What was the significance of the Paris Commune of 1871?

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The University of the West Indies

St. Augustine

Faculty of Humanities and Education

Department of History

Coursework Assignment

Name: Lyndon C. Harrington

ID#: 809001640

Course: Continuity and Change in the 19th Century Europe (Hist. 2401)

Lecturer: Mr. Jerome Teelucksing

Question #1:        “What was the significance of the Paris Commune of 1871?”


On March 18th, 1871, the revolutionary workers of Paris established the Commune. It was the first attempt at proletarian dictatorship; according to Kropotkine (1896) “the people of Paris rose against a despised and detested Government, and proclaimed the city independent, free, belonging to itself.” The late1860s were a period of social and political ferment in Paris as well as the rest of urban France. In part because of an 1864 law legalizing strikes and an 1868 law liberalizing controls on the press and public meetings, but also because growing discontent with the regime of Emperor Louis Napoleon, strikes became more frequent throughout France’s industrial regions and calls for social and political reforms became more vociferous. The Paris Commune only lasted 72 days, but it had a great many victims. More than 100,000 men and women were killed or exiled to the colonies when the bourgeoisie triumphed. The Commune is the great tradition of the French working class. The mute walls of Pѐre Lachaise remind the French workers of the heroism of their proletarian fathers who fought for freedom from wage slavery. Twenty years before the advent of the Commune, following the defeat of the workers uprising in June 1848, the military coup of 2nd December 1851 brought Emperor Napoleon III to power. Initially, the new Bonapartist regime seemed unshakable. The workers were defeated, their organizations outlawed. By the late 1860’s, however, the exhaustion of the economic upswing, combined with the revival of the labour movement, had seriously weakened the regime. It was clear that only a new – and rapidly successful – war would allow it to survive for any length of time. In August 1870, the armies of Napoleon III marched against Bismarck. The war ended, he claimed, would bring territorial gains, weaken France’s rivals, and put an end to the crisis in finance and industry. It often happens that war leads to revolution. This is not accidental. A war wrenches the working people out their daily routine. The actions of the state, of generals, of politicians, of the press, come under the scrutiny of the mass of the population to an infinitely higher degree than is normally the case in times of peace. This is particularly the case in the event of defeat.

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Paris was primed for the Commune by four circles of cause and effect. First, the French had already witnessed many periods of revolutionary activity before the commune. The French Revolution in 1789 was followed by uprisings in 1830 and 1848. Historian Alain Faure suggests that the Commune can be seen in chrysalis form during the 1860s (Schafer p.26). Indeed, the energy and fervor of the first uprising was undoubtedly channeled in the events of 1848 and 1870. Secondly, Napoleon III’s struggle through the last years of his empire created a transition into the Commune. The first hint of the Emperor’s ...

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