This book explores the nature and scope of the 1830 French revolution. Recent developments in the study of history and in the world have done much to overturn established ideas, both of marxists who believed all revolutions led to socialism, and of liberals who feared violence, but who assumed democracy would triumph. Wedged between the revolutions of 1789 and 1848, the author asks was 1830 a minor bourgeois Parisian event? Although politically avoidable, Dr Pilbeam demonstrates that socially it was part of a long-running struggle of peasants and artisans to preserve their way of life.

Saint-Simonians were a group of young engineers and doctors who proposed original solutions to the social and banking crises of the early nineteenth century. Through an examination of the lives, ideals and activities of these men and women, the book analyses the influence of the Saint-Simonians on nineteenth-century French society.