May 1968 shakes de Gaulle's government
Student protests and a general strike bring France to a standstill
Quick facts
- Location
- Paris and nationwide, France
- Key people
- Charles de Gaulle
- Scale
- About 10 million workers on strike
What happened
After months of tension at the Nanterre campus of the University of Paris, the administration closed the university on 2 May 1968, and students at the Sorbonne demonstrated the next day in protest, triggering violent clashes with police in the Latin Quarter that hospitalized hundreds by 10 May. The unrest spread far beyond students when major labor unions joined in, and by mid-May roughly ten million workers across France had joined a general strike, occupying factories and paralyzing the economy. President de Gaulle, after briefly leaving the country to confirm military backing, addressed the nation by radio on 30 May, dissolved the National Assembly, and called new elections, and the strikes gradually wound down as his Gaullist supporters rallied.
Why it matters
Though de Gaulle's party won a strong majority in the subsequent elections, the crisis exposed deep social and generational discontent that outlasted the immediate unrest, and de Gaulle himself resigned the presidency less than a year later after losing a 1969 referendum, ending his direct rule of the republic he had founded.
How we know
Contemporary news coverage of the strikes and street fighting, combined with later retrospective histories drawing on participant interviews, document the scale and progression of the unrest across French society.
Sources
- HISTORY. Students protest at the Sorbonne in Paris, kicking off month of unrest · Reputable sourcehistory.com · The domain "history.com" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Smithsonian Magazine. Fifty Years Later, France Is Still Debating the Legacy of Its 1968 Protests · Reputable sourcesmithsonianmag.com · The domain "smithsonianmag.com" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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