alone and consequently condemned to the boos of the tribunes.”^31
Participants and observers increasingly acknowledged the spatial div-
ision of the National Assembly, and this arrangement solidified as an
important political convention.
For most of the nineteenth century, however, the distinction between
the left and the right remained confined to one institution, in one
country. It pertained solely to the life of France’s National Assembly,
and belonged to the technical vocabulary of parliamentary affairs.
When universal male suffrage was adopted in 1848, French politicians
and electors spoke instead of a sharp opposition between the repub-
licans and the conservatives, or the reds and the whites, the two camps
historically in favor of or opposed to the Revolution.^32 The cleavage
was more or less the same as the one between the left and the right in
the Assembly, but the spatial metaphor had not become common-
place, let alone universal. The left–right division was not, yet, a
ubiquitous social fact.
The turning point came in the 1890s, with the rise of socialism.
Until then, the parliamentary left was defined primarily by its support
for the republic, for democracy, and for laicism, against a right still
attached to the monarchy, to limited enfranchisement, and to state
support for religious institutions. With the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury, however, a new left emerged, which was not only republican but
also socialist. Representative of an increasingly organized and mobil-
ized working class and tied to an international movement, the socialists
challenged the republicans, who clung to alaissez-faireattitude in
matters of social and economic development. After 1893, socialist
parties made electoral gains and gradually took over the left of the
National Assembly, pushing the republicans to the right.^33 On both
sides, then, there were elected representatives who believed in the
republic and claimed to be on the left. The old republicans had become
“men from the centre that hard times forced to sit on the right.”^34
Politicians were struggling to redefine parliamentary labels, in a way
that could highlight differences between opponents as well as similarities
(^31) Baron de Gauville, quoted in Gauchet, “La droite et la gauche,” p. 398 (our
32 translation).
33 Gauchet, “La droite et la gauche,” pp. 399, 409, and 412–13.
Gilles Candar, “La gauche en Re ́publique (1871–1899),” in Becker and Candar
(eds.),Histoire des gauches en France. Volume 1, pp. 117–22.
(^34) Joseph Barthe ́lemy, quoted inibid., p. 117.
A clash over equality 15