Abstract
World War I has been seen as the revenge of the ‘Ancien Regime'. Arno Mayer argued there was a ‘persistence of the old regime' because pre-industrial elites in France, Germany, Russia and Britain successfully resisted change. The argument is a restatement of Wehler's Sonderweg thesis, extending it to France, Britain and Russia. Mayer argues that the First World War was the result of the ‘remobilization of Europe's anciens regimes. The pre-industrial economic interests were important. There is also the idea that the bourgeoisie failed to raise parliamentary democracy. The rise of German fascism is partly due to pre-industrials.
In France, after the Dreyfus affair, there was a new ralliement: the aristocracy decided to support the Republic and not the royalist system anymore. Poincare's election was considered as a revenge of the Ancien Regime. However, it was not the Old order. The Republic pushed back the influence of conservatism. The Dreyfus affair led to the consolidation of the Republic. The Chamber of deputies was dominated by legal bourgeois, not by the aristocracy (only 8% of deputies were landers). The working-class and the low middle-class were underrepresented. Nobility still existed in Franche-Comté and in the South of the Massif Central. Nevertheless, the power of nobility has gone in France. There was an over representation of the legal bourgeoisie (not the upper class) in terms of economic, political and social powers.
