• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

Max's election maps and assorted others

Reader mode
Thande said:
Is the use of the unopposed colour here primarily meaning unopposed or majority unknown? I think it's a little misleading to use it for both without any distinction (an asterisk or something?) but I may have misunderstood how you've used it.
Click to expand...
There's actually no unknown majorities on this map, so I should probably edit that. On the 1946 map we have one, in French India.
 
Ares96 said:
I have no idea what happened in Algeria between 1946 and 1951 - the actual war conflict emergency situation was still three years away at this point, but I assume there would've been some sort of crackdown on Algerian separatism, because the delegates from there seem to have been in a hurry to stop forming their own party groups.
Click to expand...
Aw, should have tagged me. Yes, the 1951 election was massively, -even by the colonial Algerian standard- massively fraudulent. It was fraudulent enough to bring about a short-lived United Algerian front*, bringing together PCA, UDMA, PPA-MTLD, and AUMA** for once. Obviously, it didn't last long - it was dissolved in 1952- but the election of 1951 and the failure of the subsequent united front strategy was influential in weakening the belief in the legal, parliamentary political solution among the Algerian nationalists -obviously as these things are this narrative is teleological as hell but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
* Front Algérien pour la Défense et le Resepct des Libertés (FADRL)
**Association des 'Ulama Musulamans Algériens.
 
Last edited:
It's sort of amazing how little the outer borders of France have changed. Well, I should say, how little different they are today.

I think it's a fair categorisation to say the First Restoration border (see map above) was this border rationalised in the most pro-France way, while the current border is this rationalised in the most anti-France way.

val-fr-1789.png
 
France 1791 (constituencies)
  • Index
    • Well, the 1789 elections may be a headache to map, but the succeeding ones - held in 1791 - are very, very easy. You see, the National Constituent Assembly had been fairly quick to decide that yeah, these administrative divisions are just utterly unsalvageable, aren't they, we should probably put something new in. After the famous brief flirtation with square administrative divisions, they decided to instead adopt a division into 83 departments, very loosely based on the old provinces or divisions thereof, which would be roughly equal in surface area. These would serve as primary local administrative units, court districts, and among many, many subsidiary functions, also electoral divisions for the new Legislative Assembly provided for in the Constitution of 1791.

    The Assembly would be unicameral, which was a fairly radical notion for its time, and its size was fixed at 745. Three seats were fixed to each department, which made up about a third of the total (247). Of the rest, 249 were assigned according to number of active citizens (taxpaying men above 25), and 249 according to the amount of tax paid in the department. While this meant the distribution didn't match population, we can see how much more rural France was at the time - the only cities large enough to skew their departments were Paris (which was of course its own department along with its suburbs - this department would be renamed the Seine in 1795) and Lyon.

    If the administrative division and the working structure of the Assembly were radical for their time, the electoral system was very much not. I mention "active citizens" - well, one of the main things distinguishing them from "passive citizens" was that they got to vote in local elections. The threshold for national elections was even higher, requiring property ownership as well as a higher tax threshold. And even they only elected delegates to a departmental primary assembly, who in turn elected the department's delegates. This was seen as a prudent move by the sort of liberal reformers who ran the Constituent, whose main goals were to ensure good government and prevent mob rule, but the sans-culottes of Paris and the poor peasants of the countryside saw it as a betrayal of the Revolution's ideals. As the months wore on, the Legislative Assembly failed to win much support from anyone, and after provoking a great power war for fun and profit, it would fall like a house of cards in the fateful days of August 1792.

    val-fr-1791.png
     
    Last edited:
  • Index
    • Ares96 said:
    Well, the 1789 elections may be a headache to map, but the succeeding ones - held in 1791 - are very, very easy. You see, the National Constituent Assembly had been fairly quick to decide that yeah, these administrative divisions are just utterly unsalvageable, aren't they, we should probably put something new in. After the famous brief flirtation with square administrative divisions, they decided to instead adopt a division into 83 departments, very loosely based on the old provinces or divisions thereof, which would be roughly equal in surface area. These would serve as primary local administrative units, court districts, and among many, many subsidiary functions, also electoral divisions for the new Legislative Assembly provided for in the Constitution of 1791.

    The Assembly would be unicameral, which was a fairly radical notion for its time, and its size was fixed at 745. Three seats were fixed to each department, which made up about a third of the total (247). Of the rest, 249 were assigned according to number of active citizens (taxpaying men above 25), and 249 according to the amount of tax paid in the department. While this meant the distribution didn't match population, we can see how much more rural France was at the time - the only cities large enough to skew their departments were Paris (which was of course its own department along with its suburbs - this department would be renamed the Seine in 1795) and Lyon.

    If the administrative division and the working structure of the Assembly were radical for their time, the electoral system was very much not. I mention "active citizens" - well, one of the main things distinguishing them from "passive citizens" was that they got to vote. And they only elected delegates to a departmental primary assembly, who in turn elected the department's delegates. This was seen as a prudent move by the sort of liberal reformers who ran the Constituent, whose main goals were to ensure good government and prevent mob rule, but the sans-culottes of Paris and the poor peasants of the countryside saw it as a betrayal of the Revolution's ideals. As the months wore on, the Legislative Assembly failed to win much support from anyone, and after provoking a great power war for fun and profit, it would fall like a house of cards in the fateful days of August 1792.

    View attachment 11851
    Click to expand...
    Wouldn't the fact a majority of men got to vote have been fairly radical at the time?
     
    OwenM said:
    Wouldn't the fact a majority of men got to vote have been fairly radical at the time?
    Click to expand...
    The active citizens made up about half of adult men AFAICT, which sounds quite radical, but apparently only a subset of active citizens got to vote above the local level - the limit for active citizenship was three days' wages in tax, but to vote for the Legislative Assembly and district councils you needed to pay ten days' wages in tax and own property. There were four million active citizens in total, but much fewer on this higher level.
     
    Ares96 said:
    The active citizens made up about half of adult men AFAICT, which sounds quite radical, but apparently only a subset of active citizens got to vote above the local level - the limit for active citizenship was three days' wages in tax, but to vote for the Legislative Assembly and district councils you needed to pay ten days' wages in tax and own property. There were four million active citizens in total, but much fewer on this higher level.
    Click to expand...

    When he says fewer, the higher levels were nearly a restrictive as the franchise under the Restauration.
     
    Ares96 said:
    Now tantalisingly close to that halfway mark where the bailliages turn to sénéchaussées. Bourgogne and Franche-Comté done, the latter especially being shockingly reasonable-looking. But well... @Redolegna? I'm sad to say Gex is doing that thing again.

    View attachment 11852
    Click to expand...

    You know, those perfectly square constituencies are beginning to look like a very legitimate improvement.

    The Ancien Régime was literally so fucked up that applying British Republic-style thinking actually made the situation less bad.
     
    Redolegna said:
    When he says fewer, the higher levels were nearly a restrictive as the franchise under the Restauration.
    Click to expand...
    Wow, that's impressive.
    Come to think of it, were the Estates General of 1789 still elected by (indirect and obviously heavily weighted by what estate you were in) universal suffrage, actually?
     
    Ares96 said:
    I believe you had to be a taxpayer to vote in the Third Estate, but yeah, even so.
    Click to expand...

    Kind of reminded of the weirdness that even though Parliament in Britain always had much more power than the Reichstag throughout the existence of the German Empire, it yet was the case that the franchise in the German Empire was always substantially wider than it was in Britain.
     
    OwenM said:
    Wow, that's impressive.
    Come to think of it, were the Estates General of 1789 still elected by (indirect and obviously heavily weighted by what estate you were in) universal suffrage, actually?
    Click to expand...

    Much like everything Ancien Régime, it varied from baillage to baillage. With, as @Thande will point out, some women having the vote since they satisfied the property restrictions.
     
    Makemakean said:
    Kind of reminded of the weirdness that even though Parliament in Britain always had much more power than the Reichstag throughout the existence of the German Empire, it yet was the case that the franchise in the German Empire was always substantially wider than it was in Britain.
    Click to expand...
    It seems logical enough if you approach it from the opposite perspective, I think. "This chamber is expected to take an active part in government, thus it needs to depend on men of quality. This one is just to throw a bone to the rabble, and that's harder if we exclude people from a say"
     
    Reader mode
    You must log in or register to reply here.
    Back
    Top