ABSTRACT
This final chapter considers the legacy of 1870-1 for the evolution of the practice of citizenship in France. It begins by looking at the role of the elector in what had become de facto a decentralised administration of a centralist state. This reflects the powers of the citizen in a bartering political order, and expresses the deep impact of republican practices over the 1870-1 period while not denying that the political heritage of 1870 was not entirely claimed. In fact, it is the contention of this book that the practice of citizenship in times of war and civil war, and in a political vacuum, cannot be entirely consistent and narratively coherent with the periods that precede and follow. The debates on communal freedom and decentralisation had their corresponding counterweight in a desire for centralisation, but all had the elector-citizens at their heart, and this remained a feature of the French parliamentary system of the Third Republic. The second part of this chapter deals directly with the central argument of the second part of this book on the decline and brutalisation of French politics in the period leading to the Paris insurrection. Looking at the aftermath of the wars, it considers how 4 September republicans and Communards were reintegrated into the political fabric, even though their political enterprise had been a failure. This mending of the French political fabric was never complete or universally accepted, but it functioned well in rapidly historicising the events of 1870-1 and in converting them into a national founding myth which concluded with the necessity of the Third Republic. This political use of history did not bury all the issues raised in 1870-1, and much of the social compact established in 1871 came to haunt the conservative democracy.
