Jules Ferry (5 April 1832-17 March 1893) was Prime Minister of France from 23 September 1880 to 10 November 1881 (succeeding Charles de Freycinet and preceding Leon Gambetta) and from 21 February 1883 to 30 March 1885 (succeeding Armand Fallieres and preceding Henri Brisson). Ferry was a major leader of the Opportunist Republicans and the liberal National Republican Association during the late 19th century, and he oversaw the establishment of a free, secular, and compulsory public education system, the establishment of French as the national language of the French Third Republic, and colonial expansion into Tunisia, Madagascar, and Vietnam during his premierships.
Biography[]
Jules Ferry was born in Saint-Die, France on 5 April 1832, and he was called to the bar in Paris in 1854. He went on to become a political journalist for Le Temps, attacking the Second French Empire. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from Paris in 1869, and he opposed the Franco-Prussian War. From 1870 to 1871, he served as Mayor of Paris, but he was forced to resign due to the Paris Commune Revolt; there would not be another Mayor of Paris until Jacques Chirac in 1977. He became a leader of the Opportunists during the early years of the French Third Republic, and he served as Education Minister and Foreign Minister under William Waddington. He also served as Prime Minister from 1880 to 1881 and from 1883 to 1885, supporting the secularization of public education and the major colonial expansion of France (seeing it as the only way to economically recover following the war with Prussia). In 1882, he made French education free, non-clerical, and compulsory, and he doubled the number of professors in the country (most of them were also republicans). He also established the French language as the national language, leading to the extinction of several regional dialects. In politics, Ferry launched a wide-scale purge against monarchists in top positions in the magistrature, army, and civil and diplomatic services to weaken Henri, Count of Chambord during his attempts to claim the throne. In foreign policy matters, Ferry directed the creation of a protectorate in Tunisia in 1881, prepared the 1885 Madagascar occupation treaty, directed the exploration of the Congo and Niger, and organized the conquest of Annam and Tonkin in Indochina. The Tonkin Affair caused Georges Clemenceau and the radicals to overthow Ferry's ministry in 1885. Ferry later directed the opposition to the populist general Georges Boulanger, and, on 10 December 1887, he was mortally wounded when a madman shot him. He died of complications from this wound in 1893 at the age of 60.