The first in English on a remarkable subject, this fascinating book is in part a collection of previously published articles, and it was born out of Hazareesingh’s earlier work on the celebration of the Fête Nationale (14 of July) during the Third Republic. Here the reader is presented with an extraordinary florilegium of details not only plucked from the Archives Nationales but also from twenty-two public archives in France, both from large centres such as a Marseilles and Lyons and from smaller local archives such as Auch and Rodez, all on the theme of the celebration of the Second Empire’s ‘Fête Nationale’, the 15 of August, previously the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary but which had become associated with Saint Napoleon (it was also Napoleon Bonaparte’s birthday). The reader is shown in great detail the range, complexity and subtlety of the way in which the second Napoleonic regime presented itself and how it wished to maintain peace and social cohesion throughout the vast and varied country that was France, and the way in which Second Empire France celebrated, remembered, and participated in (or not), the Saint-Napoléon festival. The various chapters investigate themes such as: the ‘cult of celebration’ (a fascinating themes in itself) and its apogee during the Second Empire – celebration and remembering are indeed the keystones of the Napoleonic ‘realm of memory’; the themes of national ‘gloire’ and success of Second Empire administrators in encouraging national unity; the complex role of state religion in the celebration of what was essentially a secular ceremony in origin; the forms which Republican opposition took; the difficult position of the Legitimists who appreciated the order and religiousity but who objected to the percieved vulgarity of both Napoleon III and the dances and fêtes which formed the later part of the Saint-Napoléon. Hazareesingh’s conclusion remarkably underlines the ‘multiple convergences between republican and Bonapartist political culture, notably at the level of their common cult of the “Grande Nation”‘.
Sudhir Hazareesingh is Fellow and Tutor in Politics, Balliol College, Oxford University.
Table of contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Introduction: Civic Festivities in Nineteenth-Century France
- 1. A Common Sentiment of National Glory
- 2. Variations on Provincial Themes
- 3. Proud to Be French
- 4. Honorable and Honored Citizens
- 5. Incidents, Accidents, Excesses
- 6. All the Majesty of the State
- 7. The Immense Space between Heaven and Earth
- 8. We Have Our Own Music
- 9. Eroding Bonapartist Sovereignty
- 10. Legitimist Coldness, Republican Enthusiasm
- Conclusion: Festivity, Identity, Civility
- Notes
- Primary Sources
- Index