Jules Ferry

Born Apr. 5, 1832, at St. Dié; died Mar. 17, 1893, in Paris. French political and state figure. Lawyer and publicist.

Ferry was one of the leaders of the republican opposition in the corps législatif in 1869 and 1870. After the September revolution of 1870, he became a member and secretary of the Government of National Defense, prefect of the department of the Seine, and, in November 1870, mayor of Paris. He led the suppression of the January 1871 uprising in Paris. At the time of the Paris Commune, Ferry fled to Versailles. Between 1879 and 1883, with brief interruptions, he held the post of minister of education. He was minister of foreign affairs from 1883 to 1885 and premier from 1880 to 1881 and from 1883 to 1885. Ferry was instrumental in the passage of the laws on free and compulsory elementary education in 1881 and 1882 and on the elimination of religion from the curricula of state schools in 1882.

The policy of colonial expansion practiced by Ferry’s government resulted in the seizure of Tunisia in 1881, the beginning of the conquest of Madagascar and the valleys of the Congo and Niger rivers, and the wars of aggression against Vietnam in 1883 and 1884, which led to the Sino-French War of 1884–85.