stylistic:style_transfer
Political consequences

The Dreyfus affair brought the confrontation between two sides of France to life. However, according to most historians, this opposition served the republican order. There was indeed a strengthening of parliamentary democracy and a failure of monarchist and reactionary forces.

The excessive violence of the nationalist parties brought together republicans in a united front, which defeated attempts to return to the old order. In the short term, progressive political forces from the elections of 1893 and confirmed in 1898 as a result of the Dreyfus affair disappeared in 1899. The shock trials of Esterhazy and Zola created a dreyfusian politics whose aim was to develop a republican consciousness and to fight against authoritarian nationalism, which expressed itself during the affair. For the uninhibited growth of populist nationalism was another major result of the event in French politics even though it did not originate from the Dreyfus affair. It grew out of the Boulanger affair, 1886–1889, and was shaped into a coherent theory by Maurice Barrès in 1892. Nationalism had its ups and downs, but managed to maintain itself as a political force under the name of Action Française, among others. On that occasion many republicans rallied to Vichy, without which the operation of the State would have been precarious, which showed the fragility of the republican institution in extreme circumstances. Upon liberation, Charles Maurras who was convicted on 25 January 1945 for acts of collaboration exclaimed at the verdict: "This is the revenge of Dreyfus!"

The other result was an intellectual mutation of socialism. Jaurès was a late Dreyfusard (January 1898) and was persuaded by revolutionary socialists. His commitment became unwavering alongside Georges Clemenceau and from 1899 under the influence of Lucien Herr. The year 1902 saw the birth of two parties: the French Socialist Party, which brought together jaurésiens; and the Socialist Party of France under the influence of Guesde and Vaillant. Both parties merged in 1905 as the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO).

In addition, 1901 saw the birth of the Republican Radical and Radical-Socialist Party, the first modern political party, conceived as an electoral machine of the republican group. It had a permanent structure and relied on networks of Dreyfusards. The creation of the French League for Human Rights was contemporaneous with the affair. It was the hub of the intellectual left and extremely active at the beginning of the century, the conscience of the humanist left.

The final consequence on the political scene at the turn of the century saw a profound renewal of political personalities with the disappearance of great republican figures beginning with Auguste Scheurer-Kestner. Those who at the end of the century could weigh heavily on the events of the affair had now disappeared giving way to new men whose ambition was to reform and correct the errors and injustices of the past.

The Dreyfus affair created difficulties and blocked the way for improved relations between France and Italy after the customs war as Italy was Europe's most Dreyfusard nation.