1. Social reform, state reform, and Aristide Briand's moment of hope in France, 1909-1910
- Author
-
Wright, Julian
- Subjects
France -- History ,France -- Political aspects ,Political activists -- History ,Political activists -- International aspects ,Political activists -- Political aspects ,Reformers -- History ,Reformers -- International aspects ,Reformers -- Political aspects ,Social reformers -- History ,Social reformers -- International aspects ,Social reformers -- Political aspects ,Political reform ,History ,Regional focus/area studies - Abstract
Aristide Briand's first government represents an intriguing moment of convergence in French political history. Several strands of reformist political thinking had been developing since the end of the Dreyfus affair, and Rene Waldeck-Rousseau's government of 1899-1902 inspired many ideas that reemerged ten years later; the most important of these were the reforms of French society and of the republican state. Not all republicans would have seen the two strands as linked, but in the speeches of Aristide Briand and the personalities of his principal lieutenants, a reformist agenda emerged designed to unite a country recently divided over Dreyfus and the church. 'Young' intellectual movements, whose roots went back to the 1890s, supported the government with a theory of political reform that was modern and realist. The immediate failure of Briand's 'moment of hope' does not detract from the significance, in the long term, of his experiment in reconciliation.
- Published
- 2005