Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

In the spring of 1871, the citizens of Europe's second largest city rose up and proclaimed the Paris commune. For eight extraordinary weeks,

the French capital defied the national government that had been forced to decamp to Versailles

and adopted a series of progressive policies ranging from the abolition of nightwork in bakeries

to the toppling of contested monuments.

But what exactly was the commune? How did this revolutionary government function?

And why was it crushed with such figure?

Historian David A. Schaefer speaks to Danny Bird to answer listener questions on this extraordinary moment in French history.

Before we get into the events of the spring of 1871, can you take us back a bit? What were the deeper forces and tensions building in France, especially in Paris, that laid the groundwork for the commune?

So dating back, I mean, it depends on how far back we want to go.

There had been a revolutionary tradition, which in some respects laid the groundwork for the

commune.

The whole idea that the French Revolution had been an incomplete project, that it was the

filial duty of 19th century Republicans and revolutionaries to finish that job.

So that was part of it. In addition

that there was, of course, the industrialization of France, which was changing work and causing all

sorts of tensions in terms of deskilling of labor and whatnot. Other things that had happened in

between were revolutions before the commune. There was the revolution of 1830, which definitively

overthrew the Bourbon dynasty. There was the revolution of 1830, which definitively overthrew the Bourbon dynasty.

There was the 1848, February 1848 revolution, which brought on the Second Republic and, you know, led to a lot of

disappointments for people who were on the barricades then, and disappointments in terms of what it led to,

which was first the presidency and then the empire of Louis Bonaparte.

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