ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the republic survived its challengers to dominate French politics, and how it spread republican institutions and values throughout France. It considers the unprecedented expansion of the nation's overseas empire during this period. Like many other nations, France elaborated the essential outlines of its national political culture during these years, the first half of the Third Republic. One of the new Assembly's first acts was to elect the conservative Republican Adolphe Thiers head of the provisional government. Once the Republicans had reduced Patrice de MacMahon and the monarchists to political impotence they moved swiftly to remake France along liberal democratic lines. The Opportunist Republic went beyond symbols, enacting measures that would reshape the nation. The conflict over education set the republic and the Church on a collision course for decades to come. By the mid-1880s the Third Republic could point to some solid achievements, notably in the field of education.
