France Since 1871 with Professor John Merriman

This course covers the emergence of modern France. Topics include the social, economic, and political transformation of France; the impact of France's revolutionary heritage, of industrialization, and of the dislocation wrought by two world wars; and the political response of the Left and the Right to changing French society.

Click session titles below to access audio, video, and course materials.

1. Introduction

2. The Paris Commune and Its Legacy

3. Centralized State and Republic

4. A Nation? Peasants, Language, and French Identity

5. Workshop and Factory

6. The Waning of Religious Authority

7. Mass Politics and the Political Challenge from the Left

8. Dynamite Club: The Anarchists

9. General Boulanger and Captain Dreyfus

10. Cafés and the Culture of Drink

11. Paris and the Belle Époque

12. French Imperialism (Guest Lecture by Charles Keith)

13. The Origins of World War I

14. Trench Warfare

15. The Home Front

16. The Great War, Grief, and Memory (Guest Lecture by Bruno Cabanes)

17. The Popular Front

18. The Dark Years: Vichy France

19. Resistance

20. Battles For and Against Americanization

21. Vietnam and Algeria

22. Charles De Gaulle

23. May 1968

24. Immigration