Between the Iron Lady and the Wedding Cake: conflict in Belle Époque Paris

Between 1789 and 1871 Paris went through five kings, two Bonapartist empires, two republics, several revolutions and a Commune. Each had been an attempt to accommodate or neutralise one of two visions of France. The oldest was traditional and conventional; it mourned the ancien régime, and preferred the safety of autocracy over the chaos of democracy and God over science. The younger was progressive and eager for change, building on the ideas of the Enlightenment and the revolutionary ideals of 1789.

We are taken through slums, cafés, law courts, theatres, brothels, strikes and demonstrations

For Mike Rapport, ‘the friction between change and tradition is perhaps the defining characteristic of the modern condition’. In this book he explores that friction in the Belle Époque, from 1875 to 1914. He takes the reader through department stores and brothels, slums, snack shops and cafés, law courts and newspaper offices, theatres and meeting halls, concerts, strikes and demonstrations. He believes that historians should have good walking boots as well as sharp eyes. The buildings and boulevards of Paris come to life as he describes them, while the conflict between the modern and the traditional is conspicuous in two monuments that dominate the city.

The Eiffel Tower was built as the centrepiece of the Universal Exposition of 1889. So precise was its construction that every rivet hole was bored in advance and assembled by workers who, proud of their revolutionary heritage, sported red caps and sashes. Furious letters in the press declared it an eyesore. Guy de Maupassant claimed to patronise the tower’s restaurant because it was the only place from which the splay-footed monster was invisible. Yet its soaring height proved invaluable for scientific experiments; it launched the first radio transmissions in France, and it is now the very symbol of Paris.