On the Belle Époque

This book was received as an ARC by the publisher on NetGalley.

Dominique Kalifa’s The Belle Époque: A Cultural History, Paris and Beyond is not at all what I expected it to be. As such, it’s best that I start off this preface by saying what this book is not. This is not an overview of the Belle Epoque (1890ish-1914, in traditional terms), nor is it a cultural history of the years at hand. Instead, Kalifa’s work fits better into the literature on historical memory. Kalifa’s questions are not: what happened during the Belle Epoque, how did those events occur, and why did they occur when they did? Instead, Kalifa is asking: How did the “Belle Epoque” emerge as a coherent historical era, and how did the terms of that historical era change over time?

Kalifa ultimately finds that the “Belle Epoque” as a coherent concept for fin-de-siècle Paris did not exist until the summer of 1940, just after France fell to German armies. This is not to say that people did not use the term “Belle Epoque” prior, nor that the years of the Belle Epoque were like those after the First World War, especially the 1920s. However, the “Belle Epoque” was instead framed as the “good old days” by middle-aged and elderly French citizens. By being framed as an experience in personal terms, the turbulent politics of the time fell to the wayside and were supplanted by memories of rapid technological advancement, cultural boldness, and high society. Interestingly, it appears that World War II had to happen for the idea of the Belle Epoque to take root, as it was heavily advertised to German soldiers and occupying authorities as something for them to take pleasure in. While many of the most collaborationist entertainers faced punishment after Liberation in 1944, many of their ideas about the early 20th century continued to hold sway.

The formalization of the Belle Epoque in France’s public memory also brought professional and cultural attention to the period. Increasing numbers of historians began to work on the scholarship of the Belle Epoque in the 1950s and 1960s, and the postwar years saw a surge in the number of films that take place in the early 20th century. At the same time, there was a surge of memoirs by public figures that dwelled on the period and the publication of numerous postcard albums with nostalgic writings. As such, the so-called “Trente Glorieuses,” or the years between the end of World War II and the end of Georges Pompidou’s administration experienced the most stable, glorified conception of the Belle Epoque.

One notable thing about ideas about the Belle Epoque until the mid-1970s was that it was a fundamentally Parisian affair. However, the landscape of French historical scholarship changed in the 1970s and 1980s, with increasing numbers of studies emphasizing events and processes that took place outside of the capital. While many of these examined provincial cities, others looked at small towns or whole provinces as units of analysis. In doing so, historians developed a better idea of the “Belle Epoque” throughout the Hexagon. Moreover, historians also took the time to look at the “dark side” of the Belle Epoque, including alcoholism, crime, a pervasive sense of anxiety, and more. Our understanding shifted further in the 1990s and 2000s with the “globalization” of the Belle Epoque, to the point where the “Belle Epoque” is no longer a uniquely French phenomenon. It is now common to speak of “Belle Epoque Austria,” for instance, and the Belle Epoque is frequently elided with the Gilded Age in the United States and the Victorian years in the United Kingdom.

Ultimately, Kalifa’s text is an academic work that seeks to speak with other scholarly texts. Although Kalifa does offer some language that suggests he wants this to be available for a wider audience, I’m not convinced that a non-French audience will find the work nearly as useful or interesting as the French themselves (or perhaps Belgians, who seem to commence the “Belle Epoque” in 1885, with the founding of the Congo Free State—yikes). Moreover, the rapid-fire discussion of films, works of literature, music, and other cultural phenomena from years past make the text a bit more inaccessible for those unfamiliar with those artifacts.

That being said, Kalifa’s book is undeniably fascinating for those interested in both French historical memory and the Belle Epoque itself, especially graduate students.