Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A global-historical perspective (67 page)

Hampson,
The Constituent Assembly and the Failure of Consensus,

1789–1791
(New York: Blackwell, 1988); Harriet B. Applewhite,
Political

Alignment in the French National Assembly, 1789–1791
(Baton Rouge:

Louisiana State University Press, 1993); Michael P. Fitzsimmons,
The

Remaking of France: The National Assembly, the Constitution of 1791 and

the Reorganization of the French Polity, 1789–1791
(New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1994); and Timothy Tackett,
Becoming a Revolutionary:

The Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Emergence

of a Revolutionary Culture (1789–1790)
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton

University Press, 1996). The principal (and not altogether satisfactory)

work on this assembly’s short-lived successor, the Legislative Assembly,

is C. J. Mitchell,
The French Legislative Assembly of 1791
(New York:

E. J. Brill, 1988).

The storied National Convention of 1792–95 – especially in its faction-

ridden first year – has been the subject of extensive research. M. J. Sydenham

inaugurated the “modern” phase of this historiography with his contro-

versial monograph
The Girondins
(London: Athlone Press, 1961). Alison

Patrick followed this up by reappraising the “Political Divisions in the

French National Convention, 1792–93” in the
Journal of Modern History

41 (1969): 421–74; she then enlarged upon her political analysis in
The Men

of the First French Republic
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,

1972). Gary Kates has more recently contributed to this controversy with

The Cercle Social, the Girondins, and the French Revolution
(Princeton,

N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985). So have Michael S. Lewis-Beck,

Anne Hildreth, and Alan B. Spitzer, in “Was There a Girondist Faction in

276

Suggestions for Further Reading

the National Convention, 1792–1793?”
French Historical Studies
15 (1988):

519–36. Other historians, too numerous to mention, have helped to keep

this particular pot boiling.

There is, of course, a vast literature on the most radical years of

the Revolution. The reader can get a good grasp of the politics of this

period by consulting Marc Bouloiseau,
The Jacobin Republic, 1792–1794
,

trans. Jonathan Mandelbaum (New York: Cambridge University Press,

1984). On the king’s trial, the following works are recommended: David

P. Jordan,
The King’s Trial
(Berkeley: University of California Press,

1979); Michael Walzer, ed.,
Regicide and Revolution: Speeches at the

Trial of Louis XVI
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); and

Susan Dunn,
The Deaths of Louis XVI: Regicide and the French Political

Imagination
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994). Robert

R.Palmerhasunforgettablyanalyzedthe‘‘great”Committeeof PublicSafety

in
Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1941; reissued 1989). The

Committee’s most notorious member, Maximilien Robespierre, has at-

tracted countless biographers. James M. Thompson’s classic
Robespierre
,

2 vols. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1935) has been supplemented, if not superseded,

by Norman Hampson,
The Life and Opinions of Maximilien Robespierre

(London: Duckworth, 1974), and David P. Jordan,
The Revolutionary

Career of Maximilien Robespierre
(New York: Free Press, 1985). Morris

Slavin has usefully studied aspects of the Parisian Terror in
The French Rev-

olution in Miniature: Section Droits-de-l’Homme, 1789–1795
(Princeton,

N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984) and
The Making of an Insurrection:

Parisian Sections and the Gironde
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1986). The dismantling of the Terror receives effective coverage

in Bronislaw Baczko,
Ending the Terror: The French Revolution after

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

Denis Woronoff discusses both the Thermidorian period and the

Directory in
The Thermidorean Regime and the Directory, 1794–1799
,

trans. Julian Jackson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

Although very old, Albert Goodwin’s stout defense of the Directory is still

worth consulting: “The French Executive Directory – A Revaluation,”

History
22 (1937): 201–18. J.-R. Suratteau updates the pertinent histo-

riography considerably in “Le Directoire d’après des travaux récents,”

Annales historiques de la Révolution franc¸aise
224 (1976): 181–214.

Also meriting a reading is Martyn Lyons,
France under the Directory

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). More specifically, there

is an ever-growing body of monographs and articles focused upon the

politics and political culture of those years. Consult, as examples in point:

Isser Woloch,
Jacobin Legacy: The Democratic Movement under the

Directory
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970); Colin Lucas,

Suggestions for further reading

277

“The First Directory and the Rule of Law,”
French Historical Studies

10 (1977): 231–60, and “The Rules of the Game in Local Politics under

the Directory,” ibid., 16 (1989): 345–71; and Lynn Hunt, David Lansky,

and Paul Hanson, “The Failure of the Liberal Republic in France,

1795–1799: The Road to Brumaire,”
Journal of Modern History
51 (1979):

734–59.

Of course, some of the research on Parisian and “national” politics

in the revolutionary epoch shades off inevitably into a reexamination of

local politics; and this reminds us that some of the finest recent work

has deliberately focused on politics in the provinces. Playing a transitional

role here have been studies of electoral procedures and of institutions like

the Jacobin Clubs that were pivotal simultaneously in national and local

politics. Two books on the Revolution’s elections are: Patrice Guennifey,

Le Nombre et la raison: La Révolution franc¸aise et les élections
(Paris:

Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1993), and Malcolm Crook,

Elections in the French Revolution: An Apprenticeship in Democracy 1789–

1799
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). On the Jacobins,

Crane Brinton’s
The Jacobins: An Essay in the New History
(New York:

MacMillan, 1930) is still a useful starting point. But the reader will then

want to go on to Michael Kennedy,
The Jacobin Clubs in the French

Revolution,
2 vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982–88).

Most recently, there is Patrice Higonnet,
Goodness beyond Virtue: Jacobins

during the French Revolution
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1998).

Among the myriad regional studies that have appeared in the last several

decades, the following stand out: Philip Dawson,
Provincial Magistrates

and Revolutionary Politics in France, 1789–1795
(Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1972); William Scott,
Terror and Repression

in Revolutionary Marseilles
(London: Macmillan, 1973); Colin Lucas,

The Structure of the Terror: The Example of Javogues and the Loire

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1973); Alan Forrest,
Society and

Politics in Revolutionary Bordeaux
(New York: Oxford University Press,

1975); Lynn Hunt,
Revolution and Urban Politics in Provincial France:

Troyes and Reims, 1786–1790
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,

1978); Gwynne Lewis,
The Second Vendée: The Continuity of Counter-

revolution in the Department of the Gard, 1789–1815
(Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1978); Martyn Lyons,
Revolution in Toulouse: An Essay on Provin-

cial Terrorism
(Berne: Peter Lang, 1978); Hubert C. Johnson,
The Midi in
Revolution: A Study of Regional Political Diversity, 1789–1793
(Princeton,

N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986); Paul R. Hanson,
Provincial Politics

in the French Revolution: Caen and Limoges, 1789–1794
(Baton Rouge:

Louisiana State University Press, 1989); and Bill Edmonds,
Jacobinism

and the Revolt of Lyon, 1789–1793
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).

278

Suggestions for Further Reading

Historians have also endeavored to fashion broader explanations

of political resistance to the will of Paris in provincial France. On the

“federalist” revolt of 1793, for example, see in particular M. H. Crook,

“Federalism and the French Revolution: The Revolt of Toulon in 1793,”

History
65 (1980): 383–97; and Bill Edmonds, “Federalism and Urban

Revolt in France in 1793,”
Journal of Modern History
55 (1983): 22–53.

The massive literature on the Vendée (at least up to 1968) is reviewed by

Harvey Mitchell, “The Vendée and Counterrevolution: A Review Essay,”

French Historical Studies
5 (1968): 405–29. To this, Mitchell himself

has added “Resistance to the Revolution in Western France,”
Past and

Present
63 (1974): 94–131. T. J. A. Le Goff and D. M. G. Sutherland have

coauthored two valuable articles on peasant resistance in western France:

“The Revolution and the Rural Community in Eighteenth-Century

Brittany,”
Past and Present
62 (1974): 96–119; and “The Social Origins

of Counter-Revolution in Western France,” ibid. 99 (1983): 65–87. See

also Sutherland,
The Chouans: The Social Origins of Popular Counter-

Revolution in Upper Brittany, 1770–1796
(New York: Oxford University

Press, 1982). On the international counterrevolution, see (in addition to the

older works by Jacques Godechot) Harvey Mitchell,
The Underground

War against Revolutionary France
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965).

a d m i n i s t r a t i v e a n d f i n a n c i a l r e f o r m s

The books and articles that fall under this heading are relatively few in

number but, arguably, disproportionately important, treating as they do

the specific structures of government and modalities of financing policy-

making in revolutionary France.

The reader should start here with Isser Woloch’s recent overview of

“civic” institutions dating from this era:
The New Regime: Transformations

of the French Civic Order, 1789–1820s
(New York: Norton, 1994). The

pivotal figure in modern research on the development of bureaucracy

in the Revolution is Clive Church. See, first of all, three of his articles:

“The Social Basis of the French Central Bureaucracy under the Directory,

1795–1799,”
Past and Present
36 (1967): 59–72; “Bureaucracy, Politics and

Revolution,”
French Historical Studies
6 (1970): 492–516; and “In Search of the Directory,” in J. F. Bosher, ed.,
French Government and Society, 1500–

1850
(London: Athlone Press, 1973), pp. 261–94. Church then produced

a full-length study of this subject:
Revolution and Red Tape: The French

Ministerial Bureaucracy 1770–1850
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981). Al-

though there is nothing quite like this last-named work for the provinces,

Ted W. Margadant has written incisively on provincial aspects of the

Constituent Assembly’s administrative reforms in
Urban Rivalries in the

French Revolution
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992).

Suggestions for further reading

279

On the somewhat technical but nonetheless crucial subject of govern-

ment finances, the reader may wish first to consult the old-fashioned but

still useful studies by Charles Gomel, René Stourm, and Marcel Marion.

J. F. Bosher, however, has signally modernized our views of the subject.

See, in particular: “French Administration and Public Finance in Their

European Setting,” in
The New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. 8: The

American and French Revolutions, 1763–1793
(Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1965), pp. 565–91; and
French Finances, 1770–1795:

From Business to Bureaucracy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1970). A stimulating comparison of French and British finances throughout

(and beyond) this period is given by Peter Mathias and Patrick O’Brien,

“Taxation in Britain and France, 1715–1810. A Comparison of the Social

and Economic Incidence of Taxes Collected for the Central Governments,”

Journal of European Economic History
5 (1976): 601–50. More recently,

there is the research of Jean-Pierre Gross into the relationship between so-

ciopolitical radicalism and modes of taxation in revolutionary France. See,

notably: “Progressive Taxation and Social Justice in Eighteenth-Century

France,”
Past and Present
140 (1993): 79–126; and
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