Charles Maurras

Charles Maurras was a French writer and nationalist political thinker who led Action Française and advocated monarchism, integral nationalism, and an authoritarian state.

Action Française: A French monarchist and nationalist movement founded in 1899 that Maurras led and shaped. Maurras made this movement the chief vehicle for his political program.
Integral nationalism: A nationalist doctrine that subordinates individual and class interests to the supposedly organic unity of the nation. Maurras’s political theory centered on this doctrine of national unity.
Dreyfus affair: A political crisis in France, beginning in 1894, over the wrongful conviction of Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus for treason. The affair sharpened the nationalist and antisemitic politics that Maurras helped organize.
Vichy France: The authoritarian French regime that governed the unoccupied zone and collaborated with Germany from 1940 to 1944. Maurras welcomed the regime’s national revolution, though its leaders did not simply enact his program.
Léon Daudet: A French writer, polemicist, and politician who became a leading figure in Action Française. Daudet helped turn Maurras’s movement into a force in French public life.
Orléanist monarchy: A French monarchist tradition supporting the House of Orléans and constitutional monarchy. Action Française backed the Orléanist claimant as the prospective king of France.
French Third Republic: The republican regime that governed France from 1870 until the German invasion of 1940. Maurras built his monarchist opposition against this republic’s institutions.
French collaborationism: Political and administrative cooperation with Nazi Germany during its occupation of France in World War II. Maurras’s support for Vichy places his legacy within debates over French collaboration.
Henri Vaugeois: A French teacher and nationalist activist who co-founded Action Française. Vaugeois helped establish the organization Maurras later dominated.
Decentralization: The transfer of authority from a central government to regional or local institutions. Maurras proposed regional liberties as a remedy for centralized republican administration.

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