The Making of Modern France: Ideology, Politics and Culture

This is an investigation of the state of French society. France, arguably the most influential member of the European Community, its economy booming and institutions stable, appears in short to be a nation confident in its strength and sure of its future. Emmanuel Todd's argument is that between 1980 and 1990 France has undergone a revolution comparable in force to the Revolution of 1789 and with consequences of a depth equal to those of industrialization. The Communist Party, heir to the egalitarian values of the Revolution, has fallen apart. The traditional working class proletariat and peasantry are rapidly becoming extinct. The parties of the Right have lost touch with the values of Roman Catholicism. The Church itself, guardian of French familial and social values for a thousand years, is dying, its influence negligible and its pronouncements all but ignored. There is an emptiness at the heart of French political and social life, compounded by the gap between the material prosperity of the middle classes and the limited life chances of the native and immigrant poor. France, the author shows, is at once the product of its past and yet now dislocated from it - hence vulnerable (if only for a time) to the aberrant racist ideology of the extreme right. Emmanuel Todd's analysis of the state and the regions of France extends back through the centuries to present an account of contemporary society that has had a considerable impact since its publication in Paris in 1988. This updated edition, the first to appear in English should be welcomed by anyone wishing to understand the nature of one of Europe's greatest nations.