French Third Republic

The era of the Third Republic in France lasted from after the fall of the Second Empire in 1870 to the defeat to Germany in World War II in 1940. Politically the third republic was a very fractious time with many prime ministers of short tenure.

The Republic was also rocked by a series of crises, none more notorious that the Dreyfus Affair in 1894, when a Jewish officer in the French Army was wrongly jailed on charges of spying for Germany. This claim played on all the fears and perspectives of all sides. Monarchists and right-wing Roman Catholics, many of whom were anti-semitic, and in some cases blaming a "Jewish plot" for the triumph of republicanism, immediately attacked Dreyfus and refused to consider the possibility that he was innocent. Others on the left, still fighting the 'monarchy versus republic' battle, championed his cause, irrespective of his guilt or innocence. When it became clear that he was indeed totally innocent and the victim of a conspiracy, the state itself failed to accept his innocence straight away, and even when he was released from his exile, whispering campaigns still suggested he was actually guilty. In the aftermath of the affair, when the truth finally did come out, the reputations of monarchists and conservative Catholics, who had expressed unbridled anti-semitism were severely damaged. So too was the state by its unwillingness to right what had clearly been a major wrong visited on an innocent and loyal officer.

Despite this turmoil, the midpoint of the Third Republic was known as the belle epoque in France, a golden time of beauty, innovation, and peace with its European neighbors. New inventions made life easier at all social levels, the cultural scene thrived, cabaret, cancan, and the cinema were born, and art took new forms with Impressionism and Art Nouveau. But the glory of this turn-of-the-century time period came to an end with the outbreak of World War I.