The End of the Beginning: 1968–1969

Abstract

One book on the events of 1968 was entitled The Beginning of the End.¹ Such works interpreted the student riots of that year as marking the breakdown of the bourgeois order. In fact the events in France did not shake either the capitalist economy or the Communist party, the two main targets of the protesters. Nor did the protest shake the political regime in France; indeed, if anything, the events showed how secure the foundations of the Fifth Republic had become. The only victim of the events was Charles de Gaulle, and his eventual departure showed that the political system no longer needed to be held together by loyalty to a single heroic individual.