The first half of the nineteenth century saw the beginnings of the changes that would eventually transform France from a rural, agricultural society to an urban, industrial one. The rural population peaked in the 1830s; after that date population growth shifted to the cities. New forms of wealth derived from industry and commerce displaced landownership. Compared with most other European countries, France experienced these changes slowly: on the eve of the 1914 war, 40 percent of the population still lived in the countryside, versus 6 percent in England. Thus it may be misleading to talk about an ''industrial revolution'' in France. Historians have actively discussed causes for the French lag, ranging from resource disadvantages (in coal, for example) to a conservative business culture to the slow population growth, which limited consumer demand and the available labor force. But change did occur, as even artisanal sectors became more commercial. And by the 1830s and 1840s, the introduction of power-driven machinery and the building of the first French railroads were making an impact. There was an acute consciousness that the country faced a critical ''social problem'' in its major cities. Middle-class writers described the poverty, overcrowding, disease, and social breakdown that characterized slum neighborhoods in Paris and in provincial manufacturing centers such as Lille and Lyon. Early socialist theorists--Henri de Saint-Simon and his followers, Charles Fourier, Etienne Cabet, and Louis Blanc--identified capitalism and individualism as the causes of these ills and offered various prescriptions for healing them. The Saint-Simonians were especially sensitive to the fact that the growth of industry depended heavily on the exploitation of female labor, and that overcoming the challenges of modernity required reexamining established gender roles.

In 1830, after several years of economic distress and political confrontation, opposition to the conservative Restoration regime set up after Napoleon's defeat boiled over into another revolution. Although the urban crowd played a major role in the insurrection, rural protests were minor compared with those in 1789, and middle-class liberals were able to keep control of the country's institutions. Proclaimed as a ''citizen king,'' Louis-Philippe, duc d'Orleans, a relative of the deposed Restoration king, took the throne. His period of rule, from 1830 to 1848, was categorized even at the time as a ''bourgeois monarchy.'' This reflected in part the king's deliberate policy of adopting the lifestyle of a wealthy bourgeois in contrast with his predecessors' efforts to revive aristocratic court practices. The label also reflected, however, the sense that the new regime was dominated by bourgeois interests. The right to vote was extended, giving more members of the middle classes a voice, and government policies such as subsidies for railroads promoted industrialization.

Although a social order dominated by bourgeois values was firmly in place after 1830, political stability remained elusive. A severe economic crisis in 1845-1847 alienated much of the population from Louis-Philippe's regime, which was overthrown in February 1848. As in 1830, the Paris crowd played the leading role in the movement, and the provisional government that took power made important gestures to the working classes, including the creation of the Luxembourg Commission to hold public hearings on their problems. The February revolution set off an unprecedented outburst of popular demonstrations and political activity; socialist and feminist groups actively spread radical ideas. The entire male population was allowed to vote in elections for a constituent assembly. Peasant voters generally backed conservative candidates, however, and the Assembly took a confrontational attitude toward urban workers. The result was the bloody June Days uprising in 1848 in the working-class neighborhoods of Paris, put down at a cost of perhaps some two thousand lives. Its defeat strengthened the conservatives' hold on the assembly, which later passed the Falloux law allowing religious education in public schools for the first time and an electoral law disenfranchising much of the urban population. . .

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