page_title: Belle Époque
section_title: Politics
hierarchical_section_title: Belle Époque / Politics
caption_attribution_description: English: Europe in 1911
context_page_description: The Belle Époque or La Belle Époque is the term often given to a period of French history. Occurring during the era of the French Third Republic, it was a period characterised by optimism, regional peace, economic prosperity, colonial expansion, and technological, scientific, and cultural innovations. In this era of France’s cultural and artistic climate the arts markedly flourished, with numerous masterpieces of literature, music, theatre, and visual art gaining extensive recognition.
  The Belle Époque was so named in retrospect, when it began to be considered a "Golden Age" in contrast to the horrors of the World War I. The Belle Époque was a period in which, according to historian R. R. Palmer: "European civilisation achieved its greatest power in global politics, and also exerted its maximum influence upon peoples outside Europe."
context_section_description: The years between the Franco-Prussian War and World War I were characterised by unusual political stability in western and central Europe. Although tensions between the French and German governments persisted as a result of the French loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871, diplomatic conferences, including the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the Berlin Congo Conference in 1884, and the Algeciras Conference in 1906, mediated disputes that threatened the general European peace. Indeed, for many Europeans in the Belle Époque period, transnational, class-based affiliations were as important as national identities, particularly among aristocrats. An upper-class gentleman could travel through much of Western Europe without a passport and even reside abroad with minimal bureaucratic regulation. World War I, mass transportation, the spread of literacy, and various citizenship concerns changed this.
  The Belle Époque featured a class structure that ensured cheap labour. The Paris Metro underground railway system joined the omnibus and streetcar in transporting the working population, including those servants who did not live in the wealthy centers of cities. One result of this commuting was suburbanisation allowing working-class and upper-class neighbourhoods to be separated by large distances.
  Meanwhile, the international workers' movement also reorganised itself and reinforced pan-European, class-based identities among the classes whose labour supported the Belle Époque. The most notable transnational socialist organisation was the Second International. Anarchists of different affiliations were active during the period leading up to World War I. Political assassinations and assassination attempts were still rare in France (unlike in Russia) but there were some notable exceptions, including President Marie François Sadi Carnot in 1894. A bomb was detonated in the Chamber of Deputies of France in 1893, causing injuries but no deaths. Terrorism against civilians occurred in 1894, perpetrated by Émile Henry, who killed a cafe patron and wounded several others.
  France enjoyed relative political stability at home during the Belle Époque. The sudden death of President Félix Faure while in office took the country by surprise, but had no destabilising effect on the government. The most serious political issue to face the country during this period was the Dreyfus Affair. Captain Alfred Dreyfus was wrongly convicted of treason, with fabricated evidence from French government officials. Anti-Semitism directed at Dreyfus, and tolerated by the general French public in everyday society, was a central issue in the controversy and the court trials that followed. Public debate surrounding the Dreyfus Affair grew to an uproar after the publication of J'accuse, a letter sent to newspapers by prominent novelist Émile Zola, condemning government corruption and French anti-Semitism. The Dreyfus Affair consumed the interest of the French for several years and it received heavy newspaper coverage.
  European politics saw very few regime changes, the major exception being Portugal, which experienced a republican revolution in 1910. However, tensions between working-class socialist parties, bourgeois liberal parties, and landed or aristocratic conservative parties did increase in many countries, and it has been claimed that profound political instability belied the calm surface of European politics in the era. In fact, militarism and international tensions grew considerably between 1897 and 1914, and the immediate prewar years were marked by a general armaments competition in Europe. Additionally, this era was one of massive overseas colonialism, known as the New Imperialism. The most famous portion of this imperial expansion was the Scramble for Africa.
caption: Europe during the Belle Époque
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