Contemporary visions of France: the Revolution, Women and History: A Summary of the 1989 Fall Colloquia, New York University’s Institute of French Studies

1990 ◽  
Vol 10 (x) ◽  
pp. 287-307
Author(s):  
Richard Cicchillo
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
French Society ◽  
French Studies ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

The seven colloquia held at New York University’s Institute of French Studies during the Fall 1989 semester offered some new perspectives on the French Revolution, and took stock of various elements of French Society and history two hundred years after the taking of the Bastille.

The Taxing of the Clergy in Eighteenth-Century France

1964 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Ravitch
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Temporal Characteristic ◽  
Major Area ◽  
French Society ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

If after many years of scholarship and controversy, the French Revolution is to be seen, with Georges Lefebvre, as preeminently the revolution of equality, and its most important achievement the substitution of a bourgeois and individualistic social order for the former aristocratic and corporatist one, the nature of eighteenth-century corporate or “constituted bodies” becomes a major area for research. There are many questions which the historian would like to ask about these aristocratic institutions, but generally these questions fall into two groups: the relationship of these bodies to society as a whole, and their inner cohesiveness. By examining the taxation of the clergy in eighteenth-century France, we investigate the chief temporal characteristic of the ecclesiastical estate and are in a position to evaluate both its relationship to French society as a whole and its internal strengths and weaknesses.

2. The general, 1796–1799

Napoleon ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 26-45
Author(s):  
David A. Bell
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Political Power ◽  
French Society ◽  
New Period ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

‘The general, 1796–1799’ describes how it was the French Revolution that made Napoleon’s stupefying ascent possible. The Revolution badly damaged the traditional hierarchies of French society, opening the door to radically new forms of social mobility and political power. It also unleashed newly intense forms of war, and provided French rulers with new ways to harness their country’s formidable natural resources against its enemies. Napoleon displayed both military and political genius. His successful battles in Italy and Austria are outlined, followed by his campaign in Egypt, which triggered a new period of large-scale European war. Finally, his return to France to sieze power from the French parliament is described.

The Revolutionizing of the Revolution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. R. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
French Government ◽  
Thing In Itself ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

In 1792, the French Revolution became a thing in itself, an uncontrollable force that might eventually spend itself but which no one could direct or guide. The governments set up in Paris in the following years all faced the problem of holding together against forces more revolutionary than themselves. This chapter distinguishes two such forces for analytical purposes. There was a popular upheaval, an upsurge from below, sans-culottisme, which occurred only in France. Second, there was the “international” revolutionary agitation, which was not international in any strict sense, but only concurrent within the boundaries of various states as then organized. From the French point of view these were the “foreign” revolutionaries or sympathizers. The most radical of the “foreign” revolutionaries were seldom more than advanced political democrats. Repeatedly, however, from 1792 to 1799, these two forces tended to converge into one force in opposition to the French government of the moment.

‘The greatest irregular’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Scurr
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Thomas Carlyle ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dramatic Narrative ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Thomas Carlyle claimed that his history of the French Revolution was ‘a wild savage book, itself a kind of French Revolution …’. This chapter considers his stylistic approaches to creating the illusion of immediacy: his presentation of seemingly unmediated fact through the transformation of memoir and other kinds of historical record into a compelling dramatic narrative. Closely examining the ways in which he worked biographical anecdote into the fabric of his text raises questions about Carlyle’s wider historical purposes. Pressing the question of what it means to think through style, or to distinguish expressive emotive writing from abstract understanding, is an opportunity to reconsider Carlyle’s relation to his predecessors and contemporaries writing on the Revolution in English.

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