Contesting the French Revolution

ISBN-13: 9781405160834 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 248 str.

Paul Hanson

Opis

Contesting the French Revolution provides an insightful overview of one of history's most significant events, as well as examining the most significant historiographical debates about this period.

• Explores the causes, events, and consequences of the French Revolution
  
• Offers a stimulating analysis of the most controversial debates: Were the events of 1789 a social revolution or a political accident? Did they mark the rise of industrial capitalism or the birth of modern democracy? Was Napoleon Bonaparte an heir to the ideals of 1789 or a betrayer of the Revolution?
  
• Shows how historical interpretation of the French Revolution has been influenced by the changing political and social currents of the last 200 years - from the Russian Revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall - and how historical study has shifted from a political focus to social and cultural approaches in more recent years.

Recenzje

The historiography of the French Revolution is notoriously voluminous. Paul Hanson is one of very few people who can be said to have mastered it. ( Informaworld.com, January 2011)

"This book is no neutral survey of historiography, bur an engaged contribution to the debate. Hanson challenges older revisionism by endorsing recent studies that emphasize social conflict as key to the French Revolution, and he contests interpretations of the Terror or of revolutionary violence as the outcomes of revolutionary ideology." (Journal of World History, September 2010)

"Recommended [for] Graduate students [and] faculty." (CHOICE, February 2010) Designed as an introduction both to the Revolution and to the historical controversies that surround it, Contesting the French Revolution is an assured, erudite survey of recent scholarship by an accomplished historian of the Revolution. (H–France, April 2010)

Spis treści

Acknowledgements.

Chronology.

Introduction.

1. Origins: Inevitable Revolution or Resolvable Crisis?

2. 1789.

3. The Declaration of Rights and the Abolition of Feudalism.

4. Constitutional Monarchy.

5. The Republic.

6. Regeneration and Terror.

7. Thermidor and the Directory.

8. Napoleon: Heir to the Revolution?

9. Revolutionary Violence.

10. Legacy of the Revolution.

Bibliography.

Index.

O autorze

Paul Hanson is Professor of History at Butler University in Indianapolis. He has taught courses on French history, European history, and Chinese history, and has published numerous books and articles examining the French Revolution, including The Jacobin Republic under Fire, Provincial Politics in the French Revolution and Historical Dictionary of the French Revolution.

Blurb

Few events in history have generated as much scholarly work as the French Revolution, and lively and often emotional debates about is origins and meaning continue to this day.

Contesting the French Revolution presents an overview of what led up to this pivotal event, the turning points that shaped it, and its far–reaching effects, as well as examining the most significant historiographical debates about this period. Were the events of 1789 a social revolution or a political accident? Did they mark the rise of industrial capitalism or the birth of modern democracy? Was the Reign of Terror a response to foreign war and domestic resistance or the product of Jacobin ideology? Was Napoleon Bonaparte an heir to the ideals of 1789 or a betrayer of the Revolution? In this impressive evaluation of La Révolution Paul Hanson offers an engaging analysis of these debates, showing us how historical interpretation of the French Revolution has been influenced by the changing political and social currents of the last 200 years from the Russian Revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall.