Republicans, Bonapartists and rural voters in nineteenth-century France Review of Chloé Gaboriaux, La République en quête de citoyens: Les républicains français face au bonapartisme rural (1848–1880). Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 2010

Abstract

The significant rural vote for anti-republican and Bonapartist candidates in the period between 1848 and the 1870s has been seen as evidence of the need for French peasants to be converted to the French Republic. Chloé Gaboriaux's book begins with the aftermath of the elections to the Constituent Assembly and the Presidency of the Republic in 1848, and tracks the different directions of republican approaches to rural votes over the next two decades. She shows how French Republicans themselves changed their version of the Republic to make it more attractive to peasants, so that by the 1870s they were seen as the model for the Republican citizenry. This essay describes Gaboriaux's argument, and places it in the context of current discussions about democratization.