France without the Franco-Prussian War

[Yokai Man]

Let's assume that Bismarck is successfully assasinated in 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War doesn't happen. Let's also assume that the Bonapartes continue to rule France til,say,the First World War or sometime during the 20th Century.

How does France change along the years in this scenario? Does it stagnate socially and culturally or only politically with a continued Bonaparte rule? Would some reforms happen after Napoleon III's death or would Napoleon IV run France the same way as his father? And how volatile can things get after awhile? What will follow after the possible fall of the House of Bonaparte in the 20th Century?

 

[SinghSong]

Let's assume that Bismarck is successfully assassinated in 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War doesn't happen. Let's also assume that the Bonapartes continue to rule France til,say,the First World War or sometime during the 20th Century.

How does France change along the years in this scenario? Does it stagnate socially and culturally or only politically with a continued Bonaparte rule? Would some reforms happen after Napoleon III's death or would Napoleon IV run France the same way as his father? And how volatile can things get after awhile? What will follow after the possible fall of the House of Bonaparte in the 20th Century?

You have to wonder how far the butterflies would flap their wings, and how much the geopolitical landscape would be altered, with a POD like that. And I'd wager that France'd be one of the European countries which'd be least affected by it. For instance, getting rid of von Bismarck in 1866 also effectively butterflies away the Prussian deportations of 1885-1890, which he personally championed and initiated, as well as eliminating the Prussian Settlement Commission which he personally established, and greatly lessening or potentially even butterflying away the anti-Polish post-unification Kulturkampf policy which he enacted, owing to his own personal belief in the existence of a widespread Catholic conspiracy, plotted by what he called the "Coalition of Catholic Revenge" (France, Austria, and the Catholic Church itself), which posed a threat to both his German and European policies.

As a result of Bismarck's efforts to ethnically cleanse Germany of its Polish (and Jewish) minorities, combined with growing Nationalist and Pan-Slavic trends in Russian politics, the formerly good relations between Prussia/Germany and Russia greatly worsened in the 1880s, with the backlash increasing negative sentiments against German minorities in the Russian Empire, including Baltic and Russian-born Germans as well as recent German immigrants. With that in mind, the German ambassador in Russia, Schweinitz, advised Bismarck to abstain from further expulsions, anticipating that they would only provoke the supporters of Pan-Slavism and trigger repressions against all German settlers in Russia.

Soon afterward, the Russian government imposed legal restrictions on acquisition and lease of land by Germans in Russia, thus limiting the German colonization movement in the Russian-controlled part of Poland, which had previously been their primary destination of choice (and was subsequently overtaken by colonization of the USA instead, with the Russian German mass migration to the USA directly triggered by this, and with the 1880's seeing the largest flow of German immigrants to the USA ever, which had previously been steadily decreasing from its prior peak in the 1850's, but more than doubled from the previous decade, from c.718k to c.1.453M German immigrants, which amounted to 2.3% of the US population at that time).

Contrary to Bismarck's original intentions, the expulsion contributed to the worsening of German-Russian relations and the erosion of their long term cooperation – resulting in a shift in Russia's external policy which finally led to the creation of the Franco-Russian Alliance, soon transformed into the Triple Entente, which fought the German Empire during World War I in 1914–1918 IOTL. So then, without Bismarck, and the policies which he personally championed and enacted from this point onward IOTL (which set a direct precedent for Hitler and the Nazis' anti-Polish, anti-Slavic, anti-Jewish and Lebensraum policies), you have to wonder- how radically different might the world wind up being ITTL?

And couldn't this well wind up being far more advantageous to the Germans in the long run, with the Prussian-Russian Alliance remaining strong and intact, and with Prussia and France winding up trading places in TTL's equivalents to the Triple Entente and Central Powers? Combined with more manpower to call upon that IOTL, and a significantly less populous, poorer and weaker USA (for the lack of the contribution of all those Germans, Russians and Polish Americans who immigrated to the USA in this era, as a direct result of Bismarck's ethnic cleansing policies, and the retaliatory measures imposed in response to them), I know which side I'd be putting my money on to win, if and when TTL's equivalent of WW1 kicks off...

 

[raharris1973]

Interesting question @Yokai Man, and interesting set of projections about a sans Bismarck Prussia @SinghSong.

The latter list of detailed items on Bismarck is particularly interesting in a historiographical sense for covering many of the less flattering of Bismarck's policies when the shore summary of him is often as the master diplomatic, keeping the Russians (and others) pacified before Wilhelm II shot German diplomacy to hell.

The listing points, reasonably so, that many policies Bismarck favored had the effect of alienating Russia, even if his diplomacy was trying to counteract that effect. Indeed, with Bismarck, a pattern seems to be that on multiple issues related to domestic and international factors at the same time, we can call them 'intermestic' issues, like immigration, cross-border minorities, tariffs, Bismarck (and often, Junker political allies) favored policies that angered Russia, and his international diplomatic efforts to keep Russia inside his alliance or treaty framework, through the Three Emperors' Leagues and Reinsurance Treaty, were patches or band-aids designed to cover wounds some of his other policies were creating.

The things @SinghSong listed gave me an appreciation for the Russian side of dispute with Germany from the 1880s onward, which I needed a reminder of, because frankly, based on the purely diplomatic matters of alliances, wars, treaties, conferences, Bismarck and Germany's record of conduct and attitude toward Russia looks pretty good, clean, reasonable, accommodating, and Germany comes off as an 'honest broker', while Russia comes off like a prickly, whiny, vengeful, grasping, way-too-easily offended bully.

Harshness to the point of deportations of Russian immigrants (of Polish or Jewish ethnicity), and tariffs on Russian grain were naturally going to anger the Russians however. Although a country's immigration and tariff policy is its own sovereign choice, the other affected party in that bilateral interaction does not have to like it.

Russia's retaliatory measures on Germans in Russia naturally caused anti-Russian feeling in Germany.

 

[Wendell]

Fewer French may settle in Algeria, and it may be administered differently if Napoleon III holds on and his son carries a broadly similar worldview.

 

[Wendell]

Something else to consider here will be IV's choice of bride. I personally suspect that one of Isabella II's daughters would be in play.

 

[raharris1973]

@Wendell - Clearly all things Napoleon IV related would be of great interest in this scenario, including his bride-to-be. Your projection of a Spanish match certainly sounds reasonable. Quite often people in threads where it is discussed mentioned the possibility of a British match, which I suppose is not impossible, but seems a little too cute by half, or 'rule of cool'.

Nice observation/insight on possibility of a different Algeria approach. Honestly, the lesser investment of settlers the better for mutual relations of the peoples in the long run.

 

[Wendell]

@Wendell - Clearly all things Napoleon IV related would be of great interest in this scenario, including his bride-to-be. Your projection of a Spanish match certainly sounds reasonable. Quite often people in threads where it is discussed mentioned the possibility of a British match, which I suppose is not impossible, but seems a little too cute by half, or 'rule of cool'.

Nice observation/insight on possibility of a different Algeria approach. Honestly, the lesser investment of settlers the better for mutual relations of the peoples in the long run.

And, without a Franco-Prussian War, the Berlin conference or its analogue, should there still be such, might be rather different.

 

[LSCatilina]

I'm surprised by the assumption that the Second Empire would have obviously survived without a Franco-Prussian war. Overall, we could rather point out there were good reasons why it wouldn't, although the nature of its fall and the following regime would probably be much more open.

The Second Empire went trough a general political tension and in spite of a lukewarm liberalisation, and a constant hesitation between moral order and a "social caesarism", that didn't stop a steady rise of a multi-faceted opposition (both republican and royalist) due to economic, industrial and social crises, the failures of a rather adventurist imperial foreign policy in the 1860's, and a regime that simply had trouble justifying itself and its imperial institution as illustrated by the death and funeral of Victor Noir.

It doesn't help that Nappie was a rather old and ill man at this point : I don't see any good reason why he wouldn't have died in the mid-1870's ITTL as well (Eugénie claimed, which I'm sceptical, he was to abdicate in 1874), leaving a son way too young to lead an authoritarian and very much personalist regime, without any actual consensual figure to replace him.

That the Empire collapsed so easily in 1871, taking imperial bonapartism in its fall, is in itself an illustration of its vulnerability besides the military defeat.

Now, I don't think the Empire was ripe to fall in 1871, and the plebiscite of 1870 shows that it still had structural and popular strength, although definitely less so it used to in spite of the vote influence, manipulation and general meddling it was subject to.
But the prospects of a regency without obvious regent but the parliament, with domestic and foreign crises, growing opposition in urban centres, decline of overall support...
That's a lot for a regime built on personal interventionism and authoritarianism to take.

IMO, the regime would have to transform very quickly into a crowned parliamentarian republic to survive the 1880's, which, admittedly, giving the lot of continuities between the Empire and the Third Republic, isn't that wild, although the political and general institutional implications would be certainly different.

Fewer French may settle in Algeria, and it may be administered differently if Napoleon III holds on and his son carries a broadly similar worldview.

Long story short, by the 1860's, no.

 

[Wendell]

My question now is this: Would a parliamentary French Empire from Napoleon IV onward go back to using "President of the Government" for is prime minister figure, or might it use fifth republic formulation premier (ministre), or, alternatively, chancellor (Chancelier)?

 

[raharris1973]

And, without a Franco-Prussian War, the Berlin conference or its analogue, should there still be such, might be rather different.

Which Berlin Conference do you mean? The Berlin *Congress* which revised the Treaty of San Stefano, settling (for the moment) the Russo-Turkish War and the ''Eastern Question", or the Berlin *Conference on Africa* which set the 'rules' for how European states could claim title to land in Africa and how they would agree to conduct themselves according to the public international law of Europe and America?

 

[Wendell]

Which Berlin Conference do you mean? The Berlin *Congress* which revised the Treaty of San Stefano, settling (for the moment) the Russo-Turkish War and the ''Eastern Question", or the Berlin *Conference on Africa* which set the 'rules' for how European states could claim title to land in Africa and how they would agree to conduct themselves according to the public international law of Europe and America?

I meant the latter, but really, both could be different.

 

[LSCatilina]

My question now is this: Would a parliamentary French Empire from Napoleon IV onward go back to using "President of the Government" for is prime minister figure, or might it use fifth republic formulation premier (ministre), or, alternatively, chancellor (Chancelier)?

It's a detail but during the Third Republic, the President of the Councils of Ministers was formally the President of the French Republic.
You had, by 1876, a de facto chief of government actually presiding the council and being called so, but it wasn't in a constitutionally recognized fashion, hence why they also had to have a specific ministry.

Now, if we go the road of a surviving and republicanized Second Empire, I think one possible evolution besides the use of "Vice-Président du Conseil (des Ministres)" as it was used IOTL between 1871 and 1876, could be a formal use of "Chef du Cabinet (de l'Empereur)" which was the de facto name used for prime ministers of the Second Empire IOTL in spite of the colourful implication of the name for future generations.
"Président du Conseil (des Ministres)" remains still a plausible name for a further constitutional change, as it was used in this fahsion by the various royal governments under the Charter and the IInd Republic.