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The Second French Empire (1852-1870) was the regime of Emperor Napoleon III of France over France for 18 years, between the French Second Republic and French Third Republic. The empire's capital was Paris, from which it ruled a vast colonial state that had territories on all of the major continents except for Antarctica and Oceania.
History[]
Map of the Second French Empire
The Second French Empire took power in 1852 after President Louis Napoleon declared himself Emperor Napoleon III of France, as he was the heir and nephew of the late Emperor Napoleon I Bonaparte. His rule came only four years after the overthrow of the July Monarchy in 1848 and the declaration of the republican French Second Republic in one of the few successful Revolutions of 1848. Emperor Napoleon III inherited a colonial empire that had already included France proper and their overseas territories of Senegal, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Comoros, Mayotte, and Pondicherry, in addition to the recent conquests of Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Chad, and Niger in northern Africa. Napoleon wanted to expand French power and take over the world, and he had just the armed forces to do so. However, the limiting factors in his efforts to expand his empire included pressure from the United Kingdom and Ottoman Empire (the two countries that hated France the most at the time), the risk of other empires competing with him in a large war, the standards for living that French colonists had (making France unable to colonize certain unexplored areas), and the time that it took to construct a large navy to transport his men overseas.
Undaunted, Napoleon carried out his own projects. In the early 1850s France was at peace, and he focused on researching new technology to better France's prestige, the organization of their armies and navies, industrial benefits, cultural agendas, and the production of medicines and new scientific discoveries. Napoleon was always ready for a war with the United Kingdom, and he kept an army of 54,000 French troops on active duty in Paris and northern France for much of his reign. The British had already intervened militarily against France three times since 1836, always failing to counteract their colonization efforts.
French troops in Japan, 1864
The French Empire went to war with Dai Nam in 1858, annexing southern Vietnam as French Indochina. The war was swift, and the French colonized the region quickly, adding railroads, paved roads, and telegraph lines, sending Catholic missionaries, building trading posts, constructing French/European-style buildings, and modernizing the country. The annexation of Cochinchina was assisted by Spain, a friend of France. However, Europe grew more apprehensive about French ambitions to conquer the uncivilized world as they invaded more and more lands.
The Second French Empire carried out a daring project when they invaded Mexico in July 1861 to conquer the Yucatan Peninsula, and in 1862, the war turned into a war to force Mexico to repay debts, as well as to conquer the whole country for France as a major North American colony that was on land. The French were successful in capturing Mexico City and installed Maximilian of Austria as the new Emperor, but the Mexicans rose up in revolt against the French, and by 1867 they had driven the French troops out of the country and executed Emperor Maximilian.
The French also went on to colonize lands in Africa, waging war against the Tukulor Empire in Senegal and adding more lands to their African colonies. They would later become the largest colonial empire in Africa, possessing Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Mali, Niger, Chad, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic, and the Republic of the Congo on the mainland, as well as the islands of Mayotte, Comoros, and Madagascar. The Second French Empire Christianized a few of the countries, but Islam remained a major religion.
The Second French Empire also waged war in Europe. In 1859-1860 they supported Sardinia-Piedmont in their war with the Austrian Empire in northern Italy and gained Nice as a result, and they remained allies with Italy until 1923. However, their downfall came from their intervention in European wars. They were invaded by the North German Confederation (Prussia and her sphere states) in 1870 after a faked French telegram edited by the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck suggested that insults were exchanged between the French and German ambassadors discussing the candidacy for Leopold von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as the King of Spain. The Franco-Prussian War began as a result, and the Prussians defeated the French at crushing defeats at Metz and Chalons. Napoleon III himself surrendered at Metz, and the French people were disgusted. They overthrew the government in 1871, creating the French Third Republic and the Communards-ruled "Paris Commune". The French Empire's fall led to Napoleon living in exile in Britain, dying in 1873.
Politics[]
The French government, although an empire, was not afraid to introduce liberal reforms in the voting system and civil rights, and the Orleanists and Bonapartists both fought over control of the government every four years. By 1860, the Legitimistes had 61.7% of the electorate vote, although they were reactionary. However, the ideology of the government was 50.5% conservative, consisting of the Bonapartists and the French Republican Party's ideologies. The government progressively grew more liberal, with the French Liberal Party and Orleanists growing in power as more reforms were enacted. In the 1860s, the government was around half-and-half in terms of liberal and conservative, while parties such as the Républicain Radical Party tended to have less support. The conservatives and liberals divided the nation in half, while the government shifted between protectionism, interventionism, and jingoism and laissez-faire, free trade, and anti-military policies.
Culture[]
The population statistics of France in June 1860
In June 1860, the Second French Empire had a population of 10,130,000 people. 85.4% of them were French, 8% Maghrebi, 1.7% Berber, 1.5% South German, and 3.5% other (including Sephardim, Tamils, Amazonians, African Minors, Afro-Antilleans, and others). The people were 88.2% Catholic and 10.8% Sunni (although tiny percentages were also animist, Hindu, and Jewish, specifically the Amazonians, Tamils, and Sephardim, respectively). The people of France were mainly farmers (42.6%), while 25.1% were laborers, 10.2% bureaucrats, 9% artisans, 4.2% soldiers, and 3.4% clergymen, with a small percentage of other jobs. Slavery was illegal in France since 1792, and there was no slave population.
The French people were a diverse mix, growing in population and diversity as the empire expanded. The conquest of North Africa after 1836 added more Berbers, Maghrebis, and African Minors as well as Sunnis to the population, and Islam became the second-largest religion in the empire. Many of these people were illiterate, while in France proper the literacy rate was always above 80%.