The rise and fall of the Second Empire, 1852-1871

About this book

The Second Empire lasted longer than any French regime since 1789, yet most historical accounts of the government of Napoleon III have been overshadowed by knowledge of its disastrous and tragic end. As Professor Plessis shows in this detailed thematic study, such an approach ignores the major social, economic and political developments of a period which witnessed the gradual acceptance of universal suffrage, the establishment of large-scale industrial capitalism, a massive improvement in communications and the birth of impressionism in art. The modernisation of French society was nonetheless a fitful and irregular process, and the role of the imperial government in that process of modernisation equally uncertain. The paradox of a dictatorship that liberalised itself was not the least perplexing phenomenon of a age in which stagnation and innovation were constantly juxtaposed.