rather partakes of the nature of “importations.” We are no more English on account of them than we are Chinese because we all drink tea.
Of all European nations, France is the on to which we come nearest. Besides its republican form of government—the directness of its history, the unity of its actions, the sharpness that marks its internal development, are all characteristics that find their parallel her best, and vice versa. In all essentials the study of modern French history, particularly when sketched by such a master hand as Marx’, is the most valuable one for the acquisition of that historic, social and biologic insight that our country stands particularly in need of, and that will be inestimable during the approaching critical days.
For the assistance of those who, unfamiliar with the history of France, may be confused by some of the terms used by Marx, the following explanations may prove aidful:
On the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9th), the post-revolutionary development of affairs in France enabled the first Napoleon to take a step that led with inevitable certainty to the imperial throne. The circumstance that fifty and odd years later similar events aided his nephew, Louis Bonaparte, to take a similar step with a similar result, gives the name to this work—“The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.”
As to the other terms and allusions that occur, the following sketch will suffice:
Upon the overthrow of the first Napoleon came the restoration of the Bourbon throne (Louis XVIII, succeeded by Charles X). In July, 1830, an uprising of the upper tier of the bourgeoisie, or capitalist class—the aristocracy of finance—overthrew the Bourbon throne, or landed aristocracy, and set up the throne of Orleans, a younger branch of the house of Bourbon, with Louis Philippe as king. From the month in which this revolution occurred, Louis Philippe’s monarchy is called the