ABSTRACT
The nation had won the war, and the Third Republic had survived its test of arms, unlike most other major nations on the European continent. Moreover, the republican nation-state symbolized by France had gone from being exceptional to dominant in Europe. The sharp social divisions that produced a near-revolutionary situation at the end of the war had been at least papered over, but working-class discontent and political radicalism would continue to threaten the stability of the republic in the decades after the war. In important respects, the crisis of interwar France was a crisis of the universal nation. The tensions between East and West, North and South so evident during the peace negotiations also shaped domestic life in France itself. France had mobilized the empire during the First World War as never before, and many believed its aid had been crucial to the nation's victory. The economic crisis also had important implications for France's relations with its colonies.
