France 1815-1914: The Bourgeois Century

Nineteenth-century France witnessed the protracted struggle of the post-revolutionary bourgeoisie to consolidate and defend the gains it had made in 1789. In this lively and stimulating study, Roger Magraw examines the attempts of the bourgeoisie to remold France in its own image and discusses its strategy for overcoming the resistance which this met. The old aristocratic and clerical elites remained unreconciled to the revolution and the popular classes sustained a prolonged rearguard defense of their threatened peasant culture and communities, their artisanal skills and crafts.
Magraw incorporates the most recent research on religion and anticlericalism, the development of the economy, the role of women in society, and the educational system, through which the bourgeoisie presented itself as "progressive." He lucidly defends the view that the French Revolution was indeed a "bourgeois revolution" and perceptively analyzes the progress of the call for liberty, equality, and fraternity in 19th-century France.