Ending Revolution

There is a prodigious amount of literature on the French Revolution's origins. Less attention has been given to its end. Not that the issue is completely overlooked. Historians debate when to date the end of the Revolution. But identifying what an 'end' consists of has been somewhat arbitrary. One approach has been to identify the processes by which public order was more or less restored. After the great popular insurrections of 1795, crowds had less of an impact on regime changes. There were several coups between then and the rise of Napoleon, but these were orchestrated more from the top and not as much forced on the top from below.

This week focuses on three different 'ending' points, or processes: a) the fall of Robespierre; b) the rise of the 'liberal authoritarian' state; and c) the rise of Napoleon.

Core primary readings

* R. Bienvenu, The Ninth of Thermidor: The Fall of Robespierre (1968), pp. 143-75, 189-227. (MOODLE)

* Mason & Rizzo, FRDC, Chapter 11.

Core secondary readings

C. Jones, ‘The Overthrow of Maximilien Robespierre and the "Indifference" of the People’, American Historical Review (June 2014), 689-713.

H. Brown, ‘The New Security State’ in McPhee (ed.), in CFR, pp. 343-358.

P. Dwyer, ‘Napoleon, the Revolution, and the Empire’ in Andress (ed.), OHFR, 573-589.

 

Questions

1. Was the Thermidorian Reaction (the violence against 'terrorists' between the fall of Robespierre in July 1794 and founding of the Directory in September 1795) merely a continuation of revolutionary dynamics or was it a turning point?

2. Did did Thermidorian depictions of the Terror distort what really happened?

3. Why did the people not rise up to protect their hero, Robespierre? Was he really their hero?

4. Do you think Howard Brown's model of 'liberal authoritarianism' to explain the end of the Revolution is a contradiction in terms? Or does it make sense to you?

 

Further reading

M. Lyons, ‘The 9 Thermidor: motives and effects’, European Studies Review (1975)

A. Jainchill, Reimagining Politics after the Terror: the Republican Origins of French Liberalism (2008)

D. Woronoff, The Thermidorean Regime and the Directory (1984)

S. Clay, ‘The White Terror: Factions, Reactions, and the Politics of Vengeance’ in McPhee (ed.), A Companion to the French Revolution (2015), 359-377

M. Harder, ‘A Second Terror – The purges of French revolutionary legislators after Thermidor’, French Historical Studies, 38: 1 (2015), pp. 33-60

M. Lyons, France under the Directory (1975)

B. Baczko, Ending the Terror (1994)

J. Livesey, Making Democracy in the French Revolution (2001)

H.G. Brown & J.A. Miller (eds), Taking Liberties. Problems of a New Order from the French Revolution to Napoleon (2002)

H.G. Brown, War, Revolution and the Bureaucratic State: Politics and Army Administration in France, 1795-9 (1995)

H.G. Brown, Ending the French Revolution. Violence, Justice, and Repression from the Terror to Napoleon (2006).

L. Mason, ‘Thermidor and the Myth of Rupture’, in Andress (ed.), Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution (2015), 521-537

I. Woloch, The New Régime (1994)

I. Woloch, Jacobin Legacy: The Democratic Movement under the Directory (1970)

R. Schechter, ‘Gothic Thermidor: the bals des victimes, the fantastic and the production of historical knowledge in post-Terror France’, Representations, 61 (1998)