Georges Ernest Boulanger

Georges Ernest Boulanger

Georges Ernest Jean-Marie Boulanger (April 29, 1837 – September 30, 1891) was a French general and politician who seemed at the apogee of his popularity in January 1889 to pose the threat of a coup d'état and the establishment of a dictatorship. With his base of support in working districts of Paris and other cities, he promoted an aggressive nationalism aimed against Germany. Until recently it was considered a proto-fascist right-wing movement. However scholars in recent decades have argued that the Boulangist movement more often represented elements of the radical Left rather than the extreme Right. As Jacques Néré says, "Boulangism was first and foremost a popular movement of the extreme left." Irvine says he had some royalist support but that, "Boulangism is better understood as the coalescence of the fragmented forces of the Left." This interpretation is part of a 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.