The module examines the founding first decade of the Fifth Republic by focusing principally, though not exclusively, on the personality and political ideas of Charles de Gaulle.

It begins by examining his emergence as the providential leader of the Resistance, to the frustrations of the Liberation and his thwarted plans for the constitutional renaissance of France, through the Fourth Republic and the wilderness years to his return in 1958, before turning to focus on the new regime and tracing the political history of the Fifth Republic between 1958 and 1969: the period Pierre Viansson-Ponté christened ‘la République gaullienne’.

The main, though by no means exclusive axes of enquiry will be the constitutional mutation of the regime and the political narrative in the period.

Suitable for study at: undergraduate level 3