Following the vein of French historiography, many twentieth-century scholars of the French Revolution believed that the middle class of lawyers played a crucial role in the Revolution. In The Barristers of Toulouse, Lenard Berlanstein contends with that notion in a case study examining the response of the Toulousian legal community to the French Revolution. Using tax rolls, marriage contracts, and court records as primary sources, Professor Berlanstein argues that class interests-such as a desire to preserve their status in the cultured, conservative urban elite-led many Toulousian judges and...
Following the vein of French historiography, many twentieth-century scholars of the French Revolution believed that the middle class of lawyers played...
In The Working People of Paris, 1871-1914, Lenard Berlanstein examines how technological advances, expanding industrialization, bureaucratization, and urban growth affected the lives of the working poor and near poor of one of the world's most influential cities during an era of intense social and cultural change. Berlanstein departs from other historians of the working classes in treating, in a parallel manner, not only craftsmen and factory laborers but also service workers and lower-level white-collar employees. Avoiding the fallacy of letting the city limits set the boundaries of an urban...
In The Working People of Paris, 1871-1914, Lenard Berlanstein examines how technological advances, expanding industrialization, bureaucratization, and...