Poll:Who was more liberal in the 1890s France, Germany, or the UK

Who was more liberal during the 1890s:UK, France, O

  • UK

    Votes: 28 34.6%
  • France

    Votes: 44 54.3%
  • Germany

    Votes: 9 11.1%

  • Total voters
    81
Tell that to Alfred Dreyfus.

And Britain was no better -- look at what happened to Oscar Wilde for proof of that. By process of elimination, the clear choice's Germany, as warlike as they might have been.

I'll tell that to Émile Zola, at least contemporaries were aware of the problem. Or could there be a Dreyfuss Affair elsewhere?

To throw a monkey wrench into this, read the Wikipedia page on Arthur de gobineau.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...MIWTAM&usg=AFQjCNHFmrtUS3AdWbuDcRdUxcQaTBciiQ
Strangely enough, it was a Frenchmen who basically made the idea that the Germanic people's are the master race. He had vicious racism, so it's possible that while the French government wasn't racist, it's possible that the French people were.

19th century is the age of scientific racism; if you're going exclude each country that has a bigot with scientific ideas, there'd be no one left.
 
Jews: Jews were equal before the law in France since 1791 (also, Jews in the colonies could become French citizens, while Muslims couldn't), in Great Britain since 1858, in Germany since 1869

Feminism: I don't see real differences there between the three countries - all were equally conservative on women's rights

Voting rights:
- France had universal male suffrage for citizens over 21 since 1851 (Napoleon III's coup d'état)
- Germany had universal male suffrage for citizens over 25 since 1867 (Bismarck established the universal suffrage to weaken the liberals, but accidentally strengthened the socialist; since a large proportion of the German population was young, only around 20% of the population had the right to vote)
- Britain: universal male suffrage since 1918

Labour laws:
- Britain: unions legal since 1871
- Germany had very respressive labour laws since 1878 (Sozialistengesetze against socialist parties and unions), repealed in 1890
- France: unions legal since 1884 (loi Waldeck-Rousseau)

Welfare: Germany had a strong socialist movement, and Bismarck established a very social welfare system.

Homosexuality was a crime in both Britain and Germany (§ 175), whereas France had even an equal age of consent since 1791.

Interesting list of firsts. However, in the case of women suffrage, Germany (1919) and UK (1928) and nearly every other Western country were more advanced than France (1945).

Even though it is not the 1890s, the poll is difficult to vote on. It really depends on what kind of liberalism you hold dear.
 
I'd say French society was very polarised, and had one Big Enemy to unite it and the IIIrd Republic together. The Dreyfus affair was a consequence of that. After all, Dreyfus was from Alsace, which in the French people's mind made him more likely to betray. Which was the real issue, not him being a Jew. This polarisation shows in how long it took for France to get a political system bringing a degree of stability : until 1958. One cannot work with a government changing every six months.
 
Despite all the nastiness going on in French society, I would still argue that politically and socially, France was the most 'liberal' (in the sense of: free) of the three. The intellectual climate of fin-de-siècle Europe was not nice anywhere, but in France, the people we consider the 'good guys' today enjoyed a level of protection for their rights they did not have in Germany or Britain. Emile Zola could have been a prominent (though persecuted) political philosopher in Germany and an acclaimed author in Britain - in France, he was an institution. Feminists, homosexuals, anarchists, nationalists from a plethora of not-yet-extant countries and practitioners of arts that had audiences come to fisticuffs or faint in the stalls went to Paris. It was the kind of place that Berlin became after 1918.
 
Jews: Jews were equal before the law in France since 1791 (also, Jews in the colonies could become French citizens, while Muslims couldn't),

It was possible for Muslims in the colonies to become citizens, but it involved a complicated process by which they would renounce Islamic law, and only a small number agreed.
 
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