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108-552: Rail transport in Lebanon began in the 1890s as French projects under the Ottoman Empire but largely ceased in the 1970s owing to the country's civil war . The last remaining routes ended for economic reasons in the 1990s. At its peak Lebanon had about 408 kilometres (254 mi) of railway. Beirut and Damascus were first connected by telegraph in 1861 and by a macadam road in 1863. Syrian railways connecting

216-716: A branch to Haifa opened in 1906. The HRR was built to a 1.05-meter gauge to match the Beirut–Damascus Railway and absorbed both the former British concession and the DHP's line south from Damascus.) Wheat from the Hauran —high- protein semolina used in pasta—was intended to be the mainstay of the railway's income, along with the Muslim pilgrimage trade during the Hajj . The entry of American , Indian , and Australian wheat into

324-510: A coup d'état and the establishment of a dictatorship. With his base of support in the working districts of Paris and other cities, plus rural traditionalist Catholics and royalists, he promoted an aggressive nationalism aimed against Germany. The elections of September 1889 marked a decisive defeat for the Boulangists. They were defeated by the changes in the electoral laws that prevented Boulanger from running in multiple constituencies; by

432-579: A meter gauge but ended with a 1,050 mm ( 3 ft  5 + 11 ⁄ 32  in ) gauge , along with expensive Abt rack sections to deal with the Mount Lebanon range. It ran through the Dar al-Beida Pass, with the summit at Beidar (37 km or 23 mi from Beirut) 1,487 m or 4,879 ft above sea level . The railway completed its port at Beirut in December 1892. In 1893,

540-425: A French credit merchant, had served up to three million customers and was affiliated with La Samaritaine , a large French department store established in 1870 by a former Bon Marché executive. The French gloried in the national prestige brought by the great Parisian stores. The great writer Émile Zola (1840–1902) set his novel Au Bonheur des Dames (1882–83) in the typical department store. Zola represented it as

648-707: A Syrian, by the French Société ottomane des libanais nord et sud de Beyrouth . By 1898, it had only laid 19 km (12 mi) of track and the DHP's concession was emended to permit a branch line to Tripoli . This was eventually extended northward to reconnect with the Aleppo Railway at Homs , beginning service in 1911. During the First World War , however, its track was removed for use elsewhere. A separate 1,050 mm ( 3 ft  5 + 11 ⁄ 32  in )-gauge coastal railway,

756-522: A constitutional coup d'état, which he denied. The October elections again brought a Republican majority to the Chamber of Deputies, reiterating public opinion. The Republicans would go on to gain a majority in the Senate by January 1879, establishing dominance in both houses and effectively ending the potential for a monarchist restoration. De MacMahon himself resigned on 30 January 1879 to be succeeded by

864-433: A consumer version of the public square. It educated workers to approach shopping as an exciting social activity, not just a routine exercise in obtaining necessities, just as the bourgeoisie did at the famous department stores in the central city. Like the bourgeois stores, it helped transform consumption from a business transaction into a direct relationship between consumer and sought-after goods. Its advertisements promised

972-416: A few allies. Consequently, the change of governments could be seen as little more than a series of ministerial reshuffles, with many individuals carrying forward from one government to the next, often in the same posts. The Dreyfus affair was a major political scandal that convulsed France from 1894 until its resolution in 1906, and then had reverberations for decades more. The conduct of the affair has become

1080-519: A few crowns were kept, their precious gems replaced by coloured glass. In 1889, the Republic was rocked by a sudden political crisis precipitated by General Georges Boulanger . An enormously popular general, he won a series of elections in which he would resign his seat in the Chamber of Deputies and run again in another district. At the apogee of his popularity in January 1889, he posed the threat of

1188-414: A guarantee from the government of $ 4320 per mile on the 200-mile Aleppo Railway All the same, the company was never very profitable: it was at perpetual risk of bankruptcy; shares traded at 550  Fr in 1891 and only 468  Fr in 1909; and dividends were minuscule: 4.40  Fr in 1902 and 6.31  Fr in 1909. The line suffered a serious accident at Aley on 12 April 1904. Aley had grown with

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1296-518: A hostile manner toward the State ('Nobilissima Gallorum Gens' ). In 1892, he issued an encyclical advising French Catholics to rally to the Republic and defend the Church by participating in republican politics ('Au milieu des sollicitudes' ). The Liberal Action was founded in 1901 by Jacques Piou and Albert de Mun , former monarchists who switched to republicanism at the request of Pope Leo XIII . From

1404-536: A matter of months to complete, but as of 2014, Maalouf was still waiting for the green light from the Lebanese government. According to a study funded by the European Investment Bank , a railway line connecting Beirut to Tripoli would cost $ 3 billion to build, while a freight railway from Tripoli to Homs would cost much less. However, efforts to revive Lebanon's railway system have been stymied by

1512-476: A ministry under the President of the council ( prime minister ), who was nominally answerable to both the President of the Republic and the legislature. Throughout the 1870s, the issue of whether a monarchy should replace or oversee the republic dominated public debate. The elections of 1876 demonstrated strong public support for the increasingly anti-monarchist republican movement. A decisive Republican majority

1620-462: A modern and universal symbol of injustice. It remains one of the most striking examples of a complex miscarriage of justice in which a central role was played by the press and public opinion. At issue was blatant anti-Semitism as practised by the French Army and defended by conservatives and Catholic traditionalists against secular centre-left, left and republican forces, including most Jews. In

1728-608: A month at the Furn el Shebbak stockyards as late as 2002, but service was not resumed. Only a very short length of the Syrian Homs - Tartus line crosses the border into Lebanon. This happens because the railway was built before this border was defined. While today in Syria, all 1,435 mm ( 4 ft  8 + 1 ⁄ 2  in ) network and trains are operated by CFS ( Chemins de Fer Syriens ). Agatha Christie wrote

1836-567: A national pension plan. Unlike Germany or Britain, the programs were much smaller – for example, pensions were a voluntary plan. Historian Timothy Smith finds French fears of national public assistance programs were grounded in a widespread disdain for the English Poor Law . Tuberculosis was the most dreaded disease of the day, especially striking young people in their twenties. Germany set up vigorous measures of public hygiene and public sanatoria, but France let private physicians handle

1944-505: A new French government. French territories occupied by Prussia at the time did not participate. The resulting conservative National Assembly elected Adolphe Thiers head of a provisional government, ("head of the executive branch of the Republic pending a decision on the institutions of France"). The new government negotiated a peace settlement with the newly proclaimed German Empire : the Treaty of Frankfurt signed on 10 May 1871. To prompt

2052-523: A new seat of government at Versailles due to the encirclement of Paris by Prussian forces. New representatives were elected in February of that year, constituting the government which would come to evolve into the Third Republic. These representatives – predominantly conservative republicans – enacted a series of legislation which prompted resistance and outcry from radical and leftist elements of

2160-502: A newspaper would blackmail a business by threatening to publish unfavorable information unless the business immediately started advertising in the paper. Foreign governments, especially Russia and Turkey, secretly paid the press hundreds of thousands of francs a year to guarantee favourable coverage of the bonds it was selling in Paris. When the real news was bad about Russia, as during its 1905 Revolution or during its war with Japan, it raised

2268-524: A number of proposals for reviving the Lebanese railway system, but as yet, none have come to fruition. One such planned revival is being led by Elias Maalouf, founder of the Lebanese NGO , Train Train. Maalouf is planning to relaunch the line between the coastal cities of Byblos and Batroun , to show the feasibility of having trains running again. The project, with a budget of £430,000, should take only

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2376-520: A series of republican presidents in the 1880s gradually quashed prospects of a monarchical restoration. The Third Republic established many French colonial possessions , including French Indochina , French Madagascar , French Polynesia , and large territories in West Africa during the Scramble for Africa , all of them acquired during the last two decades of the 19th century. The early years of

2484-421: A symbol of the new technology that was both improving society and devouring it. The novel describes merchandising, management techniques, marketing, and consumerism. The Grands Magasins Dufayel was a huge department store with inexpensive prices built in 1890 in the northern part of Paris, where it reached a very large new customer base in the working class . In a neighbourhood with few public spaces, it provided

2592-570: Is part of an emerging consensus that France's radical right was formed in part during the Dreyfus era by men who had been Boulangist partisans of the radical left a decade earlier. The Panama scandals of 1892, regarded as the largest financial fraud of the 19th century, involved a failed attempt to build the Panama Canal . Plagued by disease, death, inefficiency, and widespread corruption, and its troubles covered up by bribed French officials,

2700-624: The communards had disastrous consequences for the labour movement . The French legislative election of 1871 , held in the aftermath when the regime of Napoleon III collapsed, resulted in a monarchist majority in the French National Assembly that favoured a peace agreement with Prussia. Planning to restore the monarchy, the " Legitimists " in the National Assembly supported the candidacy of Henri, Comte de Chambord , alias "Henry V," grandson of King Charles X ,

2808-513: The Action française , the movement declined from 1908, when it lost the support of Rome. Nevertheless, the ALP remained until 1914 the most important party on the right. Al-Midan The name Midan is derived from Midan Al Hassa ( Arabic : ميدان الحصى ) or the field of gravel. The neighbourhood was located between two sub Barada streams and when it rained heavily, the land gravel deposits filled

2916-621: The Lebanese Tramway ( Tramway Libanais ) began service in 1895 and reached Maameltein in 1908. During the First World War , the Ottoman Empire seized control of all foreign-owned railways in the country, including the DHP. The entire Hauran line was disassembled to extend the Palestine Railways toward the Suez Canal . Following the First World War , France held the mandate for Syria and Lebanon under

3024-532: The Anti-Lebanon Mountains was built to standard gauge . As a result, traffic between the two lines had to be transferred at Riyaq. The line opened as far as Baalbek on 19 June 1902 and began service to Aleppo on 4 October 1906. The Baghdad Railway reached Aleppo in 1912, connecting the line with Istanbul . The concession for the Tripoli – Saida line was purchased from its original holder,

3132-776: The Bosphorus at Istanbul , but it never operated for civilian use. Instead, the British maintained it under the control of their military as late as February 1948, when the Jewish insurgency in Palestine destroyed the bridges near the tunnels at Ras al-Nakura . An earlier attempt by Haganah forces to attack the HBT in two places near Nahal Kziv during the Night of the Bridges in 1946

3240-835: The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, which the French Third Republic continued to wage after the fall of Emperor Napoleon III in 1870. Social upheaval and the Paris Commune preceded the final defeat. The German Empire , proclaimed by the invaders in Palace of Versailles , annexed the French regions of Alsace (keeping the Territoire de Belfort ) and Lorraine (the northeastern part, i.e. present-day department of Moselle ). The early governments of

3348-676: The French Revolution . On the right stood conservative France, rooted in the peasantry, the Catholic Church , and the army. In spite of France's sharply divided electorate and persistent attempts to overthrow it, the Third Republic endured for 70 years, which makes it the longest-lasting system of government in France since the collapse of the Ancien Régime in 1789. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 resulted in

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3456-573: The Jesuits and Assumptionists —indoctrinated anti-republicanism into children. Determined to root this out, republicans insisted they needed control of the schools for France to achieve economic and militaristic progress. (Republicans felt one of the primary reasons for the German victory in 1870 was their superior education system.) The early anti-Catholic laws were largely the work of republican Jules Ferry in 1882. Religious instruction in all schools

3564-468: The Orléanist Albert de Broglie to the office. The Chamber of Deputies declared the appointment illegitimate, exceeding the president's powers, and refused to cooperate with either de MacMahon or de Broglie. De MacMahon then dissolved the Chamber and called for a new general election to be held the following October. He was subsequently accused by Republicans and their sympathizers of attempting

3672-475: The Panama Canal Company went bankrupt. Its stock became worthless, and ordinary investors lost close to a billion francs. France lagged behind Bismarckian Germany, as well as Great Britain and Ireland, in developing a welfare state with public health, unemployment insurance and national old age pension plans. There was an accident insurance law for workers in 1898, and in 1910, France created

3780-553: The Syrian Civil War . In 2011, Dr. Maroun Kassab, an architect and assistant professor, proposed a coastal metro system that can capitalize on the existing lands owned by the ministry and that can run underground from Tyr to Tripoli. In February 2022 media reported a proposed Spanish grant for the reestablishment of Lebanese railways. French Third Republic The French Third Republic ( French : Troisième République , sometimes written as La III République )

3888-539: The anti-clerical middle class, who saw the Church's alliance with the monarchists as a political threat to republicanism, and a threat to the modern spirit of progress. The republicans detested the Church for its political and class affiliations; for them, the Church represented the Ancien Régime , a time in French history most republicans hoped was long behind them. The republicans were strengthened by Protestant and Jewish support. Numerous laws were passed to weaken

3996-470: The 1.05-m DHP system was still working but still using steam power, uncompetitive and loss making. The line between Beirut and Damascus was closed in 1976. Commuter service between Dora and Byblos ceased in 1993 and the last regular rail operations in Lebanon—trains carrying cement from Chekka to Beirut—ended in 1997. The Polish diesel locomotive class SP45 for this line continued to be run once

4104-426: The 1920s and 1930s. In terms of population however, on the eve of World War II, France and its colonial possessions totaled only 150 million inhabitants, compared with 330 million for British India alone. Adolphe Thiers called republicanism in the 1870s "the form of government that divides France least"; however, politics under the Third Republic were sharply polarized. On the left stood reformist France, heir to

4212-700: The 20th century were dominated by the Democratic Republican Alliance , which was originally conceived as a centre-left political alliance, but over time became the main centre-right party. The period from the start of World War I to the late 1930s featured sharply polarized politics, between the Democratic Republican Alliance and the Radicals . The government fell less than a year after the outbreak of World War II, when Nazi forces occupied much of France , and

4320-675: The 65 mi (105 km) Damascus–Muzeirib Railway . The Hauran around Muzeirib is Syria's breadbasket and the town also served as the point of departure for pilgrim caravans during the Hajj . The two lines quickly merged as the Société des Chemins de fer Ottomans économiques de Beyrouth–Damas–Hauran or Société des chemins de fer ottomans economiques de Beyrouth–Havran , with its headquarters in Constantinople ( Istanbul ) and an office in Paris . It originally planned to use

4428-545: The Agence Havas (now Agence France-Presse ), a telegraphic news service with a network of reporters and contracts with Reuters to provide world service. The staid old papers retained their loyal clientele because of their concentration on serious political issues. While papers usually gave false circulation figures, Le Petit Provençal in 1913 probably had a daily circulation of about 100,000 and Le Petit Meridional had about 70,000. Advertising only filled 20% or so of

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4536-531: The Catholic Church. It favoured a progressive income tax, economic equality, expanded educational opportunities and cooperatives in domestic policy. In foreign policy, it favoured a strong League of Nations after the war, and the maintenance of peace through compulsory arbitration, controlled disarmament, economic sanctions, and perhaps an international military force. Followers of Léon Gambetta , such as Raymond Poincaré , who would become President of

4644-574: The Catholic Church. In 1879, priests were excluded from the administrative committees of hospitals and boards of charity; in 1880, new measures were directed against the religious congregations; from 1880 to 1890 came the substitution of lay women for nuns in many hospitals; in 1882, the Ferry school laws were passed. Napoleon's Concordat of 1801 continued in operation, but in 1881, the government cut off salaries to priests it disliked. Republicans feared that religious orders in control of schools—especially

4752-468: The Church's perspective, its mission was to express the political ideals and new social doctrines embodied in Leo's 1891 encyclical " Rerum Novarum ". Action libérale was the parliamentary group from which the ALP political party emerged, adding the word populaire ("popular") to signify this expansion. Membership was open to everyone, not just Catholics. It sought to gather all the "honest people" and to be

4860-542: The Council in the 1920s, created the Democratic Republican Alliance (ARD), which became the main center-right party after World War I. Governing coalitions collapsed with regularity, rarely lasting more than a few months, as radicals, socialists, liberals, conservatives, republicans and monarchists all fought for control. Some historians argue that the collapses were not important because they reflected minor changes in coalitions of many parties that routinely lost and gained

4968-516: The European market amid the continuing Long Depression , however, undercut that trade while the railway was still under construction. Damascene traders had thought the Beirut railway would allow them to export their grain more cheaply; instead, as early as the 1894 harvest, the rail flooded the market, collapsing prices and margins . Completion of the line to the coast did not improve matters, since

5076-403: The French Third Republic considered re-establishing the monarchy, but disagreement as to the nature of that monarchy and the rightful occupant of the throne could not be resolved. Consequently, the French Third Republic, originally envisioned as a provisional government , instead became the permanent form of government of France. The French Constitutional Laws of 1875 defined the composition of

5184-537: The French occupation, the people of Midan revolted aggressively against the French and thus suffered heavy bombing during the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925–1927. Their actions were driven in part by the extensive commercial links connecting the grain merchants of the neighborhood with Druze notables in the Hawran, among whom the revolt had begun. Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar , the founders of

5292-403: The French parliament as liberal and secular republicans gained a legislative majority during his presidency. In February 1875, a series of parliamentary acts established the constitutional laws of the new republic . At its head was a President of the Republic. A two-chamber parliament consisting of a directly elected Chamber of Deputies and an indirectly elected Senate was created, along with

5400-595: The Interministerial Press Commission to supervise the press closely. A separate agency imposed tight censorship that led to blank spaces where news reports or editorials were disallowed. The dailies sometimes were limited to only two pages instead of the usual four, leading one satirical paper to try to report the war news in the same spirit: Regional newspapers flourished after 1900. However the Parisian newspapers were largely stagnant after

5508-688: The Prussians to leave France, the government passed a variety of financial laws, such as the controversial Law of Maturities , to pay reparations. In Paris, resentment built against the government from late March through May 1871. Paris workers and National Guards revolted and took power as the Paris Commune , which maintained a radical left-wing regime for two months until the Thiers government bloodily suppressed it in May 1871. The ensuing repression of

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5616-533: The Revolution (most famously including the tricolore ) , to restore unity between the monarchy and the nation. Compromise on this was impossible, Chambord believed, if the nation were to be made whole again. The general population, however, was unwilling to abandon the Tricolour flag. Monarchists therefore resigned themselves to delay the monarchy until the death of the ageing, childless Chambord, then to offer

5724-640: The Third Republic ruled during the Siege of Paris (19 September 1870 – 28 January 1871). As Paris was cut off from the rest of unoccupied France, the Minister of War Léon Gambetta succeeded in leaving Paris in a hot air balloon , and established the provisional republican government in the city of Tours on the Loire river. After the French surrender in January 1871, the provisional Government of National Defence disbanded, and national elections were called to elect

5832-400: The Third Republic. It consisted of a Chamber of Deputies and a Senate to form the legislative branch of government and a president to serve as head of state. Calls for the re-establishment of the monarchy dominated the tenures of the first two presidents, Adolphe Thiers and Patrice de MacMahon , but growing support for the republican form of government among the French populace and

5940-759: The Tripoli line to Beirut. The service was operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits and was discontinued in 1972. In 1933, the Syrian Lines to Baghdad ( Lignes Syriennes de Baghdad ) arranged the Baghdad Railway as a subsidiary of the DHP. The railways saw significant use in the Second World War . The British originally planned to connect their standard-gauge network from Haifa to Riyaq but gave up

6048-413: The Turkish, Syrian and Iraqi state railways. Up until the late 1980s, a twice-weekly Istanbul-Baghdad service was maintained, with weekly through seating cars from Istanbul to Aleppo. For political reasons, the through service to Baghdad was suspended and the main train curtailed at Gaziantep, but the weekly through seat cars Istanbul-Aleppo were maintained. In 2001, the Aleppo portion of the Toros Express

6156-412: The ante to millions. During the World War, newspapers became more of a propaganda agency on behalf of the war effort and avoided critical commentary. They seldom reported the achievements of the Allies, crediting all the good news to the French army. In a sentence, the newspapers were not independent champions of the truth, but secretly paid advertisements for banking. The World War ended a golden era for

6264-443: The auspices of the League of Nations . The DHP's ownership of its track was reinstated and it was also given control of the Hejaz Railway . Competition between the French port at Beirut and the British one at Haifa led to tariff wars and, in 1921, land swaps in Palestine for Syrian railway rights. From around 1930, the Aleppo Railway formed a stage on the Taurus Express ' s southern route to Cairo . An alternate route ran along

6372-464: The budding Third Republic due to the perceived restoration of conservative policies and values following the suppression of the Commune. De MacMahon, his popularity bolstered by his victory over the Commune, was later elected President of the Republic in May 1873 and would hold the office until January 1879. A staunch Catholic conservative with Legitimist sympathies and a noted mistrust of secularists, de MacMahon grew to be increasingly at odds with

6480-440: The childless Comte de Chambord as king, with the Comte de Paris as his heir. This was the expected line of succession for the Comte de Chambord based on France's traditional rule of agnatic primogeniture if the renunciation of the Spanish Bourbons in the Peace of Utrecht was recognised. Consequently, in 1871 the throne was offered to the Comte de Chambord. Chambord believed the restored monarchy had to eliminate all traces of

6588-427: The company received a concession for a line from Damascus to Birecik in Anatolia , which prompted its name to be changed to the Damascus–Hama Railway or Damascus–Hama and Extensions ( Société Ottomane du Chemins de fer de Damas-Hamah et Prolongements , DHP ; Turkish : Şam–Hama ve Temdidi Osmanlı Demiryolu Şirketi ). The network is also known as the Syrian Railways in English. The initial concession

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6696-446: The country's network was reorganized as the Lebanese Railway ( Chemin de fer de l'État Libanais , CEL ). The Lebanese Civil War caused considerable damage to the rail network, however, and services gradually ceased. During the civil war, damage was caused by militias who blew up the tracks, Israeli army shelling and Syrian security forces digging up parts of the track to sell as scrap metal in Pakistan. A 1974 article revealed that

6804-430: The defeat of France and the overthrow of Emperor Napoleon III and his Second French Empire . After Napoleon's capture by the Prussians at the Battle of Sedan (1 September 1870), Parisian deputies led by Léon Gambetta established the Government of National Defence as a provisional government on 4 September 1870. The deputies then selected General Louis-Jules Trochu to serve as its president. This first government of

6912-430: The deficient health and housing legislation of 1850. However, the reformers met opposition from bureaucrats, politicians, and physicians. Because it was so threatening to so many interests, the proposal was debated and postponed for 20 years before becoming law in 1902. Implementation finally came when the government realized that contagious diseases had a national security impact in weakening military recruits, and keeping

7020-445: The director and publisher of the anti-Semitic newspaper La Libre Parole . The new trial resulted in another conviction and a 10-year sentence, but Dreyfus was given a pardon and set free. Eventually all the accusations against him were demonstrated to be baseless, and in 1906, Dreyfus was exonerated and re-instated as a major in the French Army. From 1894 to 1906, the scandal divided France deeply and lastingly into two opposing camps:

7128-403: The dry guillotine), where he spent almost five years. Two years later, evidence came to light that identified a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy as the real spy. After high-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence, a military court unanimously acquitted Esterhazy. In response, the Army brought up additional charges against Dreyfus based on false documents. Word of

7236-421: The end, it recruited mostly among the liberal-Catholics ( Jacques Piou ) and the Social Catholics ( Albert de Mun ). The ALP was drawn into battle from its very beginnings (its first steps coincided with the beginning of the Combes ministry and its anticlerical combat policy), as religious matters were at the heart of its preoccupations. It defended the Church in the name of liberty and common law. Fiercely fought by

7344-405: The end, the latter triumphed. The affair began in November 1894 with the conviction for treason of Captain Alfred Dreyfus , a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent . He was sentenced to life imprisonment for communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris and sent to the penal colony at Devil's Island in French Guiana (nicknamed la guillotine sèche ,

7452-476: The exciting complex interactions with the newest and most fashionable merchandise and upscale customers. Throughout the lifetime of the Third Republic (1870–1940), there were battles over the status of the Catholic Church in France among the republicans, monarchists and the authoritarians (such as the Napoleonists). The French clergy and bishops were closely associated with the monarchists and many of its hierarchy were from noble families. Republicans were based in

7560-418: The first part of her novel Murder on the Orient Express during her stay in room 203 in Baron Hotel in Aleppo . The novel doesn't start in Istanbul, or on the Orient Express. It opens on the platform at Aleppo, next to the two blue-and-gold Wagons-Lits sleeping cars of the Taurus Express bound for Istanbul. The Taurus Express was inaugurated in February 1930 by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits,

7668-408: The government at Versailles sought to maintain the tenuous post-war stability which it had established. In May, the regular French Armed Forces , under the command of Patrice de MacMahon and the Versailles government, marched on Paris and succeeded in dismantling the Commune during what would become known as The Bloody Week . The term ordre moral ("moral order") subsequently came to be applied to

7776-472: The government's aggressive opposition; and by the absence of the general himself, in self-imposed exile with his mistress. The fall of Boulanger severely undermined the conservative and royalist elements within France; they would not recover until 1940. Revisionist scholars have argued that the Boulangist movement more often represented elements of the radical left rather than the extreme right. Their work

7884-568: The last king from the senior line of the Bourbon dynasty . The Orléanists supported Louis-Philippe, Comte de Paris a grandson of King Louis Philippe I , who replaced his cousin Charles X in 1830. The Bonapartists lost legitimacy due to the defeat of Napoléon III and were unable to advance the candidacy of any member of the Bonaparte family . Legitimists and Orléanists eventually agreed on

7992-469: The lead in attacking Dreyfus as a traitor and stirring up anti-Semitism. After Dreyfus was pardoned, the Radical government closed down the entire Assumptionist order and its newspaper in 1900. Banks secretly paid certain newspapers to promote particular financial interests and hide or cover up misbehaviour. They also took payments for favourable notices in news articles of commercial products. Sometimes,

8100-419: The melting pot sought by Leo XIII where Catholics and moderate Republicans would unite to support a policy of tolerance and social progress. Its motto summarized its program: "Liberty for all; equality before the law; better conditions for the workers." However, the "old republicans" were few, and it did not manage to regroup all Catholics, as it was shunned by monarchists, Christian democrats, and Integrists . In

8208-642: The military court's attempts to frame Dreyfus began to spread, chiefly owing to the polemic J'accuse , a vehement open letter published on the liberal newspaper L'Aurore in January 1898 by the notable writer Émile Zola . Activists put pressure on the government to re-open the case. In 1899, Dreyfus was returned to France for another trial. The intense political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus (now called "Dreyfusards"), such as Anatole France , Henri Poincaré and Georges Clemenceau , and those who condemned him (the anti-Dreyfusards), such as Édouard Drumont ,

8316-555: The moderate Republican Jules Grévy . He promised that he would not use his presidential power of dissolution, and therefore lost his control over the legislature, effectively creating a parliamentary system that would be maintained until the end of the Third Republic. Following the 16 May crisis in 1877, Legitimists were pushed out of power, and the Republic was finally governed by Moderate Republicans (pejoratively labelled "Opportunist Republicans" by Radical Republicans ) who supported moderate social and political changes to nurture

8424-639: The monarchists and clerical elements on the one hand, and the Socialists on the other. Many members had been recruited by the Freemasons. The Radicals were split between activists who called for state intervention to achieve economic and social equality and conservatives whose first priority was stability. The workers' demands for strikes threatened such stability and pushed many Radicals toward conservatism. It opposed women's suffrage for fear that women would vote for its opponents or for candidates endorsed by

8532-547: The new regime, such as a purge of the civil service . The Jules Ferry laws making public education free, mandatory, and secular ( laїque ), were voted in 1881 and 1882, one of the first signs of the expanding civic powers of the Republic. From that time onward, the Catholic clergy lost control of public education. To discourage the monarchists, the French Crown Jewels were broken up and sold in 1885. Only

8640-431: The opportunity to participate in the newest, most fashionable consumerism at reasonable cost. The latest technology was featured, such as cinemas and exhibits of inventions like X-ray machines (that could be used to fit shoes) and the gramophone . Increasingly after 1870, the stores' work force became feminized , opening up prestigious job opportunities for young women. Despite the low pay and long hours, they enjoyed

8748-424: The pages. The Roman Catholic Assumptionist order revolutionized pressure group media by its national newspaper La Croix . It vigorously advocated for traditional Catholicism while at the same time innovating with the most modern technology and distribution systems, with regional editions tailored to local taste. Secularists and Republicans recognized the newspaper as their greatest enemy, especially when it took

8856-486: The population growth rate well below Germany's. There is no evidence to suggest than French life expectancy was lower than that of Germany. The most important party of the early 20th century in France was the Radical Party , founded in 1901 as the "Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party" ("Parti républicain, radical et radical-socialiste"). It was classically liberal in political orientation and opposed

8964-452: The press. Their younger staff members were drafted, and male replacements could not be found (female journalists were not considered suitable). Rail transportation was rationed and less paper and ink came in, and fewer copies could be shipped out. Inflation raised the price of newsprint, which was always in short supply. The cover price went up, circulation fell and many of the 242 dailies published outside Paris closed down. The government set up

9072-645: The primary port of the northern Levant . In the event, the Jaffa line was never extended towards Damascus and the Haifa line ran out of money having completed just 8 km (5.0 mi) or 21 mi (34 km) of track. Around the same time, the French Damascus Tramways ( Compagnie des tramways de Damas et voies ferrées économiques de Syrie ) or Belgian Syrian Railway ( Chemin de fer en Syrie ) purchased another native's concession for

9180-410: The pro-Army "anti-Dreyfusards" composed of conservatives, Catholic traditionalists and monarchists who generally lost the initiative to the anti-clerical, pro-republican "Dreyfusards", with strong support from intellectuals and teachers. It embittered French politics and facilitated the increasing influence of radical politicians on both sides of the political spectrum. The democratic political structure

9288-543: The problem. The French medical profession guarded its prerogatives, and public health activists were not as well organized or as influential as in Germany, Britain or the United States. For example, there was a long battle over a public health law which began in the 1880s as a campaign to reorganize the nation's health services, to require the registration of infectious diseases, to mandate quarantines, and to improve

9396-415: The project in 1941 as too difficult. Instead, engineers from South Africa and Australia completed a standard-gauge line along the coast between Haifa and Beirut by 24 August 1942 and expanded this to Tripoli Railway Station by 18 December 1942. This Haifa–Beirut–Tripoli Railway (HBT) was the last link connecting the European and North African standard-gauge rail networks, apart from the ferry across

9504-479: The railroad and functioned as a summer resort for the people of Beirut. Part of the locomotive exploded on the 7% incline east of town and, not thinking to apply the brakes, the train was allowed to fly back through the station. Two cars were completely destroyed upon the rocks on the other side, killing 8 and seriously injuring 21. The Aleppo Railway via the Beqaa Valley between the Mount Lebanon range and

9612-534: The region. Hasan Beyhum Efendi received a concession to construct a tramway between Beirut and Damascus in 1891. Beyhum sold the concession later that year to the French Beirut–Damascus Tramway ( French : Compagnie de la voie ferrée économique de Beyrouth–Damas ) or Lebanon Railway , which was anxious to forestall two mooted British lines, one from Jaffa and another from Haifa , either of which would have undercut Beirut's status as

9720-591: The republican movement. In Paris, a series of public altercations broke out between the Versailles-aligned Parisian government and the city's radical socialists. The radicals ultimately rejected the authority of Versailles, responding with the foundation of the Paris Commune in March. The principles underpinning the Commune were viewed as morally degenerate by French conservatives at large while

9828-527: The restrictive practices that had been typical for a century. High-speed rotary Hoe presses , introduced in the 1860s, facilitated quick turnaround time and cheaper publication. New types of popular newspapers, especially Le Petit Journal , reached an audience more interested in diverse entertainment and gossip than hard news. It captured a quarter of the Parisian market and forced the rest to lower their prices. The main dailies employed their own journalists who competed for news flashes. All newspapers relied upon

9936-418: The roles of railroads, republican schools, and universal military conscription . He based his findings on school records, migration patterns, military service documents and economic trends. Weber argued that until 1900 or so a sense of French nationhood was weak in the provinces. Weber then looked at how the policies of the Third Republic created a sense of French nationality in rural areas. Weber's scholarship

10044-640: The same company that operated the Orient Express and Simplon Orient Express, as a means of extending their services beyond Istanbul to the East. It ran several times a week from Istanbul Haydarpaşa station to Aleppo and Baghdad, with a weekly through sleeper to Tripoli in Lebanon. After World War II, the Wagons-Lits company gradually withdrew and operation of the Taurus Express was taken over by

10152-627: The streams and consequently, the neighbourhood. Al-Midan started during the Mamluk rule over Damascus . It took its final form about 400 years ago during the Ottoman empire and has not experienced any major changes since. It is considered the Southern Gate of Damascus and was created as a trading center by the people of Damascus for them to be closer to the people of the Hauran and to improve trade and economic relations between them. During

10260-477: The throne to his more liberal heir, the Comte de Paris. A "temporary" republican government was therefore established. Chambord lived on until 1883, but by that time, enthusiasm for a monarchy had faded, and the Comte de Paris was never offered the French throne. Following the French surrender to Prussia in January 1871, concluding the Franco-Prussian War , the transitional Government of National Defence established

10368-524: The two cities (90 mi or 140 km over the crest of the Mount Lebanon range) or another port were planned as early as 1871 but were not enacted. In 1889, the Ammiyya Revolt broke out among the Druze and other Syrian farmers. The Ottoman response to the insurrection included a number of railway concessions—quickly sold to foreign interests—to improve the development and centralized control of

10476-469: The war. The major postwar success story was Paris Soir , which lacked any political agenda and was dedicated to providing a mix of sensational reporting to aid circulation and serious articles to build prestige. By 1939, its circulation was over 1.7 million, double that of its nearest rival the tabloid Le Petit Parisien . In addition to its daily paper, Paris Soir sponsored a highly successful women's magazine Marie-Claire . Another magazine, Match ,

10584-501: The world market was trading at still lower prices and the premium once commanded by Hauran wheat—which, being hand-harvested, might include pebbles or weeds—was now lost to machine-reaped grain from the United States. It was not until 1908 that export values again reached the levels of the 1880s. The railway itself was one of the best-managed in the Ottoman Empire: It had total receipts of $ 434,000 for 1900 and in 1906 received

10692-487: Was elected to the Chamber of Deputies while the monarchist majority in the Senate was maintained by only one seat. President de MacMahon responded in May 1877, attempting to quell the Republicans' rising popularity and limit their political influence through a series of actions known as le seize Mai . On 16 May 1877, de MacMahon forced the resignation of Moderate Republican prime minister Jules Simon and appointed

10800-491: Was forbidden, and religious orders were forbidden to teach in them. Funds were appropriated from religious schools to build more state schools. Later in the century, other laws passed by Ferry's successors further weakened the Church's position in French society. Civil marriage became compulsory, divorce was introduced, and chaplains were removed from the army. When Leo XIII became pope in 1878, he tried to calm Church-State relations. In 1884, he told French bishops not to act in

10908-516: Was later emended to link the two lines at Riyaq instead of Damascus. Service from Damascus south to Muzeirib began in July 1894 (in time for that year's harvest) and to Beirut on 3 August 1895. The trip from the coast to Damascus initially took 9 hours and terminated at three different stations: Baramke Station , Qanawat Station , and Midan Station . Between 1900 and 1908, the separate Hejaz Railway (HRR) expanded from Damascus south to Medina , with

11016-500: Was modelled on the photojournalism of the American magazine Life. France was a rural nation, and the peasant farmer was the typical French citizen. In his seminal book Peasants into Frenchmen (1976), historian Eugen Weber traced the modernization of French villages and argued that rural France went from backward and isolated to modern with a sense of national identity during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He emphasized

11124-466: Was replaced by the rival governments of Charles de Gaulle 's Free France ( La France libre ) and Philippe Pétain 's French State ( L'État français ). During the 19th and 20th centuries, the French colonial empire was the second largest colonial empire in the world only behind the British Empire ; it extended over 13,500,000 km (5,200,000 sq mi) of land at its height in

11232-464: Was supported by the proliferation of politicized newspapers. The circulation of the daily press in Paris went from 1 million in 1870 to 5 million in 1910; it later reached 6 million in 1939. Advertising grew rapidly, providing a steady financial basis for publishing, but it did not cover all of the costs involved and had to be supplemented by secret subsidies from commercial interests that wanted favourable reporting. A new liberal press law of 1881 abandoned

11340-641: Was the system of government adopted in France from 4 September 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War , until 10 July 1940, after the Fall of France during World War II led to the formation of the Vichy government . The French Third Republic was a parliamentary republic . The early days of the French Third Republic were dominated by political disruption caused by

11448-634: Was unsuccessful. Nowadays the only portion of the HBT still in operation is the Coastal Railway between Nahariya and Haifa in northern Israel. General Georges Catroux proclaimed the independence of Lebanon in 1941 but the French did not actually permit local rule until 1943. In 1946, the Lebanese government bought the Naqoura –Tripoli Railway for £5 000 000 , yielding its management to DHP. Syria nationalized its own railways in 1956 as CFS ( Chemins de Fer Syriens ). In 1960 or 1961,

11556-1034: Was upgraded to a Syrian sleeping-car replacing the two basic Turkish seat cars. Trains functioning in Syria: Networks: Israel's national railway operator, Israel Railways , has planned a rail link from Lebanon to its own network, branching off the Haifa-Karmiel railway in Ahihud . These plans are unlikely to materialize given the absence of diplomatic relations between the two countries . Trains functioning in Israel: Networks: 798 672-2 > A 10450 998 143-2 > B 10450 998 771-0 > C 10450 798 789-4 > A 10451 998 032-7 > B 10451 998 876-7 > C 10451 798 707-6 > A 10452 998 010-3 > B 10452 998 672-0 > C 10452 798 708-4 > A 10453 998 153-1 > B 10453 998 862-7 > C 10453 There have been

11664-408: Was widely praised, but was criticized by some who argued that a sense of Frenchness existed in the provinces before 1870. Aristide Boucicaut founded Le Bon Marché in Paris in 1838, and by 1852 it offered a wide variety of goods in "departments inside one building." Goods were sold at fixed prices, with guarantees that allowed exchanges and refunds. By the end of the 19th century, Georges Dufayel ,

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