The Emergence of the Extreme Left in Lower Languedoc, 1848-1851: Social and Economic Factors in Politics

Abstract

IN I8I5 lower Languedoc was the scene of the White Terror and was dominated by Legitimists; a century later it had made a full swing to the Left and was dominated by Radicals and Socialists. The dramatic beginning of this transformation came during mid-century when the Revolution of I848 took the south by surprise. Among the political forces least prepared to take advantage of the situation created in Paris was the extreme Left; yet within a year men calling themselves by the revolutionary name of democratessocialistes won considerable support. Their activity initiated a new tradition that laid the basis for the broad transformation. This essay is an attempt to explain the origins of that tradition. It is a case study using three methods: electoral sociology, quantitative analysis, and, particularly, human geography. By placing men within their milieu, it hopes to reveal the possibilities and limitations available to them through the economic, social, and cultural forces surrounding their public activities. It seeks to define leadership in terms of social structure and economic activity and then to discover the role of leadership in the formation of a political movement. Such an approach, requiring an intimate knowledge of society, cannot yet be applied to French national history; information is still lacking or vague. It is, therefore, best applied to local studies or, more appropriately, regional studies sufficiently broad to permit comparison among variant geographic areas and to make possible some generalizations about the factors that influenced democratic movements in France. Lower Languedoc offers the historian a fruitful area of research. It is composed of the departments of Gard, Herault, and Aude.' In I848 they