French History Advance Access originally published online on April 26, 2006
French History 2006 20(3):333-351; doi:10.1093/fh/crl002
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The Six Fevrier 1934 and the ‘Survival’ of the French Republic
* Brian Jenkins is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of French at the University of Leeds. Email: b.j.jenkins{at}leeds.ac.uk
The Paris riots of the six février 1934 are remembered chiefly as the event that provided the initial spark and the eventual rationale for the anti-fascist Popular Front. However, most French historians have tended to downplay the importance of the riots themselves, arguing that the Republic was not under serious threat, and that the Left at the time greatly exaggerated the danger. Indeed, the fact that the regime ‘survived’ these events has often been cited as proof of its resilience, of France’s deep-rooted ‘democratic political culture’, and its inbuilt ‘immunity’ to fascism. This historiographical review argues that the standard interpretation of the six février is deeply flawed, especially in its tendency to deduce the intentions of the actors from the outcome of the events. The six février constituted a serious challenge to the regime, and created a dangerously fluid situation in which a variety of ‘outcomes’ became possible. It should be analysed not as a discrete and temporally circumscribed event but as a key moment in an ongoing process of political radicalization on the French Right.