The Oxford History of the French Revolution

by William Doyle

  The origins of the Revolution are a field in themselves. Lefebvre’s The Coming is still worth consulting, but a more recent approach, with a full historiographical introduction, is W. Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution (3rd edn., 1999). B. Stone, The Genesis of the French Revolution: A Global-Historical Interpretation (Cambridge, 1994) seeks to establish a wider context, while R. Chartier, Cultural Origins, introduces a more fashionable one. Stimulating collections of essays on revolutionary origins are P. R. Campbell (ed.), The Origins of the French Revolution (Basingstoke, 2006), T. E. Kaiser and D. Van Kley (eds.), From Deficit to Deluge: The Origins of the French Revolution (Stanford, Calif., 2011), and J. Swann and J. Félix (eds.), The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy: France from Old Regime to Revolution (Oxford, 2013). The best guide to late old regime politics is J. Hardman, French Politics, 1774–1789 (London, 1995), but for the detail of 1787–8, J. Egret, The French Pre-Revolution, 1787–88 (Chicago, Ill., 1977) remains definitive. The politics of the two subsequent years have been carefully and convincingly reappraised by T. Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary: The Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Emergence of a Revolutionary Culture (1789–1790) (Princeton, NJ, 1996). Continuities over the great divide of 1789 are stimulatingly investigated by P. M. Jones, Reform and Revolution in France: The Politics of Transition, 1774–1791 (Cambridge, 1995).

  Approachable discussions of the Constituent Assembly and its work may be found in N. Hampson, Prelude to Terror (Oxford, 1988), H. B. Applewhite, Political Alignments in the French National Assembly, 1789–1791 (Baton Rouge, La., 1993), and two works by M. P. Fitzsimmons, The Remaking of France (Cambridge, 1994) and The Night the Old Regime Ended: August 4th 1789 and the French Revolution (University Park, Pa., 2007). Some of the Assembly’s more momentous reforms are studied in subtle and impressive depth by J. Markoff, The Abolition of Feudalism (University Park, Pa., 1996) and T. W. Margadant, Urban Rivalries in the French Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 1992), which analyses the redrawing of the administrative map. The abolition of nobility is set in context by W. Doyle, Aristocracy and its Enemies in the Age of Revolution (Oxford, 2009), while T. Tackett refreshingly explores the domestic resonance of the flight to Varennes in When the King took Flight (Cambridge, Mass., 2003). The early history of the Parisian popular movement has been reappraised by D. Andress, Massacre at the Champ de Mars (Woodbridge, 2000). A useful guide to the less well known politics of the Legislative Assembly is C. J. Mitchell, The French Legislative Assembly of 1791 (Leyden, 1988), and the overthrow of the monarchy on 10 August 1792 is chronicled in minute detail by R. Allen in Threshold of Terror: The Last Hours of the Monarchy in the French Revolution (Stroud, 1999).

  The political groupings of the Convention, long deemed self-evident, were fundamentally reappraised in 1961 by M. J. Sydenham, The Girondins (London). Even more radical, hard to absorb, but in the end entirely convincing, was the analysis of A. Patrick, The Men of the First French Republic: Political Alignments in the National Convention of 1792 (Baltimore, Md., 1972); while the coup which sealed the Girondins’ fate is anatomised by M. Slavin, The Making of an Insurrection (Cambridge, Mass., 1986). A thoughtful collection of essays on the defining episode of the Terror is edited by K. M. Baker as vol. iv of the great collection on The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture (Oxford, 1994), The most outstanding single-author treatment in English of the great trauma is now D. Andress, The Terror: Civil War in the French Revolution (London, 2005). It may be supplemented by T. Tackett, The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 2015) and P. R. Hanson, The Jacobin Republic Under Fire: The Federalist Revolt in the French Revolution (University Park, Pa., 2003). The basic statistics of Terror calculated in 1935 by D. Greer, The Incidence of the Terror in the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.) remain generally accepted. Why leading figures connived at it is explored in stimulating detail by M. Linton, Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship and Authenticity in the French Revolution (Oxford, 2013). The sansculottes, so notorious then and so much studied in the 1950s and 1960s, have attracted much less attention since. The general surveys by G. Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford, 1958) and G. A. Williams, Artisans and Sansculottes (London, 1968) remain excellent distillations of what was established then, but more recent perspectives have been brought together in D. Andress, The French Revolution and the People (London, 2004). M. Alpaugh, Non-violence and the French Revolution: Political Demonstrations in Paris, 1787–1795 (Cambridge, 2014) shows that, contrary to older impressions, most popular political activity in the capital stopped well short of violence. The downfall of political populism is anatomised by M. Slavin in The Hébertists to the Guillotine (Baton Rouge, La., 1994), and, after Thermidor, by K. D. Tönnesson, La Défaite des Sans-culottes (Oslo and Paris, 1959). Still the most readable account of the period after Thermidor is A. Mathiez, After Robespierre (New York, 1931) but it is now very dated. Even the more detached M. J. Sydenham, The First French Republic, 1792–1804 (London, 1974) has been superseded in all sorts of detail. A sober analysis of the period’s dilemmas is B. Baczko, Ending the Terror (Cambridge, 1944), and a stimulating set of essays is C. Lucas (ed.), Beyond the Terror: Essays in French Regional and Social History, 1794–1815 (Cambridge, 1983). A superb study of terror and counter-terror in the blood-soaked south is D. M. G. Sutherland, Murder in Aubagne: Lynching, Law, and Justice during the French Revolution (Cambridge, 2009). I. H. Birchall, The Spectre of Babeuf (Basingstoke, 1997) provides a passionate perspective on the controversial conspirator. Attempts by later Jacobins to shake off terroristic associations are explored by J. Livesey, Making Democracy in the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 2001) and I. Woloch, Jacobin Legacy (Princeton, NJ, 1970). The problems the directors failed to solve are the subject of H. G. Brown, Ending the French Revolution: Violence, Justice, and Repression from the Terror to Napoleon (Charlottesville, Va., 2006). A concise guide to the Directory’s terminal crisis is M. H. Crook, Napoleon comes to Power (Cardiff, 1998).

  The most brilliant short introduction to the period’s religious history remains J. McManners, The French Revolution and the Church (London, 1969); it has been superseded in detail and expanded in scope by N. Aston, Religion and Revolution in France, 1780–1804 (Basingstoke, 2000). An outstanding discussion of the great divide is provided by T. Tackett, Religion and Regional Culture in Eighteenth Century France: The Ecclesiastical Oath of 1790 (Princeton, NJ, 1986); all the background detail can be found in R. J. Dean, L’Assemblée constituante et la réforme ecclésiastique, 1790 (Paris, 2014), and the papal dimension in G. Pelletier, Rome et la Révolution française: La théologie et la politique du Saint-Siège devant la Révolution française (1789–1799) (Rome, 2004). One of the Revolution’s most notorious and problematic religious episodes receives refreshing scrutiny from J. Smyth, Robespierre and the Festival of the Supreme Being: The Search for a Republican Morality (Manchester, 2016). C. Tilly, The Vendée (Cambridge, Mass., 1964) is a classic analysis of how religion shaded into counter-revolution, but doubt has been thrown on some of its suggestions by D. M. G. Sutherland’s investigation of a parallel phenomenon in The Chouans (Oxford, 1982). The scale of repression in the Vendée has become intensely controversial since the appearance of Secher’s Le Génocide franco-français in 1986. More balanced conclusions are offered by J.-C. Martin, La Vendée et la France (Paris, 1987) and R. Dupuy, De la Révolution à la Chouannnerie (Paris, 1988). A convenient brief guide to the burgeoning literature on counter-revolution is J. Roberts, The Counter-Revolution in France, 1787–1830 (Basingstoke, 1990). The scale of emigration was established as long ago as 1951 by D. Greer, The Incidence of the Emigration during the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.), but the world of the French émigrés has been reopened by the essays in K. Carpenter and P. Mansel (eds.), The French Emigrés in Europe and the Struggle against Revolution, 1789–1814 (Basingstoke, 1999). Their worst disaster at Quiberon is chronicled in unprecedented detail by M. G. Hutt, Chouannerie and Co
unter-Revolution (2 vols., Cambridge, 1983). Europe’s leading counter-revolutionary ideologist has most recently been reappraised by Richard Bourke, Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke (Princeton, NJ, 2015).

  If religion proved the first great turning point for the Revolution, war was the second, and for contemporaries perhaps even greater. T. C. W. Blanning, The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars (London, 1986) convincingly showed how this great series of conflicts began, and was resumed in 1798. Subsequently, Blanning readably plotted their course and significance in The French Revolutionary Wars, 1787–1802 (London, 1996). Their sheer scale and consequences are stimulatingly explored in D. A. Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Modern Warfare (London, 2007). The impact on the French armed forces is assessed in S. F. Scott, The Response of the Royal Army to the French Revolution: The Role and Development of the Line Amy during 1789–93 (Oxford, 1978) and W. J. Cormack, Revolution and Political Conflict in the French Navy, 1789–1794 (Cambridge, 1995). Everyday military life is illustrated by A. Forrest, Napoleon’s Men: Soldiers of the Revolution and Empire (London, 2002). On French expansionism in general J. Godechot, La Grande Nation: l’expansion révolutionnaire de la France dans le monde (2nd edn., Paris, 1983) has yet to be replaced. How the French treated foreigners at home is set out by M. Rapport, Nationality and Citizenship in Revolutionary France (Oxford, 2000). Despite its curious biases, R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution (2 vols., Princeton, NJ, 1959–64) offers an important sweeping survey of the period, attempting to place France in a wider revolutionary context. So, more recently, does J. A. Polasky, Revolutions without Borders: The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World (New Haven, Conn., 2015). O. Dann and J. Dinwiddy (eds.), Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution (London, 1988) collect a series of case-studies of reactions to the revolutionary message. There is much of relevance to the 1790s in M. Broers, Europe under Napoleon (2nd edn., London, 2015), with a more specific focus from the same author in The Napoleonic Empire in Italy, 1796–1814: Cultural Imperialism in a European Context? (Basingstoke, 2005). An epic portrait of a state engulfed in the revolutionary tide is S. Schama, Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780–1813 (London, 1997), while T. C. W. Blanning, The French Revolution in Germany: Occupation and Resistance in the Rhineland 1792–1802 (Oxford, 1983) covers more than just the Rhineland, and has an invaluable synoptic final chapter. The two countries where pro-French rebellions broke out are covered in S. Fiszman (ed.), Constitution and Reform in Eighteenth Century Poland (Bloomington, Ind., 1997), B. Lesnodorski, Les Jacobins polonais (Paris, 1965), M. Elliott, Partners in Revolution: The United Irishmen and France (New Haven, Conn., 1982), and T. Bartlett, D. Dickson, D. Keogh, and K. Whelan (eds.), 1798: A Bicentenary Perspective (Dublin, 2003). The strengths and weaknesses of France’s most inveterate opponent are analysed by J. E. Cookson, The British Armed Nation 1793–1815 (Oxford, 1998) and E. Royle, Revolutionary Britannia? (Manchester, 2000). The Revolution was central to The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 studied by R. Blackburn (London, 1988), but since that survey was written there has been an explosion of interest in the Revolution’s impact in the Caribbean. Among the most accessible studies are L. Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 2004) and J. D. Popkin, You are all Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery (Cambridge, 2010).

  The economic and social history of the Revolution has languished somewhat since the triumphs of revisionism. Nobody has yet seen fit to translate the greatest work in this field, Labrousse’s La Crise de l’économie française, although it has been reprinted (1984). There is still much to be learned, too, from A. Mathiez, La Vie chère et le movement social sous la Terreur (Paris, 1927). A magisterial treatment of the assignats and their consequences is F. Crouzet, La Grande Inflation: la monnaie en France de Louis XVI à Napoléon (Paris, 1993). There are brilliant and stimulating reflexions on the monetary history of the period in R. L. Spang, Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 2015), while the shadowy world of finance is explored by M. Bruguière, Gestionnaires et profiteurs de la Révolution (Paris, 1986). The French academic consensus on the Revolution’s economic history at the bicentenary is brought out in the essays in Etat, finances et économie pendant la Révolution française (Paris, 1991), but a sceptical overview by a layman comes from R. Sédillot, Le Coût de la Révolution française (Paris, 1987). The most distinguished of all studies of peasants, G. Lefebvre, Les Paysans du Nord pendant la Révolution française (Lille, 1924) remains untranslated, but that brilliant essay, The Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France (London, 1973), is available in English. The Peasantry in the French Revolution by P. M. Jones (Cambridge, 1988) summarizes two generations’ work in this huge area, and Philip T. Hoffman has suggested, in Growth in a Traditional Society: The French Countryside 1450–1815 (Princeton, NJ, 1996) that the peasantry was less instinctively conservative than has usually been claimed, and that productivity was much more constrained by poor communications and regressive taxation. Despite some questionable assumptions, A. Forrest, The French Revolution and the Poor (Oxford, 1981) reopened a field too long left to Catholic propagandists. Two more recent pioneering case-studies are P. McPhee, Revolution and Environment in Southern France: Peasants, Lords and Murder in the Corbières, 1780–1830 (Oxford, 1999), and N. Plack, Common Land, Wine, and the French Revolution: Rural Society and Economy in Southern France, c.1789–1820 (Farnham, 2009). A welcome sign of reviving French interest in the big questions is B. Bodinier and E. Teyssier, L’Evénement le plus important de la Révolution: La Vente des biens nationaux (Paris, 2000).

  Major issues relating to the Revolution as a whole are also being revisited. Its importance for women has been extensively discussed in both French and English, since the challenge launched by Joan Landes in 1988 (see above, p. 448). J. C. Martin offered a useful summary of where the debate had reached in 2008 in La révolte brisée: Femmes dans la Révolution française et l’Empire (Paris). Understanding of revolutionary elections has been transformed by M. H. Crook, Elections in the French Revolution: An Apprenticeship in Democracy (Cambridge, 1996). A French approach by P. Gueniffey, Le Nombre et la raison (Paris, 1993) has come in for substantial criticism from M. Edelstein, The French Revolution and the Birth of Electoral Democracy (Farnham, 2014). The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution, perhaps the most original political institutions it produced, have been examined by M. L. Kennedy in three volumes of diminishing quality (1 and 2, Princeton, NJ, 1982, 1988; 3, New York, 2000), and the growth of bureaucracy is now better understood thanks to C. H. Church, Revolution and Red Tape: The French Ministerial Bureaucracy, 1770–1850 (Oxford, 1981) and H. Brown, War, Revolution and the Bureaucratic State: Politics and Army Administration in France, 1791–1799 (Oxford, 1995). The winding up of some central old regime institutions is covered in chapter 9 of W. Doyle, Venality: The Sale of Offices in Eighteenth Century France (Oxford, 1996); R. Blaufarb, The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern Property (New York, 2016); S. L. Kaplan, La Fin des corporations (Paris, 2001); and M. P. Fitzsimmons, From Artisan to Worker: Guilds, the French State, and the Organization of Labor, 1776–1821 (Cambridge, 2010). What filled the voids is stimulatingly explored in I. Woloch, The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789–1820 (New York, 1994). So much of the Revolution proceeded in an atmosphere of paranoia: its effects are provocatively studied in B. Shapiro, Traumatic Politics: The Deputies and the King in the Early French Revolution (University Park, Pa., 2009), along with the essays in P. R. Campbell, T. E. Kaiser, and M. Linton (eds.), Conspiracy in the French Revolution (Manchester, 2007). Ideas for curbing wilder claims about threats to the Revolution are thoughtfully considered in C. Walton, Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution: The Culture of Calumny and the Problem of Free Speech (Oxford, 2009). Most free speech was exercised t
hrough newspapers: these are surveyed in H. Gough, The Newspaper Press and the French Revolution (London, 1988) and explored in the essays in R. Darnton and D. Roche (eds.), Revolution in Print: The Press in France 1775–1800 (Berkeley, Calif., 1989). But many of the scurrilous libelles said not so long ago to have helped desacralize the monarchy and the old order before 1789 turn out, after the meticulous researches of Simon Burrows in Blackmail, Scandal and Revolution: London’s French libellistes, 1758–92 (Manchester, 2006), to have been published or widely distributed only after that date. A handy if rather heavy introduction to an approach that post-revisionism has thrown into prominence is E. Kennedy, A Cultural History of the French Revolution (New Haven, Conn., 1989). Important aspects of that culture are the Festivals and the French Revolution studied by M. Ozouf (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), the popular songs surveyed by L. Mason in Singing the French Revolution: Popular Culture and Politics, 1787–1799 (Ithaca, NY, 1996), and not least the public funerals which are the subject of J. Clarke, Commemorating the Dead in Revolutionary France: Revolution and Remembrance, 1789–1799 (Cambridge, 2007). What revolutionaries thought worth preserving is the subject of D. Poulot, Musée, Nation, Patrimoine, 1789–1815 (Paris, 1997), and commemorative projects which never saw the light of day are lavishly illustrated in J. A. Leith, Space and Revolution: Projects for Monuments, Squares and Public Buildings in France, 1789–1799 (Montreal and Kingston, 1991). A subject which perplexes all students of the Revolution is the republican calendar, but its history is usefully traced by Matthew Shaw in Time and the French Revolution (Woodbridge, 2011). Revolutionary dress is analysed in A. Ribiero, Fashion in the French Revolution (London, 1983). The destructive side of revolutionary culture, however, has also been explored in S. Bernard-Griffiths, M.-C. Chemin, and J. Erhard (eds.), Révolution française et ‘vandalisme révolutionnaire’ (Paris, 1992), R. Clay, Iconoclasm in Revolutionary Paris: The Transformation of Signs (Oxford, 2012), not to mention D. Arasse, The Guillotine and the Terror (London, 1989), and J. C. Martin’s meditation on Violence et Révolution: Essai sur la naissance d’un mythe national (Paris, 2006).