Revolutionary Ideas

Revolutionary Ideas PDF Author: Jonathan Israel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400849993
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 883

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Book Description
How the Radical Enlightenment inspired and shaped the French Revolution Historians of the French Revolution used to take for granted what was also obvious to its contemporary observers—that the Revolution was shaped by the radical ideas of the Enlightenment. Yet in recent decades, scholars have argued that the Revolution was brought about by social forces, politics, economics, or culture—almost anything but abstract notions like liberty or equality. In Revolutionary Ideas, one of the world's leading historians of the Enlightenment restores the Revolution’s intellectual history to its rightful central role. Drawing widely on primary sources, Jonathan Israel shows how the Revolution was set in motion by radical eighteenth-century doctrines, how these ideas divided revolutionary leaders into vehemently opposed ideological blocs, and how these clashes drove the turning points of the Revolution. In this compelling account, the French Revolution stands once again as a culmination of the emancipatory and democratic ideals of the Enlightenment. That it ended in the Terror represented a betrayal of those ideas—not their fulfillment.

Revolutionary Ideas

Revolutionary Ideas PDF Author: Jonathan Israel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400849993
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 883

Get Book Here

Book Description
How the Radical Enlightenment inspired and shaped the French Revolution Historians of the French Revolution used to take for granted what was also obvious to its contemporary observers—that the Revolution was shaped by the radical ideas of the Enlightenment. Yet in recent decades, scholars have argued that the Revolution was brought about by social forces, politics, economics, or culture—almost anything but abstract notions like liberty or equality. In Revolutionary Ideas, one of the world's leading historians of the Enlightenment restores the Revolution’s intellectual history to its rightful central role. Drawing widely on primary sources, Jonathan Israel shows how the Revolution was set in motion by radical eighteenth-century doctrines, how these ideas divided revolutionary leaders into vehemently opposed ideological blocs, and how these clashes drove the turning points of the Revolution. In this compelling account, the French Revolution stands once again as a culmination of the emancipatory and democratic ideals of the Enlightenment. That it ended in the Terror represented a betrayal of those ideas—not their fulfillment.

Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution

Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution PDF Author: Lynn Hunt
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520931041
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
When this book was published in 1984, it reframed the debate on the French Revolution, shifting the discussion from the Revolution's role in wider, extrinsic processes (such as modernization, capitalist development, and the rise of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes) to its central political significance: the discovery of the potential of political action to consciously transform society by molding character, culture, and social relations. In a new preface to this twentieth-anniversary edition, Hunt reconsiders her work in the light of the past twenty years' scholarship.

Inventing the French Revolution `

Inventing the French Revolution ` PDF Author: Keith Michael Baker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521385787
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
A wide-ranging collection of essays exploring the question 'How did the French Revolution become thinkable?'.

The Coming of the French Revolution

The Coming of the French Revolution PDF Author: Georges Lefebvre
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691206937
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
The Coming of the French Revolution remains essential reading for anyone interested in the origins of this great turning point in the formation of the modern world. First published in 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, and suppressed by the Vichy government, this classic work explains what happened in France in 1789, the first year of the French Revolution. Georges Lefebvre wrote history "from below"—a Marxist approach. Here, he places the peasantry at the center of his analysis, emphasizing the class struggles in France and the significant role they played in the coming of the revolution. Eloquently translated by the historian R. R. Palmer and featuring an introduction by Timothy Tackett that provides a concise intellectual biography of Lefebvre and a critical appraisal of the book, this Princeton Classics edition continues to offer fresh insights into democracy, dictatorship, and insurrection.

A Revolution in Language

A Revolution in Language PDF Author: Sophia A. Rosenfeld
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804749312
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
What is the relationship between the ideas of the Enlightenment and the culture and ideology of the French Revolution? This book takes up that classic question by concentrating on changing conceptions of language and, especially, signs during the second half of the eighteenth century. The author traces, first, the emergence of a new interest in the possibility of gestural communication within the philosophy, theater, and pedagogy of the last decades of the Old Regime. She then explores the varied uses and significance of a variety of semiotic experiments, including the development of a sign language for the deaf, within the language politics of the Revolution. A Revolution in Language shows not only that many key revolutionary thinkers were unusually preoccupied by questions of language, but also that prevailing assumptions about words and other signs profoundly shaped revolutionaries' efforts to imagine and to institute an ideal polity between 1789 and the start of the new century. This book reveals the links between Enlightenment epistemology and the development of modern French political culture.

Capitalism and the Emergence of Civic Equality in Eighteenth-Century France

Capitalism and the Emergence of Civic Equality in Eighteenth-Century France PDF Author: William H. Sewell Jr.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022677046X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
"William H. Sewell, Jr. turns to the experience of commercial capitalism to show how the commodity form abstracted social relations. The increased independence, flexibility, and anonymity of market relations made equality between citizens not only conceivable but attractive. Commercial capitalism thus found its way into the interstices of this otherwise rigidly hierarchical society, coloring social relations and paving the way for the establishment of civic equality"--

The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie

The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie PDF Author: Sarah Maza
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674040724
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Who, exactly, were the French bourgeoisie? Unlike the Anglo-Americans, who widely embraced middle-class ideals and values, the French--even the most affluent and conservative--have always rejected and maligned bourgeois values and identity. In this new approach to the old question of the bourgeoisie, Sarah Maza focuses on the crucial period before, during, and after the French Revolution, and offers a provocative answer: the French bourgeoisie has never existed. Despite the large numbers of respectable middling town-dwellers, no group identified themselves as bourgeois. Drawing on political and economic theory and history, personal and polemical writings, and works of fiction, Maza argues that the bourgeoisie was never the social norm. In fact, it functioned as a critical counter-norm, an imagined and threatening embodiment of materialism, self-interest, commercialism, and mass culture, which defined all that the French rejected. A challenge to conventional wisdom about modern French history, this book poses broader questions about the role of anti-bourgeois sentiment in French culture, by suggesting parallels between the figures of the bourgeois, the Jew, and the American in the French social imaginary. It is a brilliant and timely foray into our beliefs and fantasies about the social world and our definition of a social class.

France in the Enlightenment

France in the Enlightenment PDF Author: Daniel Roche
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674317475
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 742

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Book Description
A panorama of a whole civilization, a world on the verge of cataclysm, unfolds in this magisterial work by the foremost historian of eighteenth-century France. Since Tocqueville's account of the Old Regime, historians have struggled to understand the social, cultural, and political intricacies of this efflorescence of French society before the Revolution. France in the Enlightenment is a brilliant addition to this historical interest. France in the Enlightenment brings the Old Regime to life by showing how its institutions operated and how they were understood by the people who worked within them. Daniel Roche begins with a map of space and time, depicting France as a mosaic of overlapping geographical units, with people and goods traversing it to the rhythms of everyday life. He fills this frame with the patterns of rural life, urban culture, and government institutions. Here as never before we see the eighteenth-century French "culture of appearances": the organization of social life, the diffusion of ideas, the accoutrements of ordinary people in the folkways of ordinary living--their food and clothing, living quarters, reading material. Roche shows us the eighteenth-century France of the peasant, the merchant, the noble, the King, from Paris to the provinces, from the public space to the private home. By placing politics and material culture at the heart of historical change, Roche captures the complexity and depth of the Enlightenment. From the finest detail to the widest view, from the isolated event to the sweeping trend, his masterly book offers an unparalleled picture of a society in motion, flush with the transformation that will be its own demise.

The Old Regime and the Revolution

The Old Regime and the Revolution PDF Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description


Vive la Revolution

Vive la Revolution PDF Author: Mark Steel
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743208056
Category : France
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
For most of us, the French Revolution has been reduced to jokes about Marie-Antoinette, guillotines and the Scarlet Pimpernel. But for Mark Steel, bestselling author of REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL, the French Revolution was one of the most inspirational moments in human history - a moment when ordinary people changed the world and became extraordinary. It deserves better jokes than that. In this revolutionary new book, Steel banishes stuffiness from history, telling us what happened in France between the storming of the Bastille and the rise of Napoleon, bringing to life the people who made them happen. His account is dominated by bizarre events and splendid characters, from the famously odd Robespierre, Danton and Thomas Paine, to the less well known Drouet, the local postman who arrested the fleeing King because he recognised him as the man off of the money. VIVE LA REVOLUTION is an uproariously serious work of history - brilliantly funny and insightful, it puts the peculiarity of individual people back at the centre of the story.