Abstract: | Although republicanism in France was discredited in 1815, being associated with dictatorship and terror, it provided the foundations for the political consensus of the late 1870s. Republican ideas survived through the creation of a collective ‘counter‐memory’ by a persecuted minority of republicans in the early nineteenth century; this tradition kept republicanism alive and available for later generations to adopt it more widely. This paper examines ways in which this counter‐memory was developed, from historical writings to popular customs, and how it was able to become part of the political mainstream once again. |