The term belle époque– the literal translation from French is “Beautiful Era- was coined to describe the period from the end of the Franco-Prussian War (1871) to the start of World War 1 (1914). An era characterized by cultural and artistic vitality, new technology and scientific progress, peace, optimism and prosperity – a golden age.
The term loosely equates to the phrase “Gilded Age” (a term coined in 1873 by Mark Twain in The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today) often used to describe the same historical period in the United States. The era was, in fact a time of prosperity all across Europe and the West. The British Empire, for example, extended its domination in the late 19th century to include more than one fourth of the landmass and population of the earth. While Britain remembers the time period as an age of imperial expansionism, the Gilded Age for Americans and Germans meant first and foremost technological advancement and economic progress.
In France, the historical memory of the era is defined more so by cultural and artistic innovations. Especially the French aristocracy and the growing French newly rich elite spent the belle époque in a pursuit of beauty, luxury and culture. This was the era of the Lafayette department store, the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Opéra Garnier,Moulin Rouge and Paris Casino. The Bohemian lifestyle of the Parisian elite was fueled by champagne and spent at Maxim’s restaurant, in the cabarets of Montmartre or the French Riviera.
Belle époque and art
In art, Pablo Picasso and his friend Georges Braque tried to capture the Beautiful Era with their new idea – cubism. Art Nouveau was the most popularly recognized art movement to emerge from the Belle époque period.
La belle époque was also a period of peace and prosperity, and technological progress was the moving spirit. It was the era of the machine. The industrial output of France tripled during the period. The iron, chemical and electricity industries grew, providing raw output used by the 600 different car and aviation manufactories in France. The telegraph and telephone increased the communication across the nation and the railway network expanded hugely. The Eiffel Tower, built to serve as the grand entrance to the 1889 World’s Fair became the very symbol of the spirit of industrialization that defined the age.
The French writer Charles Peguy defined the rapid progress of the period in 1913 by saying that “the world has changed more in the last 30 years than in all the time since Jesus Christ.” The Belle époque came to an end with the outbreak of World War I when the technological progress of the era was applied to the construction of destructive weapons that took the lives of more than 10 million people and reshaped the map of Europe.
In light of the destruction that followed, the phrase belle époque reflects the post-war nostalgia for the peaceful, prosperous and innocent Beautiful Era that was laid to rest with the outbreak of the Great War.
