Sans-Culottes


Book Description

This is a bold new history of the sans-culottes and the part they played in the French Revolution. It tells for the first time the real story of the name now usually associated with urban violence and popular politics during the revolutionary period. By doing so, it also shows how the politics and economics of the revolution can be combined to form a genuinely historical narrative of its content and course. To explain how an early eighteenth-century salon society joke about breeches and urbanity was transformed into a republican emblem, Sans-Culottes examines contemporary debates about Ciceronian, Cynic, and Cartesian moral philosophy, as well as subjects ranging from music and the origins of government to property and the nature of the human soul. By piecing together this now forgotten story, Michael Sonenscher opens up new perspectives on the Enlightenment, eighteenth-century moral and political philosophy, the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the political history of the French Revolution itself.







The Sans-Culottes


Book Description

A riveting portrait of the radical and militant partisans who changed the course of the French Revolution A phenomenon of the preindustrial age, the sans-culottes—master craftsmen, shopkeepers, small merchants, domestic servants—were as hostile to the ideas of capitalist bourgeoisie as they were to those of the ancien régime that was overthrown in the first years of the French Revolution. For half a decade, their movement exerted a powerful control over the central wards of Paris and other large commercial centers, changing the course of the revolution. Here is a detailed portrait of who these people were and a sympathetic account of their moment in history.




The French Revolution


Book Description

First Published in 2004. Historical Connections is a new series of short books on important historical topics and debates, written primarily for those studying and teaching history. The books will offer original and challenging works of synthesis that will make new themes accessible, or old themes accessible in new ways, build bridges between different chronological periods and different historical debates, and encourage comparative discussion in history. This book is divided into two parts. Part I provides an interpretation of events covering the causes and course of the Revolution; Part II focuses more specifically upon the controversies surrounding the economic, social and cultural policies associated with the Revolution.