Pre-World War II

L'Humanité was founded in 1904^[2][3] by Jean Jaurès, leader of the French Socialist Party (PSF), which merged the following year in the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO).^[1][4] Jaurès also edited the paper until his assassination on 31 July 1914.^[5]

When the SFIO split at the 1920 Tours Congress, the Communists took control of L'Humanité, which became the official organ of the French Communist Party (PCF), despite its socialist origins, while the SFIO retained control of the minor daily Le Populaire.^[6] The PCF has published it ever since and owns 40% of the paper with the remaining shares held by staff, readers and "friends" of the paper. The paper is also sustained by the annual Fête de l'Humanité, held in the working class suburbs of Paris, at Le Bourget, near Aubervilliers, and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the country.

The fortunes of L'Humanité have fluctuated with those of the PCF. During the 1920s, when the PCF was politically isolated, it was kept in existence only by donations from Party members.

Louis Aragon started to write for L'Humanité in 1933, in the "news in brief" section. He later led Les Lettres françaises, the paper's weekly literary supplement. With the formation of the Popular Front in 1936, L'Humanité's circulation and status increased, and many leading French intellectuals wrote for it. L'Humanité was banned during World War II but published clandestinely until liberation of Paris from German occupation.

After World War II

The paper's status was highest in the years after World War II, when the PCF was the dominant party of the French left and L'Humanité enjoyed a large circulation. Since the 1980s, however, the PCF has been in decline, mostly due to the rise of the Socialist Party, which took over large sections of PCF support, and circulation and economic viability of L'Humanité have declined as well.

Until 1990 the PCF and L'Humanité received regular subsidies from the Soviet Union. According to the French authors Victor Loupan and Pierre Lorrain (fr), L'Humanité received free newsprint from Soviet sources.

Post-Soviet Union

The fall of the Soviet Union and the continued decline of the PCF's electoral base produced a crisis for L'Humanité. Its circulation, more than 500,000 after the war, slumped to under 70,000. In 2001, after a decade of financial decline, the PCF sold 20 per cent of the paper to a group of private investors led by the TV channel TF1 (part of the Bouygues group) and including Hachette (Lagardère Group). TF1 said its motive was "maintenance of media diversity." Despite the irony of a communist newspaper being rescued by private capital, some of which supported right-wing politics, L'Humanité director Patrick Le Hyaric described the sale as "a matter of life or death."

Since 2001, there has been speculation that L'Humanité would cease as a daily newspaper. However, in contrast to most French newspapers, its publication has actually since increased to about 75,000.

After 2001

In 2006, the paper created a weekly edition, L'Humanité Dimanche. The same year L'Humanité had a circulation of 52,800 copies.^[1] In 2008, it sold its headquarters due to financial problems and called for donations. More than €2 million had been donated by the end of 2008. In 2020, L'Humanité had a circulation of 39,522 copies.^[7]