Founded in November 1903, the party competed with the more secular and centrist Alliance démocratique (Democratic Alliance). Later, most deputies of the Fédération républicaine and of Action libérale (which included Catholics rallied to the Republic) joined the Entente républicaine démocratique right-wing parliamentary group.[1]
After World War I, the Republican Federation participated during the 1919 legislative election within the Bloc national (National Block)'s electoral lists. The same year, the Action libérale populaire (Popular Liberal Action), an alliance of Catholics who had accepted the legality of the Republican regime, entered the Republican Federation by sitting within parliamentary grouping of the Entente républicaine démocratique (Arago group).
These changes were reflected in the handover of power from the Belle Époque industrialist and conservative leader Auguste Isaac to the younger militant and academic Louis Marin in 1925. Under Marin's leadership, the Republican Federation slowly transitioned from a confederation of local political bosses into a more streamlined political party on the model created by the Republican Left at the turn of the century, becoming more hierarchisesd with the creation of youth sections while ordinary members were given more weight.
Although several members participated to the Doumergue, Flandin and Laval governments of 1934–1935, most of the party opposed itself to this cooperation with the republican centre, which seemed to vindicate the "rallying of the center" (concentration républicaine) strategy advocated by the centre-rightDemocratic Republican Alliance. Following the experience of the Bloc National first and then of the Cartel des gauches (Left-Wing Cartel) in 1924, many voices inside the party argued in favor of a strategy enforcing the unity of the right-wings instead of a centrist strategy. After the 6 February 1934 riots which toppled the second Cartel des gauches, the majority of the party chose this right-wing strategy, taking the side of the opponents to the Republic accused of being anti-patriotic.
The Republican Federation thus formed in 1937 during the Popular Front a Front de la liberté (Freedom Front) along with Jacques Doriot's fascist Parti populaire français (French Popular Party) and the small Parti républicain national et social and French Agrarian and Peasant Party (Fleurant Agricola). Although this Freedom Front was theorized by Louis Marin and the other leaders of the party as a tactic against the growing influence of Colonel François de La Rocque's French Social Party—one of the first right-wing French mass party—this union also corresponded with the ideology of the leading classes outside Paris (such as Victor Perret in the Rhône region) and of the activists opposed both to the lefts and to the centre-right parties such as the Democratic Alliance or the Popular Democrats.
This shift to the right of the party during the 1930s explain how several important pre-war figures of the party (such as Laurent Bonnevay) left it. The Republican Federation acted as the nexus between parliamentary conservatives and the anti-Republican nationalist right organized in the various far-right paramilitaries and in the ultramonarchist Action française. Party members such as Philippe Henriot or Xavier Vallat (both future collaborationists) thus served as intermediaries between the leaders of the Republican Federation and the extra-parliamentary right.
Although few important members of the Republican Federation actively engaged in collaborationism during the Vichy regime, their conservative allegiance (traditional Catholicism, anti-communism and conservative nationalism) induced most of them to accept the new regime of the Révolution nationale. However, the Republican Federation was part of one of the six member parties of the Conseil national de la Résistance (National Council of Resistance) represented by Jacques Debû-Bridel. Alongside Louis Marin, the latter tried without success to recreate the Republican Federation at the Liberation, but the party remained discredited by the passive attitude of most of its members. After 1949, the National Center of the Independents was the main political structure pursuing the Republican Federation's legacy after the failure of several structures, including the Republican Party of Liberty.
In Parliament
In the Chamber of Deputies
The Republican Federation deputies sat in the following parliamentary groups in the Chamber of Deputies:
The Republican Federation senators sieged in the ANRS group (Action nationale républicaine et sociale, National Republican and Social Action) at least until 1936.
Auguste Isaac, Lyonnesse industrialist, deputy of the Rhône department (1919–1924), Minister of Trade and Industry (1920–1921) and president of the Republican Federation until 1924[3]
Henri de Kerillis (very close, if not officially a member, of the Republican Federation)
Joseph Thierry (1857–1918), lawyer, deputy of the Bouches-du-Rhône (1898–1918), Minister of Public Works (1913), Deputy-State secretary to War (1915–1916), ambassador of France to the King of Spain (1915–1918) and second President of the Republican Federation[4]
William D. Irvine, French conservatism in the crisis : The Republican Federation of France in the 1930s, Bâton Rouge, 256p, 1975.
Jean Vavasseur-Desperriers, Culture, structures, stratégie d'une organisation de la droite parlementaire entre les deux guerre : la Fédération Républicaine de 1919 à 1940, University Lille 3, state thesis under the dir. of Yves-Marie Hilaire, 914p, 1999.
Jean Vavasseur-Desperriers, « Mise en sommeil et disparition : la Fédération républicaine de 1940 à 1946 », in Gilles Richard & Jacqueline Saincliver (dir.), La recomposition des droites à la Libération 1944-1948, 2004.
Laurent Bigorgne, « Le parcours d'une génération de ‘modérés’ : les jeunes de la Fédération Républicaine », in François Roth (dir.), Les modérés dans la vie politique française (1880–1965), 2000.
Jean Vavasseur-Desperriers, « La Fédération républicaine, Louis Marin et l'idée de paix pendant l'entre-deux-guerres », in Robert Vandenbussche a Michel (dir.), L’idée de paix en France et ses représentations au XXe siècle, 2001.
Jean Vavasseur-Desperriers, « De la présence à la distance: les milieux d'affaires et la Fédération républicaine », in Hervé Joly (dir.), Patronat, bourgeoisie, catholicisme et libéralisme. Autour du Journal d'Auguste Isaac, Larhra, 2004
Mathias Bernard, La dérive des modérés. La Fédération Républicaine du Rhône sous la Troisième République, Editions l'Harmattan, 432p, 1998.
Malcolm Anderson, Conservative politics in France, Allen and Unwen, 1974.
Jean-Noël Jeanneney, « La Fédération Républicaine », in Rémond & Bourdin (dir), La France et les francais 1938-1939, 1979.
Philippe Machefer, « L’union des droites, le PSF et le Front de la liberté, 1936–1937, RHMC, 1970.
Kevin Passmore, The Right in France from the Third Republic to Vichy., Oxford University Press, 2013.
René Rémond – Janine Bourdin, « Les forces adverses », in Renovin & Rémond (dir.), Léon Blum, chef de gouvernement 1936-1937, 1981.
René Rémond, Les droites en France, Aubier, 544p, 1982 (réed. De 1954).
Jean Vavasseur-Desperriers, « Les tentatives de regroupement des droites dans les années trente », Annales de Bretagne et des pays de l'ouest, 2002.
Bruno Béguet, Comportements politiques et structures sociales : le Parti Social Français et la Fédération Républicaine à Lyon (1936–1939), Université Lyon 2, mémoire de maîtrise sous la direction de Yves Lequin, 2 volumes, 252p, 1982.
Kevin Passmore, From liberalism to fascism. The Right in a French Province, 1928-1939, (study on the Rhône department) Cambridge university press, 333p, 1997.
