Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A global-historical perspective (66 page)

A Commentary on
The Coming of the French Revolution
,”
American

Historical Review
71 (1965): 77–103, and (in a more general way) by George

V. Taylor, “Noncapitalist Wealth and the Origins of the French Revolu-

tion,”
American Historical Review
72 (1967): 469–96. The kinds of eco-

nomic issues emphasized in the Marxist view of revolutionary causation

have been updated by David Weir, “Les Crises économiques et les origines

de la Révolution franc¸aise,” in
Annales: E. S. C.
46 (1991): 917–47.

Recently, however, new exegeses of revolutionary origins have emerged.

Prominent among them have been those stressing cultural dynamics.

Refer to: Keith Baker,
Inventing the French Revolution
(New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1990); Roger Chartier,
The Cultural Origins

of the French Revolution,
trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Durham, N.C.: Duke

University Press, 1991); and Dale Van Kley,
The Religious Origins of the

French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560–1791

(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996). On the other hand,

domestic (that is, French) and international politics have also drawn re-

newed interest. William Doyle has played up domestic political causation

(and deemphasized socioeconomic factors) in his
Origins of the French

Revolution
, 3d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). In the mean-

time, C. B. A. Behrens as far back as 1967 had argued the case for the

centrality of foreign-policy concerns to the onset of revolution in

The Ancien Régime
(London: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1967; reissued

by Norton, 1989). That kind of analysis has figured most recently in

Bailey Stone,
The Genesis of the French Revolution: A Global-Historical

Interpretation
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

272

Suggestions for Further Reading

Integral to any discussion of the question of revolutionary origins is a

studied reconsideration of the “prerevolutionary crisis” of 1787–88. Here,

the standard point of departure remains Jean Egret,
The French Prerevolu-

tion, 1787–1788
, trans. Wesley D. Camp (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1977). Egret’s work in this area has been notably updated by Vivian

Gruder’s articles. See, for example: “A Mutation in Elite Political Culture:

The French Notables and the Defense of Property and Participation, 1787,”

Journal of Modern History
56 (1984): 598–634; “The Society of Orders at Its Demise: The Vision of the Elite at the End of the Ancien Régime,”
French

History
1 (1987): 210–37; and “Un Message politique adressé au public:

Les pamphlets ‘populaires’ à la veille de la Révolution,”
Revue d’Histoire

Moderne et Contemporaine
39 (1992): 161–97. Michael Fitzsimmons has

criticized some of Gruder’s notions in “Privilege and the Polity in France,

1786–1791,”
American Historical Review
92 (1987): 269–95. Also helpful

in this connection is Kenneth Margerison, “History, Representative

Institutions, and Political Rights in the French Pre-Revolution,”
French

Historical Studies
15 (1987): 68–98.

Rather than venturing too far into the dense thickets of scholarship

on France before 1787, we have to limit ourselves to citing some of the

most recent works on selected topics in that area. Jeremy Black has fur-

nished two of the most recent surveys of the geopolitics of that era:
The

Rise of the European Powers 1679–1793
(London: Edward Arnold, 1990);

and
European Warfare, 1660–1815
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University

Press, 1994). Orville T. Murphy looks at the nexus between French “public

opinion” and French foreign policy in
The Diplomatic Retreat of France

and Public Opinion on the Eve of the French Revolution, 1783–1789

(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1997). John

Hardman has deepened our knowledge of domestic politics in the late

ancien régime: see
Louis XVI
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,

1993),and
FrenchPolitics1774–1789: From the Accession of Louis XVI to the

Fall of the Bastille
(London: Longman, 1995). Two recent studies of the po-

litical culture of the high Parisian magistracy under Louis XVI also require

mention: Sarah Maza,
Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres

of Prerevolutionary France
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); and David Bell,
Lawyers and Citizens: The Making of a Political Elite in

Old Regime France
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Especially

revealing on the nature of privilege (social and political) in the twilight of

the old regime is Gail Bossenga,
The Politics of Privilege: Old Regime and

Revolution in Lille
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Finally,

L. M. Cullen reinterprets the fiscal and economic aspects of the demise

of the ancien régime in “History, Economic Crises, and Revolutions:

Understanding Eighteenth-Century France,”
Economic History Review

46 (1993): 635–57.

Suggestions for further reading

273

d i p l o m a c y a n d w a r

A very old but still very useful conspectus on international politics in

the revolutionary era is Albert Sorel,
L’Europe et la R
é
volution franc¸aise
, 8 vols. (Paris: E. Plon, 1885–1904). Two helpful updates of Sorel were

provided in the 1960s by Geoffrey Bruun and Steven T. Ross. Refer to

Bruun, “The Balance of Power during the Wars, 1793–1814,” in
The New

Cambridge Modern History, Vol. 9: War and Peace in an Age of Upheaval,

1793–1830
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), pp. 250–74;

and Ross,
France against Europe: European Diplomatic History, 1789–1815

(New York: Doubleday, 1969). Recently, T. C. W. Blanning has revisited

the issues involved in the bellicose European diplomacy of the 1790s. See,

in particular,
The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars
(London:

Longman, 1986), and
The French Revolutionary Wars 1787–1802
(London:

Arnold, 1996).

A number of studies of specific incidents in and aspects of French

Revolutionary diplomacy also deserve mention. They are as follows: Barry

Rothaus, “The Emergence of Legislative Control over Foreign Policy in

the Constituent Assembly, 1789–91” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin,

1968); H. V. Evans, “The Nootka Sound Controversy in Anglo-French

Diplomacy – 1790,”
Journal of Modern History
46 (1974): 609–40; Patricia

Chastain Howe, “Charles-Franc¸ois Dumouriez and the Revolutionizing

of French Foreign Affairs in 1792,”
French Historical Studies
14 (1986):

367–90; Linda Frey and Marsha Frey, “‘The Reign of the Charlatans Is

Over’: The French Revolutionary Attack on Diplomatic Practice,”
Journal

of Modern History
65 (1993): 706–44; and Sydney Biro,
The German

Policy of Revolutionary France: A Study in French Diplomacy during the

War of the First Coalition, 1792–1797
, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press, 1957).

The reader may also wish to consult works delving into the diplomacy

of the other European states. Crucial for the Austrian perspective is Karl

A. Roider, Jr.,
Baron Thugut and Austria’s Response to the French Revolu-

tion
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987). Some information

on Russian foreign policy appears in Isabel De Madariaga,
Russia in the

Age of Catherine the Great
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,

1981). Not surprisingly, however, monographs on British diplomacy

predominate in this area. For the early years of the revolutionary era, see

Jeremy Black,
British Foreign Policy in an Age of Revolutions, 1783–1793

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Notably useful for the

late 1790s are: Edward Ingram,
Commitment to Empire: Prophecies of the

Great Game in Asia, 1797–1800
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981); and

Piers Mackesy,
War
w
ithout Victory: The Downfall of Pitt, 1799–1802

274

Suggestions for Further Reading

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). Finally, Paul Schroeder offers a more

systemic analysis of developments in the late 1790s in “The Collapse of the

Second Coalition,”
Journal of Modern History
59 (1987): 244–90.

War has ever been the handmaiden of diplomacy; and certainly the

reader will find no lack of scholarly literature treating the military strat-

egy and institutions of revolutionary France. A good overview of mili-

tary planning in the 1790s is Steven T. Ross,
Quest for Victory: French

Military Strategy, 1792–1799
(New York: A. S. Barnes, 1973). Marcel

Reinhard has provided useful “Observations sur le r ôle révolutionnaire

de l’Armée dans la Révolution franc¸aise” in the
Annales historiques

de la R
é
volution fran
c¸
aise
168 (1962): 169–81. There is now a substantial body of works on the armies of the 1789–99 period. Outstanding among

them are the following: Samuel F. Scott,
The Response of the Royal Army

to the French Revolution
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); John

A. Lynn,
The Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army

of Revolutionary France, 1791–1794
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press,

1984); Alan Forrest,
Conscripts and Deserters: The Army and French Society

during the Revolution and Empire
(New York: Oxford University Press,

1989), and
The Soldiers of the French Revolution
(Durham, N.C.: Duke

University Press, 1990); Jean-Paul Bertaud,
The Army of the French Revo-

lution: From Citizen-Soldiers to Instrument of Power
, trans. R. R. Palmer

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989); and Howard

G. Brown,
War, Revolution, and the Bureaucratic State: Politics and Army

Administration in France, 1791–1799
(New York: Oxford University Press,

1996). The politically sensitive issue of army veterans is addressed by

Isser Woloch,
The French Veteran from the Revolution to the Restoration

(Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1979). Ken Alder

situates French military issues in a broader cultural context in
Engineering

the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763–1815
(Princeton,

N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997).

Perhaps understandably, the Revolution’s naval forces have drawn less

scholarly attention than have its armies. Still, the reader is by no means

bereft of resources in this area. Norman Hampson, for example, presented

much valuable information in “The ‘Comité de Marine’ of the Constituent

Assembly,”
The Historical Journal
2 (1959): 130–48, and in
La Marine

de L’An II: Mobilisation de la Flotte de l’Océan, 1793–94
(Paris: Marcel

Rivière et Cie., 1959). Hampson’s work, however, is in some respects su-

perseded by William S. Cormack,
Revolution and Political Conflict in the

French Navy, 1789–1794
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

d o m e s t i c p o l i t i c s

The domestic politics of the eventful year 1789 have inspired the labors

of numerous historians. Jacques Necker’s role in 1789 is thoroughly

Suggestions for further reading

275

examined in Jean Egret,
Necker: Ministre de Louis XVI, 1776–1790
(Paris:

Honoré Champion, 1975), and Robert Harris,
Necker and the Revolution

of 1789
(Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1986). The crisis

touched off in early July by the king’s dismissal of Necker is reex-

amined by Munro Price in “The ‘Ministry of the Hundred Hours’: A

Reappraisal,”
French History
4 (1990): 317–39. Lynn Hunt has very deftly

analyzed political developments in the cities and towns of France during

the summer months in “Committees and Communes: Local Politics

and National Revolution in 1789,”
Comparative Studies in Society and

History
18 (1976): 321–46. On the significant split at summer’s end be-

tween “Patriots” and “Monarchists” in the Constituent Assembly, see, first,

Egret,
La Révolution des notables: Mounier et les Monarchiens
(Paris:

Armand Colin, 1950), and then Robert H. Griffiths,
Le Centre perdu:

Malouet et les “monarchiens” dans la R
é
volution franc¸aise
(Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1988). Barry M. Shapiro takes early revolutionary politics into 1790 in
Revolutionary Justice in Paris, 1789–1790

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

The labors of the National Constituent Assembly (1789–91) have in

recent years attracted growing scholarly interest. See, especially: Norman