1 This interview was published on August 6th, 2009, Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. The best books that are about, set in, or written in the French Revolution time period (1789-1799). Self-explanatory title. Thanks in advance! Banks and Erica Johnson The French Revolution, though political, assumed the guise and tactics of a religious revolution. The following week, 6.6 million more did the same. TheAtlantic.com Copyright (c) 2020 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. Today it’s unbelievable really, to think that during the Napoleonic Wars prominent British politicians would be supporting the French cause. Comparatively cheap mass-manufactured goods from Britain and China sparked what historians call the 18th-century “consumer revolution.” In the 1780s, four-fifths of working-class Parisian households had more than 10 dishes in their cupboards, and more than half had a gold watch (in the 1720s, the figures were 20 percent and 5 percent). | JHIBlog, Follow Age of Revolutions on WordPress.com, Au delà des frontières : La nouvelle histoire du Canada/ Beyond Borders: The New Canadian History. ( Log Out /  Necker’s firing in early July 1789 was viewed widely as a calamity: “It was like losing your father,” the mathematician and astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly wrote in his memoirs. Morten Nordhagen Ottosen asks a key question concerning Bavarian politics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: did the French Revolution spread religious toleration, or did it stunt an already growing religious toleration in the German lands? Was there a sense, do you think, in which Napoleon imagined himself as a condottiere? He also contributed to the New Statesman and to the online magazine The First Post. Well, he was a great idealist, and, I suppose, a pragmatist. Likewise, the actions we take and the choices we make today will shape both what future we get and what we remember of the past. Read. Leo Tolstoy said that Victor Hugo's 'Les Miserables' was the greatest book ever written. Kings had divine right; it was easy for them to rule because they had god on their side, and the public was frightened, or in awe of them. Every year, the Booker Prize judges whittle a year's worth of fiction down to a shortlist of six books, each competing for the title of the best novel of the year. But on the whole, Michelet believes that the Revolution is necessary, and in fact started a new period of glory for France. Yes, I mean there are essays about freedom and about class issues and so on but I think it’s a marvelous counterpoint to reading these 18th and 19th century…. I’m sure everybody in that position did or should have read The Prince, but it isn’t at all fashionable nowadays, and it never has been fashionable in this country because we somehow or other have managed to keep a sort of continuous tradition of orderly and civilized, or relatively civilized government, and we never got a wholly new lot of people who didn’t benefit by the habits of the people to accept their authority, but we’re getting that now. Similarly, Blake Smith’s chapter on Anquetil Duperron considers the ways in which Frenchmen encountered Hinduism as a means to rethink the revolution’s relationship with religion. Against that of course, the other French historian, Hippolyte Taine, does exactly the opposite. He was a 'high Tory' and a staunch defender of aristocratic government. The Book of the City of Ladies, Christine de Pizan (1405). The men and women who made the French Revolution—a revolution which, in a few short and hectic years, decriminalized heresy, blasphemy, and witchcraft; replaced one of the oldest European monarchies with a republic based on universal male suffrage; introduced no-fault divorce and easy adoption; embraced the ideal of formal equality before the law; and, for a short time at least, defined employment, education, and subsistence as basic human rights—had no model to follow, no plans, no platform agreed upon in advance. What it does mean is that everything is up for grabs. If you want a complete contrast with Montaigne then read Machiavelli. Surely, the revolution’s affronts to the Catholic Church, the forced. Read. 5 However, it's important to keep in mind that she was essentially writing a sympathetic account; she was attempting to regain some favour with the restored Bourbons because she had continued to work in France during the reign of Napoleon and had fallen into some disrepute because of it. Was the French Revolution a religious “revolution”? Tocqueville was desperately searching, by looking at America, to find out how that hole could be filled, and he was finding hope that it was working in America, but he despaired (of course he lived to become an MP for the 1848 French Revolution), and he despaired of it ever happening in France and he went on searching and always writing, but it never really materialised in France in his lifetime. Yes, and it takes you back. Enter your email address to follow this publication and receive notifications of new posts by email. The men and women who made the French Revolution—a revolution which, in a few short and hectic years, decriminalized heresy, blasphemy, and witchcraft; replaced one of … History of the French Revolution He speaks with us about the best books for understanding the life and work of this renowned painter, and the very particular collaboration that led to this magisterial account of one of the finest painters of the last century. Margaret Busby, chair of this year's judging panel, discusses the six books that made the cut in 2020. They had no veneration so they couldn’t behave like gentlemen, they had to behave like ruthless tyrants. Tocqueville, yes: of course his book is about the American Revolution. Coming from the point of view of somebody who couldn’t conceive of how change could be for the better. On the biography front, I've always enjoyed Chateaubriand's Memoires d'outre tombe which can be found free online in both French and translated into English. Of course you didn’t use the word aristocracy then, because despite being the ideal, the word was out of fashion, and Tocqueville was writing about democracy. Very strange. Is goes quite deep into many topics while still being rather comprehensive of the period. What Machiavelli was saying to them was, you can’t rely on any sense of decency. Find this book: This new history of the French Revolution avoids immersing readers in the complex scholarly debates that have long characterised the subject, instead seeking to offer the best of what is currently known about this crucial historical process. second that! Duperron’s translations of the Upanishads reveal how orientalism could be mobilized to critique the revolution itself. More than 6 million Africans were sold into slavery in the 18th century—a time that some still call the “Age of Enlightenment.”. For anybody wanting to go into politics, to be able to have a mastery of the subjects the French Revolution involved is an enormous help, and will deepen their understanding of what they ought to be doing today. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! It doesn’t underplay the horrors of the French Revolution, but neither does it underplay the horrors of the ancien regime. by Niccolo Machiavelli 2 The Abbe Bergier, a Catholic critic of the theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau — and an admitted foe of “tolerance” — criticizes Rousseau for preaching tolerance but actually advocating a society and a civil religion which would be intolerant towards Catholics, atheists, and women. I just started them and I'm hooked. He was a leader writer and foreign correspondent for the Times from 1948-1953. He was the author of The Socialist Myth, 1972, Tricks of Memory, 1993 and In Defence of Aristocracy, 2004. Political factionalism grows more intense. I feel it does a fantastic overview of the eras, and also has good scholarly sources. Simon Schama's Citizens takes you from the pre-revolutionary period through Thermidor. What impact did the French Revolution have over the long term in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? Some further points of resemblance between the two may be noticed. He is currently completing a monograph on the role of Huguenots in the making of modern French political culture. Instead of visionary leaders or outraged crowds, viruses, markets, and climate change seem to shape events today. Encyclopedia Britannica: Overview of the French Revolution 1787-1799 . Yet for more than two centuries, elements of their improvised politics have been revolution’s signature features: a declared sovereignty, devised symbols, an anthem, war. Cookies help us deliver our Services. In a single week in March, 3.3 million American workers filed new unemployment claims. All Rights Reserved. Press J to jump to the feed. Ottonsen defends the latter position, complicating the argument that the French Revolution wrought modernity to the rest of the world – a modernity often defined in terms of liberty, even a religious liberty. Read. Contesting the French Revolution. What is the best history book on the French Revolution? Press J to jump to the feed. You should never change unless absolutely necessary: no unnecessary change. Blundering to Glory: Napoleon's Military Campaigns - a good book that offers a journalistic investigation into the actual events of the Napoleonic wars. If we do not perceive them as such, it is because news coverage and everyday conversations alike turn on nonhuman agents. The last two chapters approach the French Revolution in terms of  statecraft and legacy. by J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), 285. If you’re not a professional historian, the best modern history of the French Revolution is “Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution,” by Simon Schama. ( Log Out /  At the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era a couple of years ago, we decided to rethink Tocqueville’s assertion, and examine the French Revolution through both a religious and a global lens. Thanks. As Thomas Kselman notes in his chapter, the once seminal proponent of ultramontagnism, Felicité Lamennais, was unable to reconcile the liberal government of the French Revolution and its demands defended by claims to the rights of individual conscience on one side with the Catholic Church’s claim to spiritual dominance on the other. This site has an archive of more than one thousand interviews, or five thousand book recommendations. Banks is Assistant Professor of History at SUNY Adirondack. Bryan Banks focuses on the role that the Huguenot diaspora played in the rhetoric of the revolutionaries. And now I come to the absolute central one for anybody interested in politics—Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution. Only work I'd add is John Lynn's Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation And Tactics In The Army Of Revolutionary France, 1791-94. The French Revolution (French: Révolution française [ʁevɔlysjɔ̃ fʁɑ̃sɛːz]) was a period of social and political upheaval in France and its colonies beginning in 1789 and ending in 1799. I think he puts the case for that as well as it could be put. “The Coronavirus Killed the Revolution,” declared the headline of a recent essay in The Atlantic by Shadi Hamid, who argued that the COVID-19 crisis makes people crave “normalcy” over deep structural change.

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