A Social Laboratory for Modern France. The Musée Social and the Rise of the Welfare State (review)

Janet Horne’s interesting book on the rise of the welfare state in France uses the case of the creation and internal structure of, and membership to, the Musée Social in Paris. Drawing a parallel with the rise of welfare states in the United States and Britain, Horne examines the Musée Social as a typically Third Republican French answer to the increasing concern with the social question. At a time when liberalism started showing signs of internal problems even in the most stable societies like Britain, the French response to the social question had to incorporate, Horne argues, a different sort of solution that relied heavily upon the “republican” mentality of the conservative and opportunistic new government.

The origins of the Musée seem to be, Horne related to the 1889 Universal Exhibition. The Exhibition, being linked to the centennial commemoration of the French Revolution, attracted much criticism from those who believed that France was celebrating 1793, rather than 1789; the debate about the social, political and economic challenges faced by fin de siècle France was therefore heated, as competing versions of liberalism and republicanism were highlighted. The social economic exhibit in the 1889 Exhibition was the basis for the creation of the Musée Social in 1894.

The Musée was designed, Horne argues, with the idea of collective responsibility in mind; in a republican state, citizenship needed to be an active concept, with all individuals committed to reform. Unlike the nearby form of British liberalism, in France what emerged was the notion of the state as having a central and centralizing function in French society. The État Providence of the post-French Revolutionary period was reconceptualised into one where individuals were taught to take responsibility for themselves. One of its many parapolitical initiatives was the Musée Social. Placed somewhere between the invisible hand of political economists and the more visible hand of the state, the Musée encouraged beneficence and education through the new language of social rights which emerged in late nineteenth-century France.

Horne’s book does much to illustrate the concern of the French state for the social question by using the Musée Social. Arguably, she could have offered further examples. In the realms of education and colonial policy, too, one could find the state’s attitude towards the penetrating social forces which both threatened and legitimized it. Likewise, Horne could have made better use of the comparative approach with Britain or the US, which she abandons after her introduction. That said, as a case study the book is rich and interesting, and it makes an excellent addition to reading lists and bibliographies on the French Third Republic, and late nineteenth-century social and political thought.