Finance and welfare: the impact of two world wars on domestic policy in France

In the traditional historiography of twentieth-century France the period after the Second World War is usually contrasted favourably with that after 1918. After 1945, new men with new ideas, born out of the shock of defeat in 1940 and resistance to Nazi occupation, laid the basis for an economic and social democracy. The welfare state was created, women were given full voting rights, and French security, in both economic and territorial respects, was partially guaranteed by integrating West Germany into a new supranational institutional structure in Western Europe. 1945 was to mark the beginning of the '30 glorious years' of peace and prosperity enjoyed by an expanding population in France. In sharp contrast, the years after 1918 are characterized as a period dominated by France's failed attempts to restore its status as a great power. Policies based on making the German taxpayer finance France's restoration are blamed for contributing to the great depression after 1929 and the rise of Hitler. However, as more research is carried out into the social and economic reconstruction of France after both world wars, it is becoming clear that the basis of what was to become the welfare state after 1945 was laid in the aftermath of the First World War. On the other hand, new reforms adopted in 1945 which did not build on interwar policies, such as those designed to give workers a voice in decision-making at the workplace, proved to be short-lived

During pregnancy, recreational drug-using women stop taking ecstasy (3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine) and reduce alcohol consumption but continue to smoke tobacco and cannabis

While recreational drug use in UK women is prevalent, to date there is little prospective data on patterns of drug use in recreational drug-using women immediately before and during pregnancy. A total of 121 participants from a wide range of backgrounds were recruited to take part in the longitudinal Development and Infancy Study (DAISY) study of prenatal drug use and outcomes. Eighty-six of the women were interviewed prospectively while pregnant and/or soon after their infant was born. Participants reported on use immediately before and during pregnancy and on use over their lifetime. Levels of lifetime drug use of the women recruited were high, with women reporting having used at least four different illegal drugs over their lifetime. Most users of cocaine, 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine (MDMA) and other stimulants stopped using these by the second trimester and levels of use were low. However, in pregnancy, 64% of the sample continued to use alcohol, 46% tobacco and 48% cannabis. While the level of alcohol use reduced substantially, average tobacco and cannabis levels tended to be sustained at pre-pregnancy levels even into the third trimester (50 cigarettes and/or 11 joints per week). In sum, while the use of ‘party drugs’ and alcohol seems to reduce, levels of tobacco and cannabis use are likely to be sustained throughout pregnancy. The data provide polydrug profiles that can form the basis for the development of more realistic animal models

Les consequences de l'isolationnisme francais dans les annees 1940 et 1950

In the period immediately following the Second World War, the disastrous effects of the isolationism of 1930-1945 were seldom denied in the western world. Politicians, economists, journalists proclaimed that the development of international commerce is one of the conditions for a nation's prosperity (Jean-Marcel Jeanneney, Pour un nouveau protectionnisme, Seuil, 1978, p.17). In France, most economists judged that the slump of the 1930s was due in great part to the protectionism instituted after the 1928 crisis that it was protection first by import taxes, then by exchange controls and restrictions, which caused a fall not only in imports but also in exports and in national production. Only a minority of such people considered protection as the consequence, not the cause, of the French crisis, rendered necessary by the obstinate refusal of the French to devalue the franc, as sterling was devalued in 1931 and the dollar in 1933. The accepted view was to have its effects on the developments of the following twenty years