Second Empire in France; rule of Napoleon III

Historical Context Essay

Robert Clark (The Literary Encyclopedia)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.05: French Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth-Century , 1800-1900.
Vol. editors: David Elwyn Evans (University of St Andrews), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Elisabeth Gerwin (University of Lethbridge), Nigel Harkness (University of Newcastle upon Tyne), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield), Jennifer Yee (University of Oxford)

Domains

Changes of government, elections and reigns

Dates

Date of occurrence 1852-12-02-1870-09-04

Places

France (Location)

Resources

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Louis Bonaparte became Emperor Napoleon III when he took control of France by a

coup d'état

in December 1851, after which he ruled the country as a dictator until 4 September 1870. Marx famously described him in his preface to the second edition of

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon

(1869) as a “grotesque mediocrity” whom the accidents of class struggle enabled to “play a hero's part”. Marx's

Eighteenth Brumaire

opens with the often repeated sentences, “Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” Marx's essay, written as journalistic response to recent events in 1852, has left an indelible caricature of Louis Bonaparte as an…

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1517 words

Citation: Clark, Robert. "Second Empire in France; rule of Napoleon III". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 March 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=4936, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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