The ‘Trente Glorieuses’ (1945–1975) and their Aftermath

Abstract

France developed a set of political institutions at both national and subnational levels to express the idea of the one and indivisible nation-state. The dominant state ideology and tradition between the French Revolution at the end of the 18^th century and the period following the Second World War emphasized centralization, standardization and uniformity.¹ This has been true, with some nuances, until 1982, whatever the regime in place: restored monarchy (1814–1818), Second Republic (1848–1852), Second Empire (1852–1870), Third Republic (1870–1940), Vichy Regime (1940–1945), Fourth Republic (1946–1958), and the current Fifth Republic (1958–). The obsessive insistence on political and administrative centralization on the part of French political leaders, particularly those in the radical, republican and socialist traditions, however, betrays a deep-seated unease within the political class that is related to the continuing diversity of French society. Eugen Weber’s classic work Peasants into Frenchmen shows how, at the end of the 19^th and beginning of the 20^th centuries, the task of creating a culturally and sociologically homogeneous French people was still far from accomplished despite the adherence of the majority of these same French people to the institutions of the Republic. Even today, France is still characterized by its great cultural, economic, social and cultural diversity. To a large extent, the centralizing institutions that have been in place for almost 200 years were an attempt to overcome this. The more extreme Jacobins such as Émile Combes were terrified that the great diversity, associated with provincial reactionary forces such as the Church and the nobility, would rise up and destroy the gains of the Revolution and the secular republic (la République laïque). But, underneath the institutions, French society continued to exist as it had done for centuries, since the bulk of its population were peasants living the same lives as their forebears.