SHORT ESSAYS ON COMMUNITY, DIVERSITY, INCLUSION, AND THE PERFORMING ARTS
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Paris, 1860
Paris during Napoleon III’s Second Empire appeared on the surface to be one of Europe’s most commanding modernizing cities. Under Prefect George-Eugène Haussmann’s unrelenting reconstruction of the city center, Emperor Louis-Napoleon reimagined his capital as a city of grand boulevards, elegant townhouses and ultramodern infrastructure. Together, Louis-Napoleon and Haussmann achieved their up-to-date vision with remarkable success. Paris became the city that would long be celebrated throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century down to the twenty-first. Behind Haussmann’s facades lurked a more multifaceted city, one in which scarcity and ignominy played hideand-seek with vainglory. Charles-Louis Napoleon seemingly inherited his uncle Napoleon Bonaparte’s grandiose sense of self. Exiled following his uncle’s demise, Charles-Louis became embroiled in family intrigues intent on returning a Bonaparte to the French throne. He left London for Paris immediately following the collapse of the French government in early 1848 and eventually won election as President of the new Second Republic by year’s end. Prevented by constitutional prohibition from running for re-election, CharlesLouis dissolved the Second Republic and proclaimed himself Emperor Napoleon III of the Second Empire.
Self-proclamation proved more easily declared than achieved. Faced with lingering opposition, Louis-Napoleon grew ever more authoritarian. Various foreign adventures took their toll, with his despotic regime eventually collapsing in 1870 following the debacle of the FrancoPrussian War. Early during his rule, Louis-Napoleon tried to curry favor of the working class through social reform, including the establishment of a state insurance fund, granting factory workers the right to organize, the extension of education to girls and women, the construction of a national rail network, the establishment of major banks, the reduction of tariffs and the expansion of economic life. He systematically asserted the power of the state over that of the Roman Catholic Church. In the process, he watched over the transformation of France into an increasingly prosperous, integrated, largescale capitalist society. The Second Empire’s profound contradictions nurtured a deeply cynical society, one which stirred the arts to respond. Many today recall the period as much for its famous artists — such as Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet and Camille Pissarro, and writers, including Alexander Dumas, fils, Gustave Flaubert, Charles Baudelaire and Émile Zola — as for imperial folly and controlling state regulation. Theatrical and musical life
