing their satellite republics in Italy overthrown and an invasion of Germany beaten back. Attempts by the allies on Switzerland and the Netherlands failed however, and once Napoleon returned to France, he began turning the tide on them. In 1801, the Peace of Lunéville ended hostilities with Austria and Russia, and the Treaty of Amiens with Britain.

Communards building a barricade in Paris

A revolt broke out on 18 March when radicalised soldiers from the Paris National Guard killed two French generals. French government officials and the army withdrew quickly to Versailles, and a new city council, the Paris Commune, dominated by anarchists and radical socialists, was elected and took power on March 26, and tried to implement an ambitious and radical social programme.

The Commune proposed the separation of Church and state, made all Church property state property, and excluded religious instruction from schools, including Catholic schools. The churches were only allowed to continue their religious activity if they kept their doors open to public political meetings during the evenings. Other projected legislation dealt with educational reforms which would make further education and technical training freely available to all. However, for lack of time and resources, the programs were never carried out. The Vendôme Column, seen as a symbol of Napoleon's imperialism was pulled down, at the suggestion of Commune member Gustave Courbet, who was later briefly jailed and required to pay for putting it back up.

Nathalie Lemel, a religious workwoman, and Elisabeth Dmitrieff, a young Russian aristocrat, created the Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés ("Women Union for the Defense of Paris and Care to the Injured") on April 11, 1871. They demanded gender equality, wage equality, right of divorce for women, right to laïque instruction (non-clerical) and for professional training for girls. They also demanded suppression of the distinction between married women and concubins, between legitimate and natural children, the abolition of prostitution—they obtained the closing of the maisons de tolérance (legal unofficial brothels). The Women Union also participated in several municipal commissions and organized cooperative workshops.[25]

The Paris Commune held power for only two months. Between May 21 and 28 the French army reconquered the city in bitter fighting, in what became known as "la semaine sanglante" or "bloody week". During the street fighting, the Communards were outnumbered four or five to one; they lacked competent officers; and they had no plan for the defence of the city, so each neighbourhood was left to defend itself. Their military commander, Louis Charles Delescluze, committed suicide by dramatically standing atop a barricade on May 26. In the final days of the battle the Communards set fire to the Tuileries Palace, the Hotel de Ville, the Palais de Justice, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, and other prominent government buildings, and executed hostages they had taken, including Georges Darboy, the archbishop of Paris.[26]

Army casualties from the beginning April through Bloody Week amounted to 837 dead and 6,424 wounded. Nearly seven thousand Communards were killed in combat or summarily executed by army firing squads afterwards, and buried in the city cemeteries, and in temporary mass graves.[27] About ten thousand Communards escaped and went into exile in Belgium, England, Switzerland and the United States. Forty-five thousand prisoners were taken after the fall of the Commune. Most were released, but twenty-three were sentenced to death, and about ten thousand were sentenced to prison or deportation to New Caledonia or other prison colonies. All the prisoners and exiles were amnestied in 1879 and 1880, and most returned to France, where some were elected to the National Assembly.[28]

French royal and constitutional flag proposed as a compromise

Thus, the Republic was born of a double defeat: before the Prussians, and of the revolutionary Commune. The repression of the commune was bloody. One hundred forty-seven Communards were executed in front of the Communards' Wall in Père Lachaise Cemetery, while thousands of others were marched to Versailles for trials. The number killed during La Semaine Sanglante (The Bloody Week) had been estimated by some sources as high as twenty thousand; recent historians, using research into the number buried in the city cemeteries and exhumed from mass graves, now put the most likely number at between six and seven thousand.[29] Thousands were imprisoned; 7,000 were exiled to New Caledonia. Thousands more fled to Belgium, England, Italy, Spain and the United States. In 1872, "stringent laws were passed that ruled out all possibilities of organizing on the left."[30] For the imprisoned there was a general amnesty in 1880, and many of the Communards returned to France, where some were elected to the Parliament.[31] Paris remained under martial law for five years.

The primary pretenders to the throne

Henri V
(Legitimist)
King for a week in 1830

Phillipe VII
(Orléanist)
momentarily King in 1848

Napoleon IV
(Bonapartist)
momentarily Emperor in 1870

Beside this defeat, the Republican movement also had to confront the counterrevolutionaries who rejected the legacy of the 1789 Revolution. Both the Legitimist and the Orléanist royalists rejected republicanism, which they saw as an extension of modernity and atheism, breaking with France's traditions. This lasted until at least the May 16, 1877 crisis, which finally led to the resignation of royalist Marshal MacMahon in January 1879. The death of Henri, comte de Chambord in 1883, who, as the grandson of Charles X, had refused to abandon the fleur-de-lys and the white flag, thus jeopardizing the alliance between Legitimists and Orleanists, convinced many of the remaining Orleanists to rally themselves to the Republic, as Adolphe Thiers had already done. The vast majority of the Legitimists abandoned the political arena or became marginalised, at least until Pétain's Vichy regime. Some of them founded Action Française in 1898, during the Dreyfus affair, which became an influent movement throughout the 1930s, in particular among the intellectuals of Paris' Quartier Latin. In 1891, Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum novarum was incorrectly seen to have legitimised the Social Catholic movement, which in France could be traced back to Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais' efforts under the July Monarchy. Pope Pius X later condemned these movements of Catholics for democracy and Socialism in Nostre Charge Apostolique against the Le Síllon movement.[32]

Antisemitic cartoon on the newspaper Libre Parole in 1893

The initial republic was in effect led by pro-royalists, but republicans (the "Radicals") and bonapartists scrambled for power. The period from 1879 to 1899 saw power come into the hands of moderate republicans and former "radicals" (around Léon Gambetta); these were called the "Opportunists" (Républicains opportunistes). The newly found Republican control on the Republic allowed the vote of the 1881 and 1882 Jules Ferry laws on a free, mandatory and secular education.

The moderates however became deeply divided over the Dreyfus affair, and this allowed the Radicals to eventually gain power from 1899 until the Great War. During this period, crises like the potential "Boulangist" coup d'état (see Georges Boulanger) in 1889, showed the fragility of the republic. The Radicals' policies on education (suppression of local languages, compulsory education), mandatory military service, and control of the working classes eliminated internal dissent and regionalisms, while their participation in the Scramble for Africa and in the acquiring of overseas possessions (such as French Indochina) created myths of French greatness. Both of these processes transformed a country of regionalisms into a modern nation state.

In 1880, Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, Marx's son-in-law, created the French Workers' Party (Parti ouvrier français, or POF), the first Marxist party in France. Two years later, Paul Brousse's Possibilistes split. A controversy arose in the French socialist movement and in the Second International concerning "socialist participation in a bourgeois government", a theme which was triggered by independent socialist Alexandre Millerand's participation to Radical-Socialist Waldeck-Rousseau's cabinet around the start of the 20th century, which also included the marquis de Galliffet, best known for his role as repressor of the 1871 Commune. While Jules Guesde was opposed to this participation, which he saw as a trick, Jean Jaurès defended it, making him one of the first social-democrat. Guesde's POF united itself in 1902 with the Parti socialiste de France, and finally in 1905 all socialist tendencies, including Jaurès' Parti socialiste français, unified into the Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière (SFIO), the "French section of the Second International", itself formed in 1889 after the split between anarcho-syndicalists and Marxist socialists which led to the dissolving of the First International (founded in London in 1864).

The end of the 19th century saw the spectacular growth of the French empire (French troops landing in Madagascar in 1895).

Bismarck had supported France becoming a republic in 1871, knowing that this would isolate the defeated nation in Europe where most countries were monarchies. In an effort to break this isolation, France went to great pains to woo Russia and the United Kingdom to its side, first by means of the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894, then the 1904 Entente Cordiale with the U.K, and finally, with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907 this became the Triple Entente, which eventually led France and the UK to enter World War I as Allies when Germany declared war on Russia.

Distrust of Germany, faith in the army and antisemitism in parts of the French public opinion combined to make the Dreyfus affair (the unjust trial and condemnation of a Jewish military officer for treason) a political scandal of the utmost gravity. The nation was divided between "dreyfusards" and "anti-dreyfusards" and far-right Catholic agitators inflamed the situation even when proofs of Dreyfus' innocence came to light. The writer Émile Zola published an impassioned editorial on the injustice, and was himself condemned by the government for libel. Once Dreyfus was finally pardoned, the progressive legislature enacted the 1905 laws on laïcité which created a complete separation of church and state and stripped churches of most of their property rights.

The period and the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century is often termed the Belle Époque. Although associated with cultural innovations and popular amusements (cabaret, cancan, the cinema, new art forms such as Impressionism and Art Nouveau), France was nevertheless a nation divided internally on notions of religion, class, regionalisms and money, and on the international front France came sometimes to the brink of war with the other imperial powers, including Great Britain (the Fashoda Incident). Yet in 1905–1914 the French repeatedly elected left-wing, pacifist parliaments, and French diplomacy took care to settle matters peacefully. France was caught unprepared by the German declaration of war in 1914. The human and financial costs of World War I would be catastrophic for the French.

The French conquest of Algeria

Starting with its scattered small holdings in India, West Indies and Latin America, France began rebuilding its world empire.[33][34][35] It took control of Algeria in 1830 and began in earnest to rebuild its worldwide empire after 1850, concentrating chiefly in North and West Africa, as well as South-East Asia, with other conquests in Central and East Africa, as well as the South Pacific. Republicans, at first hostile to empire, only became supportive when Germany started to build her own colonial empire In the 1880s. As it developed the new empire took on roles of trade with France, especially supplying raw materials and purchasing manufactured items, as well as lending prestige to the motherland and spreading French civilization and language, and the Catholic religion. It also provided manpower in the World Wars.[36]

It became a moral mission to lift the world up to French standards by bringing Christianity and French culture. In 1884 the leading exponent of colonialism, Jules Ferry declared: "The higher races have a right over the lower races, they have a duty to civilise the inferior races." Full citizenship rights – assimilation – was a long-term goal, but in practice colonial officials were reluctant to extend full citizenship rights.[37] France sent small numbers of white permanent settlers to its empire, in sharp contrast to Britain, Spain and Portugal. The notable exception was Algeria, where the French settlers nonetheless always remained a powerful minority.

A 1910 map showing the recent consolidation of French control in much of North and West Africa as well as Madagascar

The Suez Canal, initially built by the French, became a joint British-French project in 1875, as both saw it as vital to maintaining their influence and empires in Asia. In 1882, ongoing civil disturbances in Egypt prompted Britain to intervene, extending a hand to France. The government allowed Britain to take effective control of Egypt.[38]

Under the leadership of expansionist Jules Ferry, the Third Republic greatly expanded the French colonial empire. Catholic missionaries played a major role. France acquired Indochina, Madagascar, vast territories in West Africa and Central Africa, and much of Polynesia.[34]

In the early 1880s, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza was exploring the Kongo Kingdom for France, at the same time Henry Morton Stanley explored it in on behalf of Leopold II of Belgium, who would have it as his personal Congo Free State (see section below). France occupied Tunisia in May 1881. In 1884, France occupied Guinea. French West Africa (AOF) was founded in 1895, and French Equatorial Africa in 1910.[39][34]

During the Scramble for Africa in the 1870s and 1880s, the British and French generally recognised each other's spheres of influence. The Suez Canal, initially built by the French, became a joint British–French project in 1875, as both saw it as vital to maintaining their influence and empires in Asia.[40] In 1882, ongoing civil disturbances in Egypt (see Urabi Revolt) prompted Britain to intervene, extending a hand to France. France's expansionist Prime Minister Jules Ferry was out of office, and the government was unwilling to send more than an intimidatory fleet to the region. Britain established a protectorate, as France had a year earlier in Tunisia, and popular opinion in France later put this action down to duplicity.[41] It was about this time that the two nations established co-ownership of Vanuatu. The Anglo-French Convention of 1882 was also signed to resolve territory disagreements in western Africa.

Contemporary illustration of Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand's trek across Africa

In the 1875–1898 era, serious tensions with Britain erupted over African issues. At several points war was possible, but it never happened.[42] One brief but dangerous dispute occurred during the Fashoda Incident when French troops tried to claim an area in the Southern Sudan, and a British force purporting to be acting in the interests of the Khedive of Egypt arrived.[43] Under heavy pressure the French withdrew securing Anglo-Egyptian control over the area. The status quo was recognised by an agreement between the two states acknowledging British control over Egypt, while France became the dominant power in Morocco. Dutch had failed in its main goals. P. M. H. Bell says, "Between the two governments there was a brief battle of wills, with the British insisting on immediate and unconditional French withdrawal from Fashoda. The French had to accept these terms, amounting to a public humiliation. ... Fashoda was long remembered in France as an example of British brutality and injustice."[44][45][46][47]

France had colonies in Asia and looked for alliances and found in Japan a possible ally. At Japan's request Paris sent military missions in 1872–1880, in 1884–1889 and in 1918–1919 to help modernise the Japanese army. Conflicts with China over Indochina climaxed during the Sino-French War (1884–1885). Admiral Courbet destroyed the Chinese fleet anchored at Foochow. The treaty ending the war, put France in a protectorate over northern and central Vietnam, which it divided into Tonkin and Annam.[48]

1901 edition of The Works of Honoré de Balzac, including the entire Comédie humaine

France's intellectual climate in the mid to late 19th century was dominated by the so-called "Realist" Movement. The generation that came of age after 1848 rejected what it considered the opulence and tackiness of the Romantic Movement. Realism was in a sense a revival of 18th-century Enlightenment ideas. It favored science and rationality and considered the Church an obstruction to human progress. The movement peaked during the Second Empire with writers and artists such as Flaubert and Courbet. After the establishment of the Third Republic, it had coalesced into a unified system of thought known as Positivism, a term coined by the philosopher Auguste Comte. The two most notable writers of the 1870s-80s, Hippolyte Taine and Ernest Renan rejected the Positivist label, but most of their ideas were similar in content. Writers such as Émile Zola and artists like Édouard Manet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir epitomized the spirit of Positivism.

In addition, France produced a large body of prominent scientists during the late 19th century such as Louis Pasteur and Marcellin Berthelot. Social sciences were less well-developed, but Gustave Le Bon and Emile Durkheim were notable figures in this field.

Positivism survived as a movement until at least World War I, but beginning in the 1890s was challenged by a rival school of thought that saw the return of Romantic ideas. A number of artists came to disagree with the cold rationalism and logic of the Positivists, feeling that it ignored human emotions. The so-called Symbolists included the poets Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé and an assortment of composers such as Georges Bizet and Camille Saint-Saëns who then gave way to the more experimental music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.

Symbolist writers and philosophers included Paul Bourget, Maurice Barres, and Henri Bergson plus the painters Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin. Bourget denounced Positivist ideas and proclaimed that man's salvation did not come from science, but by the more traditional values of God, family, and country. He espoused what he called "integral nationalism" and that traditional institutions, reverence for one's ancestors, and the sacredness of the French soil were what needed to be taught and promoted. Henri Bergson, whose lectures at the college de France became major social gatherings among Parisians, criticized scientific rationalism and exalted man's irrational drives, especially what he dubbed élan vital, distinguishing heroic men and nations from the plodding masses.

The Symbolist Movement also affected the political climate of the nation: in the syndicalist beliefs of Georges Sorel, in labor activism, and also a resurgent nationalism among French youth in the years immediately preceding World War I. This new spirit brought a revival of belief in the Church and a strong, fervent sense of patriotism. Also a new school of young artists emerged who completely broke with Impressionism and favored a deep, intense subjectivism. Inspired by Cézanne and Gauguin, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Georges Rouault entered the art scene so abruptly that they came to be known as the Fauves (Wild Ones).

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