History of France (1900–present)
The history of France from 1900 to the present includes:
- the later years of the Third Republic
- the Fourth Republic
- the Fifth Republic
Geography
Demographics
Unlike other European countries France did not experience a strong population growth in the mid-to-late 19th century and first half of the 20th century. That would be compounded by the massive French losses of World War I, roughly estimated at 1.4 million French dead including civilians and four times as many wounded — and World War II, estimated at 593,000 French dead, of which 470,000 were civilians. From a population of around 39 million in 1880, France still had only a population of 40 million in 1945. The post-war years would bring a massive "baby boom", and with immigration, France reached 50 million in 1968. This growth slowed down in 1974.Since 1999, France has seen an unprecedented growth in population. In 2004, population growth was 0.68% and almost reached North American levels. France is now well ahead of all other European countries in population growth and in 2003, France's natural population growth was responsible for almost all the natural growth in European population.
Today, France, with a population of 65.5 million, or 68 million including overseas territories, is the third most populous country of Europe, behind Russia and Germany.
Immigration in the 20th century differed significantly from that of the previous century. The 1920s saw great influxes from Italy and Poland; in the 1930-50s immigrants came from Spain and Portugal. Since the 1960s however, the greatest waves of immigrants have been from former French colonies: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, Mali, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam. Much of this recent immigration was initially economical, but many of these immigrants have remained in France, gained citizenship and integrated into French society. Estimates vary, but of the 60 million people living in France today, close to 4 million claim foreign origin. This massive influx has created tensions in contemporary France, especially over issues of "integration into French society" and the notion of a "French identity", and in recent years the most controversial issues have been with regards to Muslim populations.
Eastern-European and North-African Jewish immigration to France largely began in the mid to late 19th century. In 1872, there were an estimated 86,000 Jews living in France, and by 1945 this increased to 300,000. Many Jews integrated into French society, although French nationalism led to antisemitism in many quarters. The Vichy regime's collaboration with the Nazi Holocaust led to the extermination of 76,000 French Jews, and of all other Western European countries, this figure is second only to Germany; but many Jews were also saved by acts of heroism and administrative refusal to participate in the deportation. Since the 1960s, France has experienced a great deal of Jewish immigration from the Mediterranean and North Africa, and the Jewish population in France is estimated at around 600,000 today.
Around the start of the 20th century, almost half of all Frenchmen depended on the land for their living, and up until World War II, France remained a largely rural country, but the post-war years also saw an unprecedented move to the cities: only around 4% of the French continue to work in farms and 73% live today in large cities. By far the largest of these is Paris, at 2.1 million inhabitants, followed by Lille, Lyon, Marseille. Much of this urbanization takes place not in the traditional center of the cities, but in the suburbs that surround them. With immigration from poorer countries, these "cités" have been the center of racial and class tensions since the 1960s.
French identity
The loss of regional and traditional culture, the poverty of many rural regions and the rise of modern urban structures have created tensions in modern France between traditionalists and progressives. Compounding the loss of regionalism is the role of the French capital and the centralized French State.Independence movements sprang up in Brittany, Corsica and the Basque regions, and the Vichy Regime actively encouraged Catholicism and local "folk" traditions, which they saw as truer foundations for the French nation.
The post-war years saw the state take control of a number of French industries. The modern political climate has however been for increasing regional power and for reduced state control in private enterprise.
It can be assumed that “The First World War initiated a period of sudden, often traumatic transformation. It accelerated changes that had slowly begun to alter French cultural, social, and economic life in the first decades of the twentieth century.” French identity and culture had been completely disheveled after World War I, and that destruction is in part caused by gender-ambiguity. French culture and identity were heavily based on societal gender roles that seemed to have been blurred after the war. Perhaps the “most famous expression of this postwar sense of cultural mortality” came from a 1919 letter by Paul Valery, which discussed that “We modern civilizations, we too now know that we are mortal like the others."
Feminist movement
After World War I, when it had lost 1.4 million of its citizens to World War I, France was facing a serious issue. With a casualty rate higher than any other country in Europe at 16.5 percent, along with 3 million wounded and 1.1 million suffering from permanent disability, France was suffering from a low birthrate. At the same time, France was painting a fearful picture of women no longer wanting to have children. Because of the flagging birthrate, legislators introduced and passed a bill on July 23, 1920, which penalized the use of propaganda that encouraged and supported abortion and contraceptives. Historians believe that the legislative victory can be interpreted as either a “logical gesture of the postwar conservative, nationalist Block national that came into power in the November legislative elections of 1919,” or they saw the natalist victory as “a response to an already serious demographic problem made worse by wartime casualties.” Prior to World War I, until 1914, abortions were “frequent and virtually unpunished, though outlawed by Article 317 of the Penal Code.” Feminists like Madeleine Pelletier, a female physician and socialist thinker, “developed socio-economic pro-abortion arguments which were already well known to the intellectual working class. Natalists that had pushed this legislation as well as further restrictions against a women’s right not to bear children, as Pelletier observes, “was presented as a class position.” Legislation like this represented the interest of those with a high socio-economic status that “used the working class as a pool of labour to bolster the economy." Throughout the first couple decades of the 20th century, there is a noticeable clash between French feminists, who more aligned with the socialist parties of France, and the natalists, who resonated more with the conservative parties of France.Historical overview
Coming of World War I 1900–1914
In an effort to isolate Germany, France successfully formed alliances with Russia and Great Britain. First came the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894, then the 1904 Entente Cordiale with Great Britain, and finally the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907 which became the Triple Entente. This alliance with Britain and Russia against Germany and Austria in 1914 led Russia, Britain, and France to enter World War I as Allies. Military leaders in Berlin planned to defeat first France, then Russia.Paris feared the German military power. The Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894 served as the cornerstone of French foreign policy until 1917, in the expectation that Germany would avoid a two-front war. A further link with Russia was provided by vast French investments and loans before 1914. In 1904, French foreign minister Théophile Delcassé negotiated the Entente Cordiale with Lord Lansdowne, the British Foreign Secretary, an agreement that ended a long period of Anglo-French tensions and hostility. The Entente Cordiale, which functioned as an informal Anglo-French alliance, was further strengthened by the First and Second Moroccan crises of 1905 and 1911, and by secret military and naval staff talks. Delcassé's rapprochement with Britain was controversial in France as Anglophobia was prominent around the start of the 20th century, sentiments that had been much reinforced by the Fashoda Incident of 1898, in which Britain and France had almost gone to war, and by the Boer War, in which French public opinion was very much on the side of Britain's enemies. Ultimately, the fear of German power was the link that bound Britain and France together.
Preoccupied with internal problems, France paid little attention to foreign policy in the period between late 1912 and mid-1914, although it did extend military service to three years from two over strong Socialist objections in 1913. The rapidly escalating Balkan crisis of July 1914 surprised France, and not much attention was given to conditions that led to the outbreak of World War I. Paris was caught by surprise when the German army suddenly invaded and plunged toward Paris. However London decided that France must be aided or Germany would be far too powerful, and so it declared war on Germany.
World War I (1914–1918)
Many French intellectuals welcomed the war to avenge the humiliation of defeat and loss of territory to Germany following the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. After Socialist leader Jean Jaurès, a pacifist, was assassinated at the start of the war, the French socialist movement abandoned its antimilitarist positions and joined the national war effort. Prime Minister Rene Viviani called for unity—for a "Union sacrée" —ending the feud between the right and left factions that had been fighting bitterly. France had few dissenters. However, by 1917 war-weariness was a major factor, seriously weakening the willingness of the Army to take the offensive. Soldiers said that instead of attacking it was best to wait for the arrival of millions of Americans. The soldiers were protesting not just the futility of frontal assaults in the face of German machine guns but also degraded conditions at the front lines and at home, especially infrequent leaves, poor food, the use of African and Asian colonials on the home front, and concerns about the welfare of their wives and children.The economy was hurt by the German invasion of major industrial areas in the northeast. This occupied area, in 1913, had produced 58% of the steel, and 40% of the coal. Considerable relief came with the influx of American food, money and raw materials in 1917.
Georges Clemenceau became prime minister in November 1917, a time of defeatism and acrimony. Italy was on the defensive, and Russia had surrendered. Civilians were angry as rations fell short and the threat of German air raids grew. Clemenceau realized his first priority was to restore civilian morale. He arrested Joseph Caillaux, a former French prime minister, for openly advocating peace negotiations. He won all-party support to fight to victory calling for "la guerre jusqu'au bout".
The war brought great losses of manpower and resources. Fought in large part on French soil, it led to approximately 1.4 million French dead including civilians, and four times as many wounded. France borrowed billions of dollars from the U.S. that it had to repay. The stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles were favourable: Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France; Germany was required to take full responsibility for the war and to pay war reparations to France that covered its entire war costs, including veterans' benefits. One German industrial area, Saar Basin, a coal and steel region, was temporarily occupied by France.