ABSTRACT
The periodic newspaper headlines about the crisis of the franc during the 1920s gave a misleading impression about the state of the French economy in the post-war decade. The post-war French government spent heavily to rebuild damaged areas of the north, giving work to the construction industry. The leaders of the ngritude movement, Aim Csaire from Martinique and Lopold Sedar Senghor from Senegal, argued that people of African descent all shared a common culture, distinct from that of Europe. The American economic collapse had immediate repercussions in many other countries, most notably in Germany, where the difficulties it caused gave Adolf Hitler's Nazi movement the opportunity to start its rise to power. American models also had an impact on mass culture, which became increasingly associated with the electronic media. The political party system, too, came in for severe castigation. The post-war decade was a lively one for French culture.
