Teaching the French Popular Front

Abstract

specialists on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary (1936-86) may serve to highlight the enduring and exemplary interest of the subject for all teachers of history. France has always provided history teachers with basic topics; feudalism, absolutism, revolution and class conflict are commonly approached with reference to French example when approaching the history of European civilization. France was the laboratory where they appeared in their purest form. The use of French models is less common in teaching the twentieth century although some political scientists have found in Gaullism the model of the modem bureaucratic state par excellence, and the Mitterrand experiment has briefly rekindled interest in the possibilities of socialism in a modem industrial democracy. In all this the French Popular Front experiment of the 1930s should not be overlooked, the surprising lack of interest in it by analysts of the contemporary socialist experiment notwithstanding.' While a Popular Front policy was implemented with varying results in a wide variety of countries in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, the French Popular Front was in its own way the classic example? To be sure, a Popular Front government also came to power in Spain, but its tragic history more properly belongs to the study of the Second World War. In France alone the Popular Front became a part of the national political culture, its achievements permanently enshrined in the national psyche. It established collective bargaining, the 40-hour week, and paid vacations