While the foundations of the fiscal-military state changed little either side of 1830, the new Orleanist regime did much to extend the state’s developmental dimension. The government took responsibility for the development of the railway network, which entailed extensive public investment in the 1840s. In part, this extension of public works was motivated by a desire to manage the ‘social question’, the fear of a potentially subversive underclass; indeed, despite the limited extension of the franchise after 1830, the July Monarchy was attentive to public opinion. The desire for popular legitimation also pushed the regime to seek glory abroad through the conquest of Algeria, which entailed higher military expenditure, as did an international crisis in 1840. As under the Restoration, the growth of public expenditure was financed through credit, which enabled the government to avoid painful tax reforms, while increasing the numbers of people invested in public credit and thus with a stake in the social and political order.

The limits of the Bourbons’ attempt to assert their legitimacy became apparent in the late 1820s, particularly as the economy slumped after 1825. The downturn fuelled the rise of economic liberalism, invoked by a vocal group of the government’s opponents in their quest for a smaller state and cheaper government – ‘un gouvernement à bon marché’. Though many of these people found themselves in power after the overthrow of the Bourbons in 1830, the new July Monarchy did little to reduce the size of the state. Rather, it largely upheld the existing fiscal system, doing little to reduce taxes and resorting to public credit to cover shortfalls in public finance that arose in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution of 1830. Borrowing therefore facilitated the survival of the fiscal system, which only incurred minor changes to direct taxes, alcohol duties and customs. While the Revolution changed little and thus demonstrated the continuities that affected French politics and economics during the ‘Age of Revolution’, it produced new pressures to reform the fiscal system, many of which encouraged the development of the French state’s economic interventionism from the late 1830s onwards.

The Prologue begins with brief accounts of the revolutions of 1848, first in France, then in Europe. This is followed by a substantial overview of the book, emphasizing its dual focus on the experience of nine writers from 1848 to 1852 and analysis of the texts in which each writer attempted to take the measure of the revolution and its aftermath. The rest of the Prologue provides comment on features of French political culture (1815–1848) that are important for an understanding of 1848. Themes include: the continuing weight of the memory of the first French Revolution; the emergence of political groups defined by their relation to conflicts and factions of 1789–1794; the development of working-class organization and protest; the emergence of republican and socialist movements; the influence of the press; the economic and social roots of the February Revolution. A substantial discussion of French rural society in the 1830s and 1840s emphasizes the plight of the peasant smallholder, which was poorly understood by the republicans who took power in February. We conclude with a discussion of the agricultural, then financial, crisis of 1846/47 which resulted in a loss of confidence in the July Monarchy on the part of the elites.