A lot can change in a hundred years.
In 1789, Paris was the center of world attention as its citizens rose up against the ancien regime. Anger over food shortages — a regular feature of life in Europe for centuries — combined with the government’s mismanagement of its finances and new ideas about equality to rupture French, and European, history. The events of 1789 were a genuine turning point in the world, the end of an old way of doing things and an opening to a new set of possibilities.
But I don’t really want to talk about Paris during the French Revolution today, as interesting as it is. I want to look at the city a century later. By 1889, Paris was a city transformed.
The nineteenth century had been a century of upheaval — first the revolution, then Napoleon’s wars, then a series of unstable and short-lived governmental systems. By 1889, France was governed by the “Third Republic,” which, as it says on the tin, was the country’s third attempt in a century to govern itself without handing power over to a king. The Third Republic had begun in 1871 after a series of humiliations and upheavals — first, defeat in war to Prussia and then a worker’s uprising, in which the Paris Commune barricaded the streets and fought bloody battles against the army.
All of this took place against the backdrop of the city’s transformation. Napoleon III, the ruler whom the Third Republic would eventually replace, commissioned Georges-Eugene Haussmann to “modernize” the city, demolishing old, medieval buildings, widening streets, and providing for sanitation. The changes — and Haussmann himself — were controversial. Though Haussmann was eventually fired, the government continued to carry out his vision into the 1880s, getting rid of narrow alleyways like the delightfully named Rue de Marmousets:
And prioritizing open public spaces like the Avenue de l'Opéra, painted here by Pissarro:
As the city was transformed, so was its culture. The 1880s began the so-called Belle Époque, an exciting period of prosperity, innovation, and cultural experimentation. Artists were experimenting with new techniques, social mores were loosening, and Paris became a center of both high culture and lowbrow fun.
So let’s go back 125 years and spend some time in a city full of intellectual, artistic, and political ferment, as Paris once again became the center of the world.
The biggest event in Paris — and maybe the whole world — in 1889 was the “Exposition Universelle,” a World’s Fair. The event attracted over 32 million visitors, a number approximating 2% of the world’s population (although this estimate is probably a little high, as many attendees came several times).
The exposition was meant to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. French elites had spent a century struggling with whether to remember the revolution as a positive development and, if so, which parts of the revolution to highlight. Soon after defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the establishment of the Third Republic, leaders looked for national holidays that might instill civic pride and unite the public.
But which event should they celebrate? The beheading of Louis XVI? No, too inflammatory to monarchists. The end of the feudal system? No, not exciting enough. Eventually, the government chose Bastille Day — July 14, 1789 — as the new national holiday. This was not without controversy, however, as some objected to the choice of a violent act of insurrection as a national holiday — what message would it send to potential rabble-rousers?
But France celebrated Bastille Day in 1880 and each year afterward, which meant that 1889 marked the anniversary of not just an important event in French history, but one that the government had sanctified as a formative moment, one that was responsible for the republic that French people enjoyed a century later.
So 1889 was to be a year of national celebration rather than one of sober reflection on the messy aftermath of the Bastille, and the exposition was meant to be an expression of that feeling. This rubbed some countries (the ones with monarchies) the wrong way, which meant that ten European nations — including Italy, Germany, and England — officially boycotted the event.
This didn’t seem to matter much, though. The Exposition Universelle was an exuberant celebration of France’s power, prosperity, and creativity.
The big attraction of the fair was, as you can see in the poster above, the Eiffel Tower. The tower was the tallest structure in the world, dwarfing other famous sites like the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Statue of Liberty, as you can see in this design sketch from Eiffel’s firm:
Originally meant to be a temporary structure, the tower was an instant icon. People flocked to climb it, paying extra to brave the stairs even before the elevators (themselves a marvelous new invention) were installed in May. At night, the tower was often lit up in a patriotic red, white, and blue. Here it is, glowing red as pyrotechnics are lit on its various levels:
The Eiffel Tower became the symbol of the fair. Over time, it would become a symbol of Paris itself; officials declined to dismantle in 1909 it after its originally planned lifespan ended.
But the Eiffel Tower wasn’t the only attraction at the exposition. There was the Galerie des Machines, which celebrated the industrial innovations of the age, including hundreds of Thomas Edison’s creations:
The Palais de Beaux-Arts featured the artistic achievements of France:
Like many world’s fairs, the 1889 expo tried to give attendees a taste of cultures around the world. One of the most popular attractions was the “Cairo Street,” where people could experience some of the sights, sounds, and tastes of Egypt:
It was an age of imperialism, which meant that France used the fair as an opportunity to trumpet its conquests. A pavilion represented each French colony, and visitors watched performances of “native cultures,” like this one representing French Indochina:
The exhibition’s displays of colonial cultures were no doubt crude, cartoonish, and jingoistic, but some of them tipped over into something more awful. The fair featured “human zoos,” in which tourists could gawk at the “primitive” lifestyles of people from around the world, like these people from Tierra del Fuego, who somehow ended up in Paris as part of the exhibition:
The stain of imperialism wasn’t the only dark undercurrent running through Paris in 1889. A militaristic, authoritarian movement had been brewing in opposition to the Third Republic for years, led by a general named Georges Ernest Jean-Marie Boulanger. The general had started his military career by taking part in the conquest of Algeria and then had fought against Germany in the humiliating war of 1870. He helped to crush the worker’s uprising during the Paris Commune and then administered the colony in Tunisia. He finally entered government, serving as War Minister.
Over the course of the 1880s, Boulanger became consumed by right-wing resentments. He was fanatically anti-German, working to ban the import of German horses and the performance of Wagner’s operas. After being fired as War Minister for bringing France and Germany close to conflict, he flirted with monarchists who wanted to restore the Bonaparte family to power. He won election to the Chamber of Deputies, even though he wasn’t a legal candidate (soldiers weren’t allowed to run for office), finding himself at the head of a coalition of revanchists.
People seemed to love Boulanger’s act, even though he was essentially a reactionary clown. My favorite part of Boulanger’s story is when he challenged his political opponent, the lawyer Charles Floquet, to a duel, and lost — even though Boulanger was ten years younger and a decorated military hero.
By January 1889, Boulanger’s movement was at its peak. His partisans went door to door, building support for his movement. I love this 1889 painting by Eugene Buland, which shows a Boulangist, propaganda poster in hand, lobbying ordinary people on behalf of the general:
Boulanger had the support of wealthy business interests, parts of the military, church officials, and common people who distrusted the Republic and wanted revenge on Germany. Republican politicians feared that he might overthrow the government at any moment.
He won a thumping victory for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies in that year’s elections. At his election celebration, the crowd shouted for him to launch a coup and take control as a dictator. But Boulanger dithered and his moment passed. Instead of taking charge of his raucous election-night crowd, he retired to sleep with his mistress, Marguerite Brouzet, the Vicomtesse de Bonnemains.
Boulanger planned to contest the general election later in 1889 and then, perhaps, launch his coup. This hesitation allowed his political opponents to regroup; the government launched an investigation and Boulanger fled to Belgium. His party, its leader in exile, lost the election and crumbled. Boulanger would commit suicide at Marguerite’s grave two years later:
While the masses were touring the expo and the rightists were contemplating the end of the republic, bohemians and artists were creating a new world of culture in Montmartre.
Montmartre had, just a few decades before, been an agricultural town peripheral to Paris. You can see its sleepy rural nature in Georges Michel’s 1820 painting of “The Mill of Montmartre:”
But, by 1889, Montmartre had been absorbed into Paris as the capital quintupled its population over the nineteenth century. No longer the site of wheat fields and windmills, Montmartre was now the vanguard of Paris’ artistic movements, home to groundbreaking artists and scandalous behavior.
During the day, the city’s artists hung out at cafes like this one, painted by Van Gogh, who was hanging around the neighborhood in the late 1880s. He might have run into Degas, Renoir, or Toulouse-Lautrec there:
The cafe scene of the daylight hours morphed into a pretty raucous nightlife, centered around nightclubs like the Moulin Rouge, which opened in October 1889. The cabaret was the birthplace of the can-can, a high-kicking dance that was scandalous because it exposed what women were — or weren’t — wearing under their dresses. This is Georges Seurat’s depiction of it (he was hanging around Montmartre, too):
Jules Chéret and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec made the place famous with their exuberant posters advertising the venue’s shows. Here’s one of Chéret’s from 1889, showing dancers whose dresses leave little to the imagination:
And here’s one of Toulouse-Lautrec’s from a couple of years later, advertising a dancer named Louise Weber, who was better known as “La Goulue” — the glutton. She earned the name by swiping patrons’ drinks and gulping them down as she danced past their tables; she was also known for taking men’s hats off with her toe as she high-kicked around the club. La Goulue was one of the most famous residents of Paris for a short while, dubbed the “Queen of Montmartre:”
Paris in 1889 was a city in ferment. It was politically combustible and artistically vibrant. It attracted travelers from all over the world who wanted to see the latest in technology and experience something of the cultures of the world.
This truly was a Belle Époque, a beautiful age, although the beauty was tinged with a lot of ugliness. But nobody called this period the Belle Époque while it was happening. Twenty-five years after the Exposition Universelle came to an end, the world fell apart as France plunged into the First World War. It was only after war broke out that people began to look back and see the Belle Époque as something special.
The Paris of 1889 seemed to glitter even more in contrast with the horrors of the twentieth century, a more innocent and optimistic period that contrasted with the disasters that were to come.
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