Liberty and Locality in Revolutionary France


Book Description

This book examines the interface between the old and the new France in the period 1760–1820. It adopts an unusual 'comparative micro-historical' approach in order to illuminate the manner in which country dwellers cut themselves loose from the congeries of local societies that made up the Ancien Régime, and attached themselves to the wider polity of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic state. The apprehensions and ambitions of six groups of villagers located in different parts of the kingdom are explored in close-up across the span of a single adult lifetime. Contrasting experiences form a large part of the analysis, but the story is ultimately one of fusion around a set of values that no individual villager could possibly have anticipated, whether in 1750 or 1789. The book is at once an institutional, a social and a political history of life in the village in an epoch of momentous change.







Common Land, Wine and the French Revolution


Book Description

Recent revisionist history has questioned the degree of social and economic change attributable to the French Revolution. Some historians have also claimed that the Revolution was primarily an urban affair with little relevance to the rural masses. This book tests these ideas by examining the Revolutionary, Napoleonic and Restoration attempts to transform the tenure of communal land in one region of southern France; the department of the Gard. By analysing the results of the legislative attempts to privatize common land, this study highlights how the Revolution's agrarian policy profoundly affected French rural society and the economy. Not only did some members of the rural community, mainly small-holding peasants, increase their land holdings, but certain sectors of agriculture were also transformed; these findings shed light on the growth in viticulture in the south of France before the monocultural revolution of the 1850s. The privatization of common land, alongside the abolition of feudalism and the transformation of judicial institutions, were key aspects of the Revolution in the countryside. This detailed study demonstrates that the legislative process was not a top-down procedure, but an interaction between a state and its citizens. It is an important contribution to the new social history of the French Revolution and will appeal to economic and social historians, as well as historical geographers.




The French Revolution and Historical Materialism


Book Description

This text reasserts the Marxist view of the French Revolution as a bourgeois and capitalist revolution. Based mainly on articles published in the journal Historical Materialism it challenges the still dominant revisionist view of the French Revolution. It serves to restore the close tie between the history of the Old Regime and the Revolution. It demonstrates that the rise of a bourgeois capitalist class has a long history dating back to the sixteenth century. Moreover, it shows that the Revolution itself played a large role in strengthening the bourgeoisie politically and economically while bringing about the unification of financial and productive capital. Indeed, it shows that the rising of the masses during the Revolution, viewed by revisionism as economically regressive, in fact helped to bring about the consolidation of capitalism.




Contesting the French Revolution


Book Description

Contesting the French Revolution provides an insightful overview of one of history’s most significant events, as well as examining the most significant historiographical debates about this period. Explores the causes, events, and consequences of the French Revolution Offers a stimulating analysis of the most controversial debates: Were the events of 1789 a social revolution or a political accident? Did they mark the rise of industrial capitalism or the birth of modern democracy? Was Napoleon Bonaparte an heir to the ideals of 1789 or a betrayer of the Revolution? Shows how historical interpretation of the French Revolution has been influenced by the changing political and social currents of the last 200 years – from the Russian Revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall – and how historical study has shifted from a political focus to social and cultural approaches in more recent years.




Enquiring History: The French Revolution


Book Description

Think more deeply and work more independently at A level History through a carefully thought-out enquiry approach from SHP. Enquiring History: It makes you think! The OFSTED report on school history suggests that the current generation of A Level students have been poorly served by exam-based textbooks which spoon-feed students while failing to enthuse them or develop deeper understandings of studying History The Schools History Project has risen to this challenge with a new series for the next generation. Enquiring History is SHP's fresh approach to Advanced Level History that aims: - To motivate and engage readers - To help readers think and gain independence as learners - To encourage enquiry, and deeper understanding of periods and the people of the past - To engage with current scholarship - To prepare A Level students for university Key features of each Student book - Clear compelling narrative - books are designed to be read cover to cover - Structured enquiries - that explore the core content and issues of each period - 'Insight' panels between enquiries provide context, overview, and extension - Full colour illustrations throughout Web-based support includes - lesson planning tools and activities for teachers - Dynamic eBooks for whole class teaching or individual student reading - Exam advice for each specification The French Revolution This title covers the turbulent history of France from 1774 to 1802 and the revolutionary events and larger than life individuals whose ideas and actions sent shock waves around Europe. Each enquiry tackles a discrete topic which together build a rounded and balanced picture of the causes, the course, the consequences, and the historiography of the revolution. As William Doyle puts it: 'There are few periods in history when so many benevolent intentions led to such unintended chaos and destruction, ...'How and why did this happen? What can we learn from it? What has the French Revolution got to say to us today? Web-based support includes - lesson planning tools and guidance for teachers available from the SHP website http://www.schoolshistoryproject.org.uk/Publishing/BooksSHP- eBooks for whole class teaching or individual student reading available from eBook retailers




The French Revolution 1787-1804


Book Description

P. M. Jones’ The French Revolution, now in its third edition, is an authoritative survey of events in France from 1787, as the power of the ancien régime began to crumble, until 1804 and the demise of the Republic. It provides a balanced and accessible account of the dramatic events of the intervening years, including the fall of the Bastille, the months of the Terror and the journey towards the creation of the First French Empire, are analysed, along with an assessment of the wider significance of the revolutionary decade. This new edition has been fully revised and updated to include new material on citizenship, gender, equality and legal reforms, and the imperial dimension of the Revolution. The historiographical debate is brought right up to date, taking into account the most recent scholarship on the Revolution. The narrative is supported by a selection of original documents which shed light on events of the period from the perspective of those who lived through it. With supplementary materials including a chronology, who’s who, glossary and guide to further reading, this book remains an invaluable resource for students of the French Revolution.




Ending the French Revolution


Book Description

"Filled with critical insights, Brown's revisionist study utilizes an impressive array of archival sources, some only recently cataloged, to support his thesis that the French Revolution survived until 1802 and the Consulate regime.... This volume should be a priority for all historians and serious students interested in modern French history. Summing Up: Essential."--Choice "What Brown has done is to put all historians of the French Revolution in his debt by the thoroughness with which he explores an important aspect of the complex and interrelated problems posed by any attempt to create a new social and moral order based on principles that could prove to be self-contradictory and were neither understood nor welcomed by a substantial proportion of the population."--English Historical Review "This is one of the most important pieces of scholarship on the French Revolution since the 1989 bicentennial."--David Bell, Johns Hopkins University For two centuries, the early years of the French Revolution have inspired countless democratic movements around the world. Yet little attention has been paid to the problems of violence, justice, and repression between the Reign of Terror and the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte. In Ending the French Revolution, Howard Brown analyzes these years to reveal the true difficulty of founding a liberal democracy in the midst of continual warfare, repeated coups d'état, and endemic civil strife. By highlighting the role played by violence and fear in generating illiberal politics, Brown speaks to the struggles facing democracy in our own age. The result is a fundamentally new understanding of the French Revolution's disappointing outcome. Howard G. Brown, Professor of History at Binghamton University, State University of New York, is the author of War, Revolution, and the Bureaucratic State: Politics and Army Administration in France, 1791-1799 and coeditor of Taking Liberties: Problems of a New Order from the French Revolution to Napoleon. Winner of the American Historical Association's 2006 Leo Gershoy Award and the University of Virginia's 2004 Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an outstanding work of scholarship in eighteenth-century studies




France 1715-1804


Book Description

Gwynne Lewis’ history opens with a full analysis of all the components of traditional France, including political and religious structures, the seigneurial system, the bourgeoisie and the poor. Part two examines the meaning and challenge of the Enlightenment, with particular reference to women and the mass of the poor. Part three concentrates upon the relationship between the shift to laissez-faire economics, popular revolts and government repression, providing the essential background to the Revolutionary decade of the 1790s. The Revolution witnessed the rise of a politicised ‘Popular Movement’ that achieved, briefly, a measure of popular democracy. War and counter-revolution blocked the move towards real democracy, strengthened the authority of the centralised state, and enhanced the credibility of bourgeois political and economic power. One of the main contentions of this work is that the failure of both monarchical and Revolutionary regimes to deal with the massive social problem of poverty played a far larger part in explaining the collapse of the Bourbons in 1789, and the failure of democracy during the 1790s, than most historians have allowed. Likewise, the importance of religion in directing the momentous events of this period has also been under-estimated.




Feudalism, venality, and revolution


Book Description

According to Alexis de Tocqueville’s influential work on the Old Regime and the French Revolution, royal centralisation had so weakened the feudal power of the nobles that their remaining privileges became glaringly intolerable to commoners. This book challenges the theory by showing that when Louis XVI convened assemblies of landowners in the late 1770s and 1780s to discuss policies needed to resolve the budgetary crisis, he faced widespread opposition from lords and office holders. These elites regarded the assemblies as a challenge to their hereditary power over commoners. The king’s government comprised seigneurial jurisdictions and venal offices. Lordships and offices upheld inequality on behalf of the nobility and bred the discontent motivating the people to make the French Revolution.