How was France in the nineteenth century shaped by its prelude of revolutionary strife and warfare? Was it a bourgeois society seeking a combination of economic dynamism with political stability and, if so, was this better provided by the Second Empire of Napoleon III or the republican governments that immediately preceded and succeeded it?

In this edition of Black’s History Week, Professor Jeremy Black talks to The Critic‘s political editor, Graham Stewart, about the conflicts and continuities of France from Louis Philippe to the Belle Epoque.

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