France's New Deal [electronic resource] : from the thirties to the postwar era / Philip Nord.

ISBN:

9781400834969

Title:

Author:

Nord, Philip G., 1950-

Personal Author:

Nord, Philip G., 1950-

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 457 pages)

Contents:

Part I. The French model -- The crisis of the thirties -- The war years -- The Liberation moment -- Part II. A culture of quality -- Art and commerce in the interwar decades -- Culture in wartime -- The culture state.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Social change -- France -- History -- 20th century.

Economic development -- France -- History -- 20th century.

Political culture -- France -- History -- 20th century.

Arts, French -- 20th century.

Geographic Term:

France -- Politics and government -- 1914-1940.

France -- Politics and government -- 1940-1945.

France -- Cultural policy -- History -- 20th century.

France -- History -- German occupation, 1940-1945.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2010

Publication Information:

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
944.0816 22	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

France's New Deal is an in-depth and important look at the remaking of the French state after World War II, a time when the nation was endowed with brand-new institutions for managing its economy and culture. Yet, as Philip Nord reveals, the significant process of state rebuilding did not begin at the Liberation. Rather, it got started earlier, in the waning years of the Third Republic and under the Vichy regime. Tracking the nation's evolution from the 1930s through the postwar years, Nord describes how a variety of political actors--socialists, Christian democrats, technocrats, and Gaullists--had a hand in the construction of modern France.

Nord examines the French development of economic planning and a cradle-to-grave social security system; and he explores the nationalization of radio, the creation of a national cinema, and the funding of regional theaters. Nord shows that many of the policymakers of the Liberation era had also served under the Vichy regime, and that a number of postwar institutions and policies were actually holdovers from the Vichy era--minus the authoritarianism and racism of those years. From this perspective, the French state after the war was neither entirely new nor purely social-democratic in inspiration. The state's complex political pedigree appealed to a range of constituencies and made possible the building of a wide base of support that remained in place for decades to come.

A nuanced perspective on the French state's postwar origins, France's New Deal chronicles how one modern nation came into being.

Author Notes

Philip Nord is the Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Princeton University. His books include Paris Shopkeepers and the Politics of Resentment (Princeton), The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France , and Impressionists and Politics: Art and Democracy in the Nineteenth Century .

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

Nord (Princeton) offers a magisterial, highly nuanced account of the dramatic remaking of the French nation after the crushing defeat of 1940 and the empty years of occupation by the Nazis. What may surprise general readers is a somewhat diminished role for l'homme du 18 juin, considered heretofore to be the single, heroic author of France's remarkable recovery after the liberation. Nord discovers, in fact, that Charles De Gaulle and his followers had important assistance in carrying out that monumental task. The process of transformation, he shows, actually began back in the 1930s with the much reviled governments of the Third Republic and the Vichy regime, whose useful, reformist ideas (never fully realized) would carry over into the postwar years. Tendencies toward authoritarianism and central planning already implicit in those regimes would be picked up and later elaborated by a phalanx of socialists, Christian democrats, technocrats, and, of course, Gaullists. Inspired by De Gaulle, a cadre of "new deal" technocrats made enormous strides toward social democracy, creating en passant the political, cultural, and social institutions of the enduringly successful Fifth Republic. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. J. I. Donohoe emeritus, Michigan State University

Acknowledgments	p. ix
List of Abbreviations	p. xi
Introduction. Postwar Stories	p. 1
Part I The French Model	p. 17
Chapter 1 The Crisis of the Thirties	p. 25
Chapter 2 The War Years	p. 88
Chapter 3 The Liberation Moment	p. 145
Part II A Culture of Quality	p. 215
Chapter 4 Art and Commerce in the Interwar Decades	p. 221
Chapter 5 Culture in Wartime	p. 254
Chapter 6 The Culture State	p. 311
Conclusion	p. 360
Notes	p. 385
Index	p. 435

Available:*

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

Table of Contents