The Persistence of the Old Regime

The Persistence of the Old Regime PDF Author: Arno J. Mayer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781844676361
Category : Europe
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A seminal book extremely challenging. The historical and political implications of the Mayer thesis will be widely discussed in years to come certainly not only by specialists. Carlo Ginzburg

The Persistence of the Old Regime

The Persistence of the Old Regime PDF Author: Arno J. Mayer
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction

The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: William Doyle
Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
ISBN: 0192853961
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
Beginning with a discussion of familiar images of the French Revolution, this work looks at how the ancien régime became ancien as well as examining cases in which achievement failed to match ambition.

Backstage at the Revolution

Backstage at the Revolution PDF Author: Victoria Johnson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226401952
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
On July 14, 1789, a crowd of angry French citizens en route to the Bastille broke into the Paris Opera and helped themselves to any sturdy weapon they could find. Yet despite its long association with the royal court, its special privileges, and the splendor of its performances, the Opera itself was spared, even protected, by Revolutionary officials. Victoria Johnson’s Backstage at the Revolution tells the story of how this legendary opera house, despite being a lightning rod for charges of tyranny and waste, weathered the most dramatic political upheaval in European history. Sifting through royal edicts, private letters, and Revolutionary records of all kinds, Johnson uncovers the roots of the Opera’s survival in its identity as a uniquely privileged icon of French culture—an identity established by the conditions of its founding one hundred years earlier under Louis XIV. Johnson’s rich cultural history moves between both epochs, taking readers backstage to see how a motley crew of singers, dancers, royal ministers, poet entrepreneurs, shady managers, and the king of France all played a part in the creation and preservation of one of the world’s most fabled cultural institutions.

The Furies

The Furies PDF Author: Arno J. Mayer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400823439
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 735

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Book Description
The great romance and fear of bloody revolution--strange blend of idealism and terror--have been superseded by blind faith in the bloodless expansion of human rights and global capitalism. Flying in the face of history, violence is dismissed as rare, immoral, and counterproductive. Arguing against this pervasive wishful thinking, the distinguished historian Arno J. Mayer revisits the two most tumultuous and influential revolutions of modern times: the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Although these two upheavals arose in different environments, they followed similar courses. The thought and language of Enlightenment France were the glories of western civilization; those of tsarist Russia's intelligentsia were on its margins. Both revolutions began as revolts vowed to fight unreason, injustice, and inequality; both swept away old regimes and defied established religions in societies that were 85% peasant and illiterate; both entailed the terrifying return of repressed vengeance. Contrary to prevalent belief, Mayer argues, ideologies and personalities did not control events. Rather, the tide of violence overwhelmed the political actors who assumed power and were rudderless. Even the best plans could not stem the chaos that at once benefited and swallowed them. Mayer argues that we have ignored an essential part of all revolutions: the resistances to revolution, both domestic and foreign, which help fuel the spiral of terror. In his sweeping yet close comparison of the world's two transnational revolutions, Mayer follows their unfolding--from the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Bolshevik Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited Masses; the escalation of the initial violence into the reign of terror of 1793-95 and of 1918-21; the dismemberment of the hegemonic churches and religion of both societies; the "externalization" of the terror through the Napoleonic wars; and its "internalization" in Soviet Russia in the form of Stalin's "Terror in One Country." Making critical use of theory, old and new, Mayer breaks through unexamined assumptions and prevailing debates about the attributes of these particular revolutions to raise broader and more disturbing questions about the nature of revolutionary violence attending new foundations.

University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization, Volume 7

University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization, Volume 7 PDF Author: Keith M. Baker
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226069500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
The University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization (nine volumes) makes available to students and teachers a unique selection of primary documents, many in new translations. These readings, prepared for the highly praised Western civilization sequence at the University of Chicago, were chosen by an outstanding group of scholars whose experience teaching that course spans almost four decades. Each volume includes rarely anthologized selections as well as standard, more familiar texts; a bibliography of recommended parallel readings; and introductions providing background for the selections. Beginning with Periclean Athens and concluding with twentieth-century Europe, these source materials enable teachers and students to explore a variety of critical approaches to important events and themes in Western history. Individual volumes provide essential background reading for courses covering specific eras and periods. The complete nine-volume series is ideal for general courses in history and Western civilization sequences.

French Salons

French Salons PDF Author: Steven D. Kale
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801883866
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Challenging many of the conclusions of recent historiography, including the depiction of salonnières as influential power brokers, French Salons offers an original, penetrating, and engaging analysis of elite culture and society in France before, during, and after the Revolution.

Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?

Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? PDF Author: Arno J. Mayer
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 184467777X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
Was the extermination of the Jews part of the Nazi plan from the very start? Arno Mayer offers astartling and compelling answer to this question, which is much debated among historians today.In doing so, he provides one of the most thorough and convincing explanations of how the genocidecame about in Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?, which provoked widespread interest and controversywhen first published. Mayer demonstrates that, while the Nazis’ anti-Semitism was always virulent, it did not becomegenocidal until well into the Second World War, when the failure of their massive, all-or-nothingcampaign against Russia triggered the Final Solution. He details the steps leading up to thisenormity, showing how the institutional and ideological frameworks that made it possible evolved,and how both related to the debacle in the Eastern theater. In this way, the Judeocide is placedwithin the larger context of European history, showing how similar ‘holy causes’ in the past havetriggered analogous – if far less cataclysmic – infamies.

Célestine

Célestine PDF Author: Gillian Tindall
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805045465
Category : Chassignolles (Indre, France)
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
In an abandoned old house in rural France, novelist Gillian Tindall discovered a cache of letters written in the 1860s, addressed to Celestine Chaumette. Tindall searched dusty archives and farmhouse attics and probed the memories and lore of local villagers in her quest for learn about Celestine. The treasures Tindall unearthed ultimately reach far beyond the mystery of one woman to tell of a vanished way of life, of a century of revolutionary change, and of the strange persistence, intrusion almost of the past into today.

Europe 1780 - 1830

Europe 1780 - 1830 PDF Author: Franklin L. Ford
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317870956
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 493

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Book Description
Europe 1780--1830 rapidly established itself as a standard introduction to European history in the age of the French Revolution and its aftermath when it first appeared. Now for the first time the book has been fully revised, updated and expanded. The half-century covered constitutes one of the most complex, eventful and rapidly changing of any in Europe's history. It is a period whose emphasis on conflict and political crisis combines daring innovation with the stubborn persistence of many older attitudes and patterns of human behaviour. Professor Ford explores these tensions throughout; and he gives his readers a powerful sense of the extraordinary energy, in every aspect of human activity, that characterised the time.

Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy

Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy PDF Author: Julian Swann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139440837
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Book Description
This is the first book in English to study the history of the Estates General of Burgundy during the classic period of absolute monarchy. Although not a representative institution in any modern sense, the Estates were constantly engaged in a process of bargaining with the French crown, and this book examines that relationship under the Ancien Régime. Julian Swann analyses the organization, membership and powers of the Estates and explores their administration, their struggles for power with rival institutions and their relationship with the crown and with the Burgundian people. The Estates proved remarkably resilient when confronted by the challenges posed by the Bourbon monarchy, and by the reign of Louis XVI they were seemingly more powerful than ever. However the desire to protect their privileges and to extend their authority had not been accompanied by an attempt to forge a meaningful relationship with the people they claimed to serve.