The Lost History of Liberalism by Rosenblatt Helena;

Author:Rosenblatt, Helena; [Rosenblatt, Helena;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780691170701
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2018-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

The Battle to Secularize Education

The snake in Paradise already spoke the temptations and false promise of liberalism.

—CATHOLIC CHURCH LEXICON, 1891

IN 1870 BISMARCK goaded Napoleon III into declaring war on Prussia and the Second Empire came to a sudden and humiliating end. It took Prussia a mere six months to defeat France, which until then had been regarded the strongest power in Europe. When Napoleon III was captured at Sedan on September 2, 1870, France became a de facto republic.

The shock of the French defeat was compounded by a rebellion in Paris, where a large portion of the population, refusing to accept the peace terms imposed by Germany and agreed to by their own government, rose up in anger and set up the so-called Commune.

While the provisional national government at Versailles assembled the forces necessary to put down the uprising, the Commune took a series of actions that stunned the world. It adopted the red flag as its symbol. It sent delegates to other French cities encouraging them to establish their own communes. It issued a Declaration to the French People promising to implement measures to improve the “social welfare” and began legislating in the name of the working classes. It voted the separation of church and state and the elimination of the ecclesiastical budget. It closed many Catholic schools and churches. Some two hundred priests, nuns, and monks were arrested. A feminist movement demanded wage equality, the right to divorce, and secular and professional education.

The astonishing defeat of the French army, followed by what seemed like another revolution and a communist takeover in Paris, sent shockwaves through Europe and beyond. Liberals were yet again forced to contemplate what had gone so horribly wrong. They of course had no way of knowing that France’s humiliation at the hands of Prussia would help prepare it for what liberals had fought for so long: a “liberal educational system” and the separation of church and state.

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