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.




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.




The Soldiers of the French Revolution


Book Description

In this work Alan Forrest brings together some of the recent research on the Revolutionary army that has been undertaken on both sides of the Atlantic by younger historians, many of whom look to the influential work of Braudel for a model. Forrest places the armies of the Revolution in a broader social and political context by presenting the effects of war and militarization on French society and government in the Revolutionary period. Revolutionary idealists thought of the French soldier as a willing volunteer sacrificing himself for the principles of the Revolution; Forrest examines the convergence of these ideals with the ordinary, and often dreadful, experience of protracted warfare that the soldier endured.




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.




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.




Understanding the French Revolution


Book Description

Seventeen fascinating essays on many aspects of the French Revolution. Soboul was chair of the History of the French Revolution at the Sorbonne for many years until his death in 1982. Maps. Glossary. Notes. Brief biography of the author.