Although it is not the purpose of these lecture notes to offer a detailed description of the development of postwar France - a more detailed account can be found at Les trente glorieuses - some brief outline of the principal changes needs to be sketched. In 1945, France was a nation happy to be liberated. However, the devastation caused by war and enemy occupation was everywhere. Industrial production was down to half of its pre-war level and agriculture had ground to a halt due to a shortage of labour and machinery. The priority for France was recovery and, indeed, France was soon on its feet with industrial output up to pre-war levels by 1947. This was largely acheived by: i) the active role of the state in industry which nationalized public utilities, airlines, banks and many other private companies like the Renault car factory and ii) the Marshall Aid Plan an American initiative which gave grants, loans and subsidies to struggling postwar nations.

France began to witness many changes in the immediate postwar period. France began to enjoy an unbroken period of economic prosperity and rising standards of living which lasted until the 1970's. In France the name given to this period of growth and prosperity was les trente glorieuses - that is to say, the thirty years between 1945 and 1975. les trente glorieuses witnessed rapid economic growth. Between 1945 and 1975 the economy grew on average by 5% per annum - a considerable economic achievement. Moreover, both industry and agriculture were undergoing a process of increasing modernization.

Les trente glorieuses also witnessed the rapid process of urbanization. Between 1946 and 1985 the population grew from 40.3 million to 55 million, 69% of whom were now living in towns or cities compared with 51% before the war. (Price: 1993 p.273). In 1945 housing conditions in the cities were little different from those of the nineteenth century. The housing stock was old - most of it nineteenth-century - and lacking modern amenities like bathrooms, kitchens and running water. In 1954 more than a third of all households lacked running water and only 17.5% had a either a bath or a shower (Price: 1993 p.292). Overcrowding was a major problem however. As late as 1962 in fact, a census classified one flat in four as overcrowded and recorded that 60% of all housing stock predated 1914. Housing stock was not only in poor condition but it was also in high demand. Increasing numbers of Frenchmen and women were moving from the country to the city and, just as important, increasing numbers of Frenchmen and women were deciding to have children. The rising birth rate exacerbated the already serious problem of overcrowding.

Massive investment in France's housing infrastructure took place in the 1950s and 1960s to address the nation's needs. From 1954 onwards, new building projects began to be realized, often supplanting as well as complementing existing housing stock. At its peak, some 400,000 properties - modern, sanitized, standardized and suburban - were created each year. One striking example of the council estates created after 1954 was Sarcelles situated near Le Bourget airport. Interestingly enough, it had a population of over 40,000 yet had neither secondary school nor cultural centre. It created a new kind of psychological depression or new-town blues that rapidly acquired its own name: Sarcellitis.

New patterns of consumption and leisure activities began to emerge too as a newly affluent working-class enjoyed a higher standard of living than ever before. Although disparities in levels of income remained significant, there was, on average, a 6% increase in people's real incomes. The higher incomes and increased spending power of postwar France, and in particular, of the 1950s and 1960s, was created by economic growth and rising productivity. This newly prosperous working-class was anxious to enjoy the possessions and lifestyle hitherto afforded only by the middle-class and the wealthy. A number of consumer durables came to symbolise this new age of prosperity and consumer aspiration: the refrigerator, the washing machine, the television and the car. By the end of the 1950's, for instance, 7.5% of French families owned a refrigerator, 10% a washing machine, 26% a television and 21% a car (Price: 1993 p.292). Frenchmen and women enjoyed longer holidays: in little over a decade the average annual holiday had increased from three weeks in 1956 to four weeks in 1969.

The kind of transformations that were taking place in France in the thirty years following the war sound, from my brief overview, fairly positive. Indeed, any dry, purely economic overview is likely to sound positive, to give the misleading impression that the France of the postwar years was building a brave new world that brought universal benefits to its citizens. Rochefort's Les Petits Enfants du siècle challenges this rosy picture with an altogether more disturbing analysis of the human consequences of France's modernization.

In these lecture notes, I want to take a look in detail at three main areas of France's postwar modernization and their social consequences:

i) France's birth control policy and its implications for women

ii) the growth of the consumer society and its effects on human relationships

iii) the growth of the grandes cités and their effect on social life and, of course, the environment