HISTORIOGRAPHY – AN OVERVIEW
TOPIC
Marxist
Old Regime
The
Alfred Soboul: “The
Enlightenment Enlightenment
undermined the
ideological
foundations of the
established order”
Financial and
political crisis
Role of the
bourgeoisie
Revolution +
New society
1789-1791
Georges Lefebvre
(on the Great
Fear): “[the Great
Fear] allowed the
peasants to realise
their strength”
Georges Lefebvre:
“The ultimate
cause of the
revolution was the
rise of the
Bourgeoisie”
Albert Soboul: “The
revolution of 17891794 marked the
appearance of
modern bourgeois
and capitalist
society in the
history of
France…classic
model of a
bourgeois
revolution”
Alfred Soboul: “The
insurrection of the
popular classes had
ensured the victory
of the
bourgeoisie…the
Revisionist
Simon Schama: “It
was in the Church,
more than any
other group in
France, that the
separation between
rich and poor was
most bitterly
articulated”
William Doyle:
Philosophes did not
necessarily cause
the French
Revolution. Many of
their ideas were not
revolutionary.
Other
Alison Patrick: “[When] in 1789 the National
Assembly got to work on its program of
reform, the debates were conducted within an
accepted framework of political ideas…the
philosophes had formulated the ideas which
were taken for granted by the revolutionaries
of 1789; and in this sense it can be said that
the revolution was indeed their work.”
Jocelyn Hunt: “…the privileged classes both
prevented the Crown from solving its financial
problems and escalated these problems into a
full-scale revolution…on the other hand…the
pro-reform attitudes of some of the nobles are
also significant factors.”
Jocelyn Hunt: “the pro-reform attitudes of
some of the nobles are also significant factors.”
Simon Schama:
“There was enough
[finance] for the
government to
function for one
afternoon”
George Taylor
describes the
revolution as
occurring by chance, Recent research by Chartier and Taylor
not as being
suggests that 64% of noble Cahier de
inevitable
doleances called for a constitution, as opposed
to 57% of Third Estate books, implying that the
“The bourgeoisie
nobles had more revolutionary demands than
was far from
the bourgeoisie
united”
William Doyle:
revolution was
“accidental”
William Doyle:
“In this sense [they]
gave France a
constitutional
monarchy,
decentralised and
Gwynne Lewis: “The fourteenth of July
supplied the [death blow] to absolute
monarchy in France…it provoked, rather than
strengthened, a whole series of minirevolutions in France, as a result of which
effective power, administrative and police,
attempted
counter-revolution
had been
shattered…The
National Assembly,
having emerged
triumphant from
its struggle with
the monarchy only
with the help of
the Parisians, now
feared it might
find itself at the
mercy of the
people and was in
future every bit as
distrustful of the
forces of
democracy as it
was of absolutism.”
George Rude:
“Why had the
situation changed
so abruptly [by the
end of 1791?]. In
the first place, the
King had only
accepted the
Constitution with
his tongue in his
cheek: long before
it had been signed,
he had made an
unsuccessful bid to
seek safety in
flight, and having
been returned
ignominiously to
his capital, he
continued to
intrigue with the
rulers of Sweden,
Prussia and Austria
for the restoration
of his old authority
by force of arms.
[The nobles]
formed a constant
focal point of
dissension, sullen
representative
institutions, civil and
fiscal equality, and
guarantees for
individual liberty,
[the revolutionaries]
were broadly true
to the instructions
of the [Books of
Grievances]. But
these contained no
mandate for the
abolition of the
provinces,
municipalities,
nobility or titles.
[Almost] none called
for a declaration of
rights, and none at
all for National
Guards or paper
money. Most of
these reforms were
the product of the
revolutionary
process itself…their
implementation
may have been
chaotic and
disorganised, but
they were carried
through with
remarkable goodwill
and even
enthusiasm
considering the
multitude of vested
interests they
threatened or
damaged.”
passed, in a very messy way, from the
supporters of the [old regime] to the ‘patriots
of 1789’…however the corridors of
revolutionary power were frequented…by the
propertied and educated classes, amongst
whom one could find a good sprinkling of
liberal nobles and clerics…those
deputies…were as frightened of the millions of
poor, hungry and unemployed as they were of
the king.”
J.M Thompson: “Lafayette’s command of the
National Guard made him, from 1789 to 1791,
the most important figure in France next to the
King, and it was impossible for anyone to
control the situation without his
support…Lafayette misread the political
situation, had no policy of his own, and refused
to ally himself with anyone who had”
Peter McPhee: “[The Declaration of the Rights
of Man and Citizen] represented the end of
absolutist, seigneurial, and corporate structure
of seventeenth-century France. [It] was also a
revolutionary proclamation of the principles of
a new golden age…an extraordinary document,
one of the most powerful statements of
liberalism and representative
government…universal in its language, and
resounding in optimism, it was nonetheless
ambiguous in its wording and silences…was
ambiguous on the propertyless, slaves and
women…and silent on how the means to
exercise one’s talents could be secured by
those without education and property”
Peter McPhee (on the Civil Constitution of the
Clergy): “Mounting clerical opposition to these
changes ultimately focused on the CoCC voted
on the 12th July 1790…however, in applying
popular sovereignty to the choice of priests
and bishops, the Assembly crossed the narrow
line separating temporal and spiritual life”
Jill Fenwick and Judy Anderson: “[The
declaration of the National Assembly] marked
the beginnings of the real revolution and it was
largely as a result of the indecision of Louis
XVI”
resentment and
suspicion, and
provoked the
revolutionary
authorities to take
ever-harsher
measures to
restrain their
liberties and keep
them in check.
More serious
perhaps was the
division caused by
among the clergy
by the new Church
settlement”
New society
after 1792
George Rude:
“…having won its
victory over
“privilege” and
“despotism, the
Bourgeois now
wanted peace and
quiet in order to
proceed with its
task of giving
France a
constitution”
Georges Lefebvre:
“In reality the
government lost
control of the
repression [during
the Terror]…like
administration, it
was decentralised
by the emergency”
Albert Mathiez:
“The dictatorship
of a party or a class
is as a rule only
established by
force, and in time
of war this is
necessarily so.
Revolutionary
government had as
its inevitable
accompaniment
William Doyle: “It
was resistance that
made the revolution
become violent. It
was naïve of the
men of 1789 to
think that they
could regenerate
the nation without
opposition, and
imagine that the
honesty and
benevolence of
their intentions
would be as obvious
to others as to
themselves…Even
after the nation had
been sickened with
public carnage,
politicians still
found it impossible
JM Roberts: “On both French and European
History the impact of the Legislative
[Assembly] was colossal, but also indirect. It
was made by taking France to war at the
beginning of 1792. No single decision so much
influenced the course of the Revolution at
home and abroad. It had not been intended
that it do so, but the war changed everything.
It was the major determinant of all that
followed for nearly a decade…Yet the war was
in large measure a by-product of a long and
deepening political crisis which ended in
disaster for the Legislative Assembly itself and
for the Constitution which it set up.”
Patrice Higonnet: “Jacobinism’s core belief was
that mankind could best realise its true self in
the [political] context of a universalist republic.
Only in that ideal setting could men and
women, as individuals in their own right, fully
become what nature and reason wished them
to be, namely, the free and active citizens of a
the Terror…the
fever of patriotism,
the approach of
the enemy, and the
sound of tocsin
lulled the men’s
inconsistencies to
sleep”
to accept the
legitimacy and good
faith of their
opponents”
harmonious state. [I reject] the idea that the
essence of Jacobin politics culminated in the
immoral and useless Terror of 17931794…Jacobinism can still be a model for
modern democrats. Jacobins were enlightened
Simon Schama: “…a libertarians who in their own
good case…might be uncomprehending dismay found themselves
made for seeing the re-enacting a past of persecution they
September
desperately wanted to deny”
Massacres as an
event which
David Garrioch: “Robespierre remains a
…exposed a central
controversial figure because he embodies the
truth of the French
contradictions not only of the French
Revolution: its
Revolution, but of every country that feels
dependence on
itself to be under siege; and of every leader
organised killing to
who must make decisions that pit idealism
accomplish political against pragmatism…”
ends. For however
virtuous the
Dominique Godineau: “Only a few women
principles of
claimed the right to vote during the
kingless France
Revolution. Nevertheless, the question of their
were supposed to
citizenship always faces the historian because
be, their power to
the problem keeps reoccurring: how was it
compel allegiance
possible to be a citoyenne (female citizen),
depended, from the how was it possible for women to become
very beginning, on
involved in political life, without acquiring all
the spectacle of
the attributes of citizenship? An important
death”
women’s movement, too long forgotten in the
historiography, existed at the heart of the
Francois Furet: On
revolutionary movement”
the Terror: “In other
words, it ruled
Peter McPhee on the Terror: “The central
through far, making purpose of the Terror was to institute the
the threat of death
emergency and draconian measures necessary
hang over all
at a time of military crisis”
servants of the state
and citizens alike”
Gwynne Lewis: “The institutions of the Terror
had been created long before Robespierre
Norman Hampson
joined the Government on 26th July 1793”
on the Terror: “The
massacres
contributed to
divide revolutionary
leaders as well as to
envenom the
relations between
the Girondin and
the Parisian sansculottes”
Francois Furet: “In
1793 terrorist
discourse was in the
mouths of nearly all
leaders of the
Revolution.
Conceived in order
to exterminate
aristocracy, the
Terror ended as a
means of subduing
wrongdoers
combating crime.
From now on it
coincided with and
was inseparable
from the
Revolution, because
there was no other
way of someday
moulding a republic
of citizens”
Events of
1795
William Doyle: “The
ninth of Thermidor
marked not so much
the overthrow of
one man or a group
of men as the
rejection of a form
of government”
Alfred Cobban:
“There was little to
admire in them: no
motive higher than
self-preservation
inspired their
desperate attack, no
ideals justified their
executions, no
laurels crowned
their victory”
Francois Furet: “The
Thermidorians
brought back and
would give lasting
life to that new race
of political
Norman Hampson: “The Constitution of 1795
ensured that the Directory would be a weak
government. It tried to apply liberal policies in
a situation where war, inflation, food shortages
and the whole violent legacy of the Revolution
made liberal government impossible. It has
found few supporters, and historians have
been reluctant to recognise either the
achievements of these able men or the
extraordinary problems that defeated them.
They achieved outstanding military successes,
but the country was ungovernable by normal
constitutional methods”
Christopher Hibbert: “The destruction of the
Robespierrists and the wholesale purge of the
Commune soon resulted in the Revolution’s
launching to the Right”
Revolution as
a whole
“destruction of the
seigneurial regime”
men…conservative
revolutionaries”
Simon Schama: “The
revolution was
powdered by
brutality”
“the arrival of
modern bourgeois
society”
George Taylor: “The
bourgeoisie was far
from united”
“most outstanding
bourgeois
revolution”
William Doyle:
“Was, then, the
revolution worth it
in material terms?
For most ordinary
French subjects
turned by it into
citizens, it cannot
have been”
Albert Soboul:
“dramatic nature
of…class struggle”
Sarah Maza: “lack of respect for government
and society”
Colin Lucas: “bourgeoisie and nobility formed a
ruling elite”