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Author Chapman, Herrick, author.

Title France's long reconstruction : in search of the modern republic / Herrick Chapman
Published Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2018
©2018

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Description 1 online resource (x, 405 pages) : illustrations
Contents Liberation authorities: legitimizing the state from above and below -- Available hands: from manpower crisis to immigration control -- Shopkeeper turmoil: tax rebels and state reformers in the postwar marketplace -- Family matters: expertise, gender, and voice in the social security state -- Enterprise politics: the postwar nationalizations -- Reformer dilemmas: Pierre Mendès France and Michel Debré as renovators of the republic -- Algerian anvil: war and the expansion of state authority
Summary At the end of World War II, France's greatest challenge was to repair a civil society torn asunder by Nazi occupation and total war. Recovery required the nation's complete economic and social transformation. But just what form this "new France" should take remained the burning question at the heart of French political combat until the Algerian War ended, over a decade later. Herrick Chapman charts the course of France's long reconstruction from 1944 to 1962, offering fresh insights into the ways the expansion of state power, intended to spearhead recovery, produced fierce controversies at home and unintended consequences abroad in France's crumbling empire. Abetted after Liberation by a new elite of technocratic experts, the burgeoning French state infiltrated areas of economic and social life traditionally free from government intervention. Politicians and intellectuals wrestled with how to reconcile state-directed modernization with the need to renew democratic participation and bolster civil society after years spent under the Nazi and Vichy yokes. But rather than resolving the tension, the conflict between top-down technocrats and grassroots democrats became institutionalized as a way of framing the problems facing Charles de Gaulle's Fifth Republic. Uniquely among European countries, France pursued domestic recovery while simultaneously fighting full-scale colonial wars. France's Long Reconstruction shows how the Algerian War led to the further consolidation of state authority and cemented repressive immigration policies that now appear shortsighted and counterproductive.-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes In English
Print version record
Subject HISTORY -- Europe -- France.
Economic history
Politics and government
Social conditions
Politik
Soziale Situation
Wiederaufbau
SUBJECT France -- Politics and government -- 1945- http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85051488
France -- Social conditions -- 1945-1995. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85051499
France -- Economic conditions -- 1945- http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85051221
Subject France
Frankreich
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2017015077
ISBN 9780674982437
0674982436
067497641X
9780674976412
0674982452
9780674982451