French Revolution: The Basics


Book Description

French Revolution: The Basics is an accessible and concise introduction to the history of the revolution in France. Combining a traditional narrative with documents of the era and references to contemporary imagery of the revolution, the book traces the long-and short-term causes of the French Revolution as well as its consequences up to the dissolution of the Convention and the ascendancy of Napoleon. The book is written with an explicit aim for its reader to acquire understanding of the past whilst imparting knowledge using underlying historical concepts such as evidence, continuity and change, cause and effect, significance, empathy, perspectives, and contestability. Key topics discussed within the book include: The structure of French society before 1789. The long- and short-term factors that contributed to the French Revolution. How ordinary French people, including women and slaves, participated in the revolution. What brought about the end of the ancien régime. The major reforms of the National Assembly, 1789–1791, and how they lead to the division and radicalisation of the revolution. How the alternative visions of the new society divided the revolution and what were the internal and external pressures on the revolution that contributed to its radicalisation. The forms of terror which enabled reality to triumph over the idealism. The rise of Napoleon Bonaparte as military leader and Emperor. This book is an ideal introduction for anyone wishing to learn more about this influential revolution in the shaping of modern Europe and the world.




The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction


Book Description

Beginning with a discussion of familiar images of the French Revolution, this work looks at how the ancien régime became ancien as well as examining cases in which achievement failed to match ambition.




A New World Begins


Book Description

From an award-winning historian, a “vivid” (Wall Street Journal) account of the revolution that created the modern world The French Revolution’s principles of liberty and equality still shape our ideas of a just society—even if, after more than two hundred years, their meaning is more contested than ever before. In A New World Begins, Jeremy D. Popkin offers a riveting account of the revolution that puts the reader in the thick of the debates and the violence that led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a new society. We meet Mirabeau, Robespierre, and Danton, in all their brilliance and vengefulness; we witness the failed escape and execution of Louis XVI; we see women demanding equal rights and Black slaves wresting freedom from revolutionaries who hesitated to act on their own principles; and we follow the rise of Napoleon out of the ashes of the Reign of Terror. Based on decades of scholarship, A New World Begins will stand as the definitive treatment of the French Revolution.




A Short History of the French Revolution (Subscription)


Book Description

This book attempts to introduce students to the major events that make up the story of the French Revolution and to the different ways in which historians have interpreted them. It covers the relationship between France and the United States.




Encyclopaedia Britannica


Book Description

This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.




A Concise History of the French Revolution


Book Description

"This concise introduction to the French Revolution explains the origins, development, and eventual decline of a movement that defines France to this day. Through an accessible chronological narrative, Sylvia Neely explains the complex events, conflicting groups, and rapid changes that characterized this critical period in French History. She traces the fundamental transformations in government and society that forced the French to come up with new ways of thinking about their place in the world and led to liberalism, conservatism, terrorism, and modern nationalism. All readers interested in France and revolutionary history will find this a rewarding read."--BOOK JACKET.




Becoming a Revolutionary


Book Description

Here Timothy Tackett tests some of the diverse explanations of the origins of the French Revolution by examining the psychological itineraries of the individuals who launched it--the deputies of the Estates General and the National Assembly. Based on a wide variety of sources, notably the letters and diaries of over a hundred deputies, the book assesses their collective biographies and their cultural and political experience before and after 1789. In the face of the current "revisionist" orthodoxy, it argues that members of the Third Estate differed dramatically from the Nobility in wealth, status, and culture. Virtually all deputies were familiar with some elements of the Enlightenment, yet little evidence can be found before the Revolution of a coherent oppositional "ideology" or "discourse." Far from the inexperienced ideologues depicted by the revisionists, the Third Estate deputies emerge as practical men, more attracted to law, history, and science than to abstract philosophy. Insofar as they received advance instruction in the possibility of extensive reform, it came less from reading books than from involvement in municipal and regional politics and from the actions and decrees of the monarchy itself. Before their arrival in Versailles, few deputies envisioned changes that could be construed as "Revolutionary." Such new ideas emerged primarily in the process of the Assembly itself and continued to develop, in many cases, throughout the first year of the Revolution. Originally published in 1996. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.




Sovereignty, International Law, and the French Revolution


Book Description

This book argues that the introduction of popular sovereignty as the basis for government in France facilitated a dramatic transformation in international law in the eighteenth century.




Modern France


Book Description

The French Revolution, politics and the modern nation -- French and the civilizing mission -- Paris and magnetic appeal -- France stirs up the melting pot -- France hurtles into the future.




Robespierre and the French Revolution in World History


Book Description

Traces the history of the French Revolution from the storming of the Bastille through the rise of Napoleon, highlighting the influence of revolutionary leader, Maximilien Robespierre, from his early life through his involvement in the Reign of Terror.