It is particularly good on the social and intellectual back-ground. There’s immediate writing about why this is making a point. As the world went into lockdown early in 2020, many of us without frontline jobs and lucky enough not to fall sick with Covid-19 found more time to read than usual. I suppose what has taken its place in France although it hadn’t quite materialised in his day was—what are those French schools called the brightest children go to? For Napoleon I would recommend you look for anything by David Chandler; he's one of the best authors for that period. by Hippolyte Taine In France, different types of changes have happened in the history. A specific time which brings lots of changes in a country is considered as the revolution. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years. He’s extremely critical of the revolution isn’t he? Read. Hodder Education The French Revolution: Teachers’ Support Material Democracy in America Yes, in the sense that Occupy Wall Street is about not just sitting around saying, “Oh! Let’s talk about your fourth book, Twelve Who Ruled, by R. R. Palmer. Read. Amongst them, and one that people tend to forget, is that when the monarchy comes back in 1814, there is a constitution. He was trying to be the new-style king, but in a situation in which it turned out to be impossible for him to push that through as a project. Was there a sense, do you think, in which Napoleon imagined himself as a condottiere? Did he have any direct experience of France? And somehow it’s quite true, you can’t demand that an erection go down or come up. We shouldn’t have a republic because they all say we shouldn’t.” He really gets you to see the political stakes that are involved. Read He was going over and over again, trying to find a way that France could overcome this gaping hole. For my book review, I have read and evaluated Sylvia Neely’s history book entitled A Concise History of the French Revolution published in 2007 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This is of course a very, very different thing. 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. Yes, they limit the vote, but there is no way that you’re not going to have a constitutional form of government from that time onwards. He’s actively involved, and yet he’s able to deliver this analytical tour de force. Hunt is the Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her 2007 work, Inventing Human Rights, has been heralded as the most comprehensive analysis of the history of human rights. Many people have tried to explain why the French Revolution is the way it is. The book offers good coverage of the origins, outbreak, course and results of the French Revolution to 1802. He points to the fact that it’s not a France that’s in misery, it’s a France that’s getting better and better off. And politics in general. Maybe I’m obsessive about this, but the whole question, “Does the revolution fail?” or “Why does the revolution fail?” is a misguided one. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount. Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases. They want to make something of it, and come up against a lot of obstacles. Documentary about the bloody beginning, bloodier middle and unceremonious end of the French Revolution, an event that ended in blood the reign of kings in France and laid the foundation for a new - republican - … What he shows you is that all these different things change in ways that will never be turned back again. But the revolution shows that governments are going to ignore this at their peril. Peregrine Worsthorne (1923-2020) was a journalist, writer and broadcaster. So it’s filled with incredibly interesting titbits and anecdotes and characterisations of people. Didn’t the book mirror his own disillusionment with communism, since he had originally been a member of the Communist Party? They’re fantastically frank. He thought having a ruling class which was rich and hereditary was a good thing. Neither of them could be regarded as propagandists or apologists. This is an incredibly brilliant perception. Yes, and it takes you back. So what does Furet actually say about the French Revolution? Violence spread to the countryside, … “Democracy has an internal, inherent tendency to lead to despotism unless there are certain conditions that prevent that from happening.”. What the revolution does is create a staggering rupture in people’s ideas in that regard, because a centuries-old monarchy just collapses, and is replaced by something that France had never had, a republic. The Complete Essays In short, you will end up with totalitarianism. $29.95. He maybe veers towards the Furet position, but it doesn’t have any of the analytical panache of either Tocqueville or Furet, because he’s telling a story, and wants to tell an interesting story. After the events unravel in the way they unravel, he is able to stand back and say, “What is going on? by Alexis de Tocqueville Read. I mean, you can’t be a politician without being deeply interested in history. By far the best single-volume history of the French Revolution, Doyle's book is suitable for all levels of interest. Read. To me, the revolution is filled with hundreds of thousands of stories of people who find their lives transformed for the better. The book argues that although the industrial revolution is often portrayed as a catastrophic event that led to environmental problems, harsh working conditions and child labor. Those people are not in Schama. You say it completely changed the way historians viewed the French Revolution. Buy The French Revolution New Ed by Hibbert, Christopher (ISBN: 8601300093253) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. He’s an incredible enthusiast. Here, philosopher David Edmonds, author of The Murder of Professor Schlick, introduces us to their ideas, their milieu and the poignant background to their lives and thinking. Let’s go through the books you’ve chosen. Well, there are two French writers among my recommendations. That’s a great story. It’s a way of saying that just because things are the way they are doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. Albert Soboul, The French Revolution, 1787–99. He never found one. He doesn’t try to make it seem like it’s all a bed of roses, that they’re just idealists who are achieving what they want to achieve – he’s also interested in the conflicts between them. Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases. Read. The revolution raises the whole issue of how change takes place, and how much people should organise to insist that change takes place. Yes. It’s not a good idea. The French Revolution Read Both of them are extremely serious historians. As the above poster suggests Marissa Linton’s, ‘Choosing Terror’ is excellent and the ‘Longman Companion to the French Revolution’, edited by Colin Jones is … He recommends the best books on the French Revolution, both for and against. There’s a growing gap between the rich and poor,” but figuring out what we’re going to do about it. In that sense, it has an enormous impact. Because it’s all ideology it doesn’t actually set up democratic forms of government, it veers off into terror and totalitarianism instead. Divorce is instituted in 1792. What the revolution showed is that it would, in future, be impossible to ignore the vast mass of the people. Was it going to be towards a kind of neoliberalism that many people associated Furet with in the 1970s and 1980s? I’m not saying this is sufficient, but one should definitely start with Michelet, Taine, Tocqueville. The opening essay in this book, “The Revolutionary Catechism”, is just devastating and no other approach would probably have had the decisive impact it had. A king had been beheaded before, as we know, in England. So when you see Wall Street being occupied, do you think of the French Revolution? All of these subjects are beautifully considered in Tocqueville’s books: two volumes about the American democracy. You just think, “Wow. 3 Your first choice is by one of the greatest interpreters of the revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville. The capture of the Bastille ignited one of the greatest social upheavals in Western history, the French Revolution. The sudden change to a slower gear also left more room to reflect on the state of the world and our place as humans in it. He was a leader writer and foreign correspondent for the Times from 1948-1953. It’s completely different from the other books. This is about the twelve members of the Committee of Public Safety, who led the Terror and of whom the most famous is probably Maximilien Robespierre. 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…. The French Revolution, three-volume narrative history by Scottish essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle, first published in 1837.. Tocqueville’s book had an incredibly wide influence in a variety of fields, with a variety of readerships. They’re working 20 hours a day, they’re devoting themselves completely to the cause of trying to save the republic. Yes, he really doesn’t like Louis XIV, but he really likes Louis XVI. Paul Lay, editor of History Today, recommends his favourite history books of 2020. As a view of the revolution, Schama’s book is anathema to Eric Hobsbawm. Published in 1969, this book covers the span of the American Revolution from the days of the French and Indian War to Washington’s inauguration and, while doing so, details the important political, military and social aspects of the revolution. Schama is not a specialist on the French Revolution is he? Let’s go on to François Furet, and his book Interpreting the French Revolution, published in 1978. He was afraid of what the war would do to the revolution. It's a revolution that still resonates and yet it resists easy interpretation. by RR Palmer Today it’s unbelievable really, to think that during the Napoleonic Wars prominent British politicians would be supporting the French cause. This isn't a book, so feel free to disregard, but Mike Duncan has a podcast called Revolutions. by Edmund Burke So much in Tocqueville has had such an enormous influence on social scientific thinking about social and political movements. He was the author of The Socialist Myth, 1972, Tricks of Memory, 1993 and In Defence of Aristocracy, 2004. They had no veneration so they couldn’t behave like gentlemen, they had to behave like ruthless tyrants. I mean, this is a man mostly writing very sort of highbrow stuff, but there’s one essay about why the human brain can control every part of the human body: arms, mouth, eyes and so on, but the only part of the human body that cannot be bullied is the human penis. And did it have an impact beyond France as well? “Oh well! What is the best history book on the French Revolution? But if you read it, it’s more about the French Revolution than the American Revolution. The sudden change to a slower gear also left more room to reflect on the state of the world and our place as humans in it. Absolutely. It had a staggering impact on the way historians viewed the French Revolution, because he was an extremely effective polemicist. Many books have been written about it, but I loved your comment, in your presidential address to the American Historical Association that “every great interpreter of the French Revolution – and there have been many such – has found the event ultimately mystifying”. The Tocquevillean answer is still an incredibly important answer, which is that you are more likely to end up as a democracy if you have institutions that support a democratic political life. Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. Since then, he’s become interested in art history, he’s done a lot on the history of Britain, which also was not his speciality originally. Yes, and he’d been a member of the same cell as the leading communist interpreter of the French Revolution. I mean a prime minister today is almost in the same position, in that he can’t afford to think the public are going to give him a second chance. You do it in order to get a democratic political life, but you don’t have the infrastructure in place to make that possible. by Alexis de Tocqueville Sophie Roell, editor of Five Books, takes us through her personal choice of the best nonfiction books of 2020. He refers to him as “this kindly and unfortunate prince”. Yes. The French Revolution ‘This is more than a history of the French Revolution. 4 There’s very little analysis. He seems to write about a lot of different things. One of them puts the case for the Revolution as far as it can be put, in my view. Fox of course was in favour of the French Revolution, and supported Napoleon. He makes you think that despite its high ideals, the French Revolution was an absolute disaster. I think he puts the case for that as well as it could be put. I wish somebody had told me to read them and I’d done them all together, and consistently, and kept them by me and learnt them by heart and, my goodness, I wish that every journalist who writes about politics would do the same. It’s a lesson in civilisation just to read them, if one could be like him the world would be a better place. This is an older book, from 1941, but very readable. All these books seem to me necessary, if you want to understand contemporary politics. French Revolution, revolutionary movement that shook France between 1787 and 1799 and reached its first climax there in 1789—hence the conventional term ‘Revolution of 1789,’ denoting the end of the ancien regime in France and serving also to distinguish that event from the later French … He wanted to argue that the problem with communism was that it was a false and contradictory ideology, and that you can’t change the world through ideology. I mean Machiavelli would say if you’re going to get rid of your opponents don’t just get rid of a few, get rid of the whole lot of them. But as a representation of what the revolution is about, it’s a problematic choice. It inaugurates an enormous debate about how far you can go to change things just because you think it’s reasonable and right to change them, and how much change has to take place in a more gradual way. Precisely what he was doing—not perhaps in a clear conscious way, but that is what it amounts to. It’s not that he’s just kind of around. That’s because Schama is really not interested in an extremely important part of it, which is that there are thousands of people who get involved in the revolution. Its creation was beset with difficulty; after spending months on the manuscript in 1834, Carlyle lent his only draft to philosopher John Stuart Mill, who accidentally burned it. We’re almost reverting to the time when reading Machiavelli might be necessary in English. They hold office, they go to meetings, they are sincerely motivated by the idea of establishing a democratic and republican form of government, because it will lead to more equality, more political freedom and more social justice. That is such a great way of saying it.”. What Tocqueville loves about the United States is that they have this infrastructure already, because of the forms of local representative government that had already developed before they broke from Great Britain. He didn’t just say it’s wrong, he derided it. And to read Montaigne, a 17th century writer writing in this completely sort of uninhibited way, is very cheering. He could conceive that you could improve, which is not of course what revolutions do because the very word revolution means more than just “improve”. by Niccolo Machiavelli What Machiavelli was saying to them was, you can’t rely on any sense of decency. They’re a model of how history should be written. He was an outsider, he was not a grandee, but he did flatter the English aristocracy in a way, by giving them a cleaner bill of health than they probably deserved. 5 You come away understanding not only more about French 17th and 18th century politics, but about politics today. Read The Glass Blowers by Daphne du Maurier Most novels of the French Revolution take place at the centre, in Paris or Versailles. This book is a somewhat dry presentation. The oxford History of the French Revolution by William Doyle is one of the standard texts used to study the period. One fact he mentions that surprised me, given the number of people he sent to their death, is that Robespierre started out as an opponent of capital punishment. That’s because he has done something that a few other historians have been able to do – and only a few – and that is to tell a story that’s sufficiently absorbing that people want to read it. If you suddenly, violently and in a short period of time, destroy the church hierarchy and the political hierarchy, the aristocracy, the great historical governing orders of France—you break them, get rid of them, humiliate them, kill them—you leave a gaping hole. This interview was published on August 6th, 2009, Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. Furet’s book, on the other hand, was very much a book for people who already knew something about the subject. What is so great about Tocqueville is that he looks at archives and studies the events, but he applies to it an amazing synthetic and analytical intelligence. The French Revolution is one of the most important – perhaps still the historical event of all time. And it’s a beautifully written book, a marvelous book to read: that’s Jules Michelet: who wrote his History of the Revolution in two volumes. And Napoleon spent a long time writing his own notes in the margins of his copy of The Prince. What explains how this could possibly happen? From the great Latin poet Ovid, to the poet of the 17th century English republic, John Milton. Simon is a very quick study and a fantastic writer and speaker. 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