From Burke to Schama:
The historiography of the French Revolution
© Tony Taylor, Monash University Churchill Campus
(This article originally appeared in Agora, a quarterly journal published by HTAV.)
A "French" Revolution
The French Revolution has been the object of much study - but historical interpretation was complicated during
much of the 20th century by a hostile view of some French historians to non-French accounts of the Revolution.
This led to a situation where "French" interpretation was regarded, in France at least, as the authoritative position.
Today, issues surrounding the Revolution are much more widely debated than was previously the case. This
article is not offered as an exhaustive analysis but is merely an introductory guide to act as a signpost for teachers
who may be unfamiliar with the landscape of revolutionary historiography.
Teaching the French Revolution
For the teacher of history, the French Revolution is a major challenge. Partly because of its length (arguably
1763-1815) and partly because of its depth (Paris / country / women / peasantry / bourgeoisie / aristocracy /
monarchy / wars / foreign policy / individuals / clubs and political movements / ideologies / cultural movements
and so on) it is easy to get lost in the detail. Beyond that, there are so many varying interpretations of the French
Revolution that a teacher new to the topic may find the process of helping students get to grips with these three
aspects a very daunting prospect.
Accordingly, this historiographical introduction is an attempt to allow teachers reasonably easy access to the key
interpretations of the Revolution. Some opinions are from the long past and others more current, but all are
influential. In no way, however, is this introduction exhaustive since there are articles, books, and even a
substantial dictionary (really an encyclopedia) devoted to the historiography of the French Revolution. This
article is merely a starting point.
Early Interpretations - Burke 1790 to Orczy 1905
From the very beginning the French Revolution aroused a passionate response. Two key early interpretations were
by contemporary British observers.
Edmund Burke
Burke was an Irishman who represented the constituents of Bristol as their Westminster MP He was also a
polemical writer who was traditionalist in his views and a leading political thinker of his time. Burke is regarded
as one of the founding fathers of the modern Conservative Party. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France
(first published in 1790 - and still selling as a major political text) he warned that the forces the French had let
loose in 1789 would eventually produce tyranny. Burke viewed society as an organism that grew slowly - and
which allowed the productive parts of the organism to thrive whilst the nonproductive parts would eventually
decay and disappear. He had previously supported the American revolutionaries of the 1770s because he argued
that the British government had broken with its traditional approach to governing that colony - and he said that the
Americans were actually fighting for a return to former days. Seemingly radical because of his support for the
American revolutionaries, Burke's position was ideologically conservative.
By the same token, as far as Burke was concerned, a disruptive, radical revolution such as the French Revolution,
was a disastrous break with the kind of fruitful slow growth he espoused. His opinion was that the imposition of
revolution as had happened in France in 1789 (and this was before the trial and execution of the king) was an
extreme remedy for a curable illness.
Quote: "By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little"
Thomas Paine
Burke's view was opposed by his contemporary, Englishman Thomas Paine, who went to the American colonies
in 1774 to seek his fortune and became a sympathizer with the revolutionaries and an active participant in the new
post-independence US administration. Paine re-crossed the Atlantic to France in 1781 and eventually ended up as
a Deputy in the French National Convention before returning to the US.
Unlike Burke, Paine was a genuinely radical thinker and political activist. Paine's book The Rights of Man (1791
- sold 200 000 copies) was supportive of the republican and democratic aims of the Revolution. Paine, infuriated
by Burke's book, took the view that revolution was a logical remedy for the evils of inherited government with its
arbitrary nature, its fondness for war and its tolerance of poverty, illiteracy and high levels of unemployment. As
events turned out Paine found himself in opposition to the revolutionaries over the execution of Louis XVI and the
Reign of Terror. He fell foul of Robespierre but was rehabilitated after Robespierre's death. Paine left France in
1802 and died in the US in 1809.
Quote: "All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny.... To inherit a government, is to inherit the people, as if
it were flocks or herds"
Thomas Carlyle
After the collapse of the Revolution and the restoration of the monarchy in 1815, Thomas Carlyle wrote his
three-volume history (1837) which characterized the Revolution as a colourful, bloody, tyrannical interlude. The
style of Carlyle's book became famous and/or notorious for its dramatic, almost fictional form of explanation that
produced phrases which are now standard cliches. As to the Revolution, his view was that the monarchy and the
aristocracy got what it deserved in 1789, in an explosion of mass violence. At the same time, it was Robespierre
who was Carlyle's real villain, for directing the Terror with such bloodthirsty efficiency. Carlyle was however
favourably disposed to Mirabeau (if only he had lived beyond 1791), Danton (a real 'man' - unlike the sea-green
incorruptible Robespierre) and Napoleon (very good at whiffs of grapeshot).
Charles Dickens
Carlyle's view was adopted by Charles Dickens, the famous Victorian author, in his novel A Tale of Two Cities
where the revolutionaries were represented as bloodthirsty ogres. Whilst not a historian, Dickens was an
influential writer, arguably the most socially and politically influential English language writer in the 19th century
and his position on the Revolution with its explicit condemnation of the Terror was still being portrayed without
much conscious reflection in 20th century films.
Baroness Orczy
Again not a historian but a very successful writer whose pre-Great War Scarlet Pimpernel novels (the first of
which was published in 1905) followed the Dickens line of a persecuted aristocracy pursued by sinister
Revolutionary authority. These novels were later made into successful films and a recent successful 1990s TV
series. The Burke/Carlyle/Dickens/Orczy representation remains the accepted popular view of the Revolution in
many western countries. Simon Schama in his 1989 Citizens tends to follow the Carlyle line, portraying the
Revolution as a vivid narrative.
Serious history, as a modern academic discipline, began in the first half of the 19th century and the French
Revolution, an incident within living memory, was an early object of professional historical curiosity.
The Classic View
This was originally a 19th century republican-democratic view put forward by one of the great French historians
of the Revolution, Michelet, in the 1840s and 1850s. Later, just before the Great War, it became a mainly French
Marxist or socialist interpretation. The classic view is broadly sympathetic to the Jacobins - the pain was
necessary and the Jacobins took on the job of organizing the Terror because it was a dirty job but someone had to
do it - and suggests that the Revolution was a largely progressive event that moved social and political ideas
forward by overthrowing a feudal regime which was in decline. The rationalism of the Enlightenment, it argues,
was the theoretical foundation for the liberation of "the People" from irrational superstition, privilege and
corruption.
The Marxists
Writers like Lefebvre, Jaurez, Mathiez and Souboul later re-interpreted the Revolution as not merely a popular
revolt against the old regime but as part of the ongoing class struggle. The bourgeoisie were reacting against the
fading and bankrupt regime to give themselves more space for capitalistic development (trade and industry) and
they found temporary allies in the working class of Paris who wanted equality, and with the peasants who had
been hurt by the 1788 harvest failure. The Terror was a desperate response to war, to inflation, to subsequent
popular discontent and to conscription. Robespierre was the revolutionary hero who maintained his ideals in a
time of turmoil (Mathiez), much like Lenin. The revolutionary regime needed support from the sans-culottes
through these crises but once events had settled, bourgeois and working class interests differed with Robespierre
reining in the sans-culottes - to their despair. So they rebelled in 1795 and were then crushed.
To come up with this point of view, Lefebvre and Souboul both studied the archives more extensively and deeply
than had previously been the case. In doing so, Lefebvre (The French Revolution, 1924) found that peasants were
not a single group but consisted of various groups, some of whom actually opposed each other. Souboul (The
French Revolution, 1962) found that the sans-culottes had made the Revolution more radical than had originally
been envisaged by the bourgeois reformists and were then crushed in the Terror. Souboul's interpretation is still
regarded as important by many 21st century historians.
The Anglo-Saxon Revisionist View
Two non-French historians, Cobban (UK) and Taylor (USA) looked closely at these interpretations and, after
checking through the archives, came up with a different view. They felt that the Revolution had been "captured"
by Marxist "theory".
Cobban's writing (The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution, 1964) suggested that it was a socialist myth
that the old regime was overthrown by bourgeois capitalists who wanted more economic freedom. His research
showed that many Assembly deputies were actually members of the class they were supposed to be overthrowing
- many of them held (old regime) lawyers/government offices and were landowners rather than merchants.
Taylor showed in a major article ("Types of Capitalism in Eighteenth Century France", 1964) that much prerevolutionary wealth was not based on trade and commerce (capitalist) and the small minority of bourgeois
capitalists had no real interest in pulling down the regime just to make economic gains. On the contrary, the
Revolution led to a succession of economic and financial disasters - although, to give the Marxist interpretation its
credit, the revolutionaries could not have seen this coming.
Although the work of Taylor and Cobban was disparaged by the French Marxists who saw them both as
anti-Soviet ideologues, their pioneering work led to a stream of books and articles by other authors in the 1960s
and 1970s. These were based on deep digging in the archives - something many Marxists had not done
systematically because they had adopted a high-thinking theoretical overview which did not, supposedly, require
a concentrated study of archive materials.
French Revisionists
The French Marxist historians had rejected the CobbanTaylor view. Not only was it a Cold War issue, it was also
non-theoretical (French intellectuals generally prefer Theory) and the Anglo-Saxon view was seen as an attempt
to deny the rightful place of the French Revolution as the major event in modern history.
However two important French historians then came up with their own revisionist view. Francois Fu ret was the
leader of this position (Interpreting the French Revolution, 1981) and he drew on both French and Anglo-Saxon
research and the writings of early 19th century commentator Alexis de Tocqueville, to develop a view that the
Revolution was indeed progressive because it did lead to Enlightenmentstyle equality and democracy - but
because it had to misuse force to maintain itself, the Revolution failed to produce liberty. Furet, and his colleague
Denis Richet argued, for example, that Napoleon could use democracy to gain tyranny because the disruptions of
the Revolution had removed all the checks and balances in society and government which would keep tyrants at
bay - or would at least slow them down. Unlike those who saw the Reign of Terror as a temporary and unpleasant
diversion - or those who saw it as a painful but necessary interlude - Furet's position was that terror was built-in to
the Revolution from the very beginning because, having destroyed early acceptance of differences of opinion, it
could not accept any opposition. The conclusion, the French Revolution had seriously lost its way and the
Jacobins were the originators of modern totalitarianism.
Furet was regarded a maverick by many of his Marxist colleagues whom he had attacked for their allegedly blind
loyalty to the progressivist nature of the revolution which was, in effect, from their point of view a vindication of
radical socialism. In 1978 he controversially declared that the Revolution was dead. He meant that the linking of
the French Revolution to post-Russian Revolution ideology was over and it could now be studied more
dispassionately. Not everybody agreed with him but he kept on arguing until his death in 1997.
Post-revisionism - discourse analysis
In the 1980s as cultural studies grew in strength in the universities especially in the US, a new interpretation arose
based not so much on archival evidence as a postHabermas examination of the language of the documents of the
Revolution. The argument here is that the old regime had lost public support because of the way public opinion
had been influenced by published writings (pamphlets, books etc) prior to 1789. The post-revisionists saw the prerevolutionary period as important because the discourse of that time showed that the monarchy was already on its
way out. This view is part of the postmodern movement which prefers to assess events and evidence as "texts"
instead of accepting evidence as a concrete 'objective' reality.
Narrative History - back in fashion again
One of the most influential books of the past twenty years is Simon Schama's (1789) Citizens. This is partly
because Schama's work represents a return to centre stage of narrative history after so many years of
theoretically-based history, and partly because of his interpretation, which is not to everybody's taste. But then
historians have a tendency to professional jealousy especially when they see a highly talented and very energetic
colleague becoming rich and famous.
Schama all but ignores the more stolid historiography and goes for the passion, the colour and the drama but there
is a point of view beneath all the prose. For Schama the French Revolution was a bloody interlude and, as with
Furet, he feels that the revolution lost its way with the Terror. Interestingly, he is one of the few mainstream male
historians who attempts to deal with gender issues in his book. Citizens is probably too long to be read as a single
narrative by students but does contain many brilliantly written vignettes which are useful and memorable
milestones. For example his account of the Fall of the Bastille - and his movingly written account of the execution
of Louis XVI are excellent classroom texts. Tellingly, the book ends in 1794, after the Terror, and before things
get really complicated!
Gender Politics and the French Revolution
From the 1970s onwards US and other feminist historians (Jane Abray, Darline Gay Levy, Harriet Branson
Applewhite, Mary Durham Johnson, Joan Landes) began to look at the role of women in the revolution. All but
ignored in history prior to that decade, women were the 'invisible' factor in the equation, successfully marginalised
by male historians who in turn then marginalised gender studies of the Revolution (in his influential
Revolutionary France: Critical Dictionary, Furet all but ignores the role of women). "Furet was regarded a
maverick by many of his Marxist colleagues whom he had attacked for their allegedly blind loyalty to the
progressivist nature of the revolution which was, in effect, from their point of view a vindication of radical
socialism."
Significant studies have looked at the role of the street women of Paris, the women of the clubs, and more recently,
the conservative attitude of peasant women and their active resistance to the revolution (Olwen Hufton). The
recent feminist view is that the Revolution was a backward step for women.
The Neo-Liberal View
Part of the Reaganomic/Milton Freidman worldview, the 1990s neo-liberals (William Sewell Jr; Colin Jones)
disagree with Furet about the failure of the Revolution. From their point of view, there was a successful capitalist
benefit after the fall of the Old Regime. In line with the capitalist argument, they do not play down the oppressive
nature of the aristocracy, they maintain that the Constituent Assemby was moderate and constructive and that the
violent events of the summers of 1789 and 1792 were necessary for the setting up of a liberal state.
Some follow-up questions about the French Revolution
• What was the role of the Enlightenment ideas? Were they important?
• What was it about social, financial, economic and political conditions that put such an unbreakable strain on
the old regime and led to revolution?
• How did leadership play a part in the collapse of the old regime (monarchy/ministers/reformers)? What
agreements and disagreements led to the collapse of the old regime?
• What part did leaders play (Robespierre & Danton)? Were leaders important or were they just part of a bigger,
more overwhelming process? Or was it both?
• What part did groups play - the political clubs and the mass movements (Jacobins/Girondins/Hebertists/Sansculottes/Paris Commune)?
• How did the revolutionaries cope with the threats posed to their new society? Did they become tyrannical more or less tyrannical than the old regime? Were there any benefits of the new regime?
• Were the original aims of the revolution maintained?
• What were the economic consequences of the revolution?
• What were the military consequences of the revolution?
• Was a totally new order established or did some elements of the old regime persist - mixed in with some new
elements?
• Did the people of the new regime have greater freedoms and improved living conditions?
• Was the new regime successful in the long term? Did it establish new values and a new consciousness
amongst its citizens?
• What happened after the "end" of the revolution in 1799?
• How have interpretations of the revolution changed over time - and why?