Freedom and Discontents

The period between 1789 and mid 1792 (when the monarchy was toppled) is often called the 'liberal phase'. For some historians it was a 'happy phase' as well -- an optimistic period of freedom when democratic institutions and practices took root. It precedes the 'radical' or 'Jacobin phase' -- a tumultuous period of civil war and terror. How the Revolution swung from one phase to the other is a staple question in French Revolutionary studies. Was a good Revolution blown off course by a radical 'sect' of ideologues (Jacobins)? Or did the 'liberal phase' already contain the seeds of radicalisation? Just how much of the Terror (1793-94) owed to unresolved tensions between the freedoms and equalities proclaimed in the Revolution's early years?

The readings this week address some of the areas where the limits of freedom and equality remained undefined.

 

Quiz - 20 multiple choice questions on Popkin and readings up to and including week 8. 20 mins in class.

Counts towards participation

 

Core primary reading

* Mason & Rizzo, FRDC, chps 4 & 6. (Skip the documents concerning rights, which we read last week).

Civil Constitution of the ClergyLink opens in a new window (July 1790)

Clerical OathLink opens in a new window (Nov 1790)

 

Core secondary reading

J. Markoff, ‘Violence, Emancipation, and Democracy: The Countryside and the French Revolution’, American Historical Review 100: 2 (1995), 360-386

M. Crook, ‘The New Regime: Political Institutions and Democratic Practices under the Constitutional Monarchy, 1789-1791’, in OHFR, 218-235.

E. Woell, ‘Religion and Revolution’, in OHFR, 254-271.

 

Questions

1. How necessary was violence for liberating peasants from the vestiges of the Ancien Régime feudalism?

2. Do the parameters of elections in the early Revolution account for radicalisation?

3. Was the Civil Constitution of the Clergy a mistake? What were the alternatives and how might they have played out given the political and financial context?

 

Further reading

General

M. Price, ‘The Ministry of the 100 Hours: a reappraisal’, French History, 4 (1990)

M. Price, The Fall of the French Monarchy (2002)

T. Tackett, When the King Took Flight (2003)

G. Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution (1959)

R.B. Rose, ‘How to make a revolution: the Paris districts in 1789’, BJRL, (1977)

W. Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution, 3^rd edn. (1999)

G. Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution (1946)

R. Harris, Necker and the Revolution of 1789 (1986)

D. Wick, A Conspiracy of Well-Intentioned Men: The Society of Thirty and the French Revolution (1987)

G.A. Kelly, ‘The machine of the duc d’Orléans and the new politics’, JMH (1979)

S.F. Scott, The Response of the Royal Army to the French Revolution, 1785-93 (1978)

K. Alder, ‘Stepson of the Enlightenment: the duc de Châtelet, the colonel who “caused” the French Revolution’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32 (1998-9)

D. Garrioch, ‘The everyday lives of Parisian women and the October Days of 1789’, Social History, 24 (1999)

C. Lucas, ‘Talking about popular violence in 1789’, in A. Forrest & P.M. Jones (eds), Reshaping France (1991)

The Bastille

C. Quétel, Escape from the Bastille: the Life and Legend of Latude (1989)

R. Reichard & H.J. Lusebrink, The Bastille: A History of a Symbol of Despotism and Freedom (1997)

Rural – General

P.M. Jones, The Peasantry in the French Revolution (1988).

P.T. Hoffman, Growth in a Traditional Society: The French Countryside, 1450-1815 (1996).

L. Vardi, The Land and the Loom: Peasants and Profits in Northern France, 1680-1800 (1993)

H.L Root, Peasants and King in Burgundy. Agrarian Foundations of French Absolutism (1987)

O. Hufton, ‘The seigneur and the rural community in eighteenthcentury France: the seigenurial reaction. A reappraisal’, TRHS, 5th series, 29 (1979)

O. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 1750-89 (1974)

C. Jones, The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France (1989)

R.M. Schwartz, Policing the Poor in Eighteenth-Century France (1988)

T. Adams, Bureaucrats and Beggars: French Social Policy in the Age of Enlightenment (1990)

G.L. Gullickson, Spinners and Weavers of Auffay: Rural Industry and the Sexual Division of Labor in a French Village (1986).

Rural - 1789

G. Lefebvre, The Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France (1973)

C. Ramsay, The Ideology of the Great Fear. The Soissonnais in 1789 (1992)

A. Davies, ‘The origins of the French peasant revolution of 1789’, History, 49 (1964)

P.M. Jones, The Peasantry in the French Revolution (1988)

J. Markoff, The Abolition of Feudalism. Peasants, Lords and Legislators in the French Revolution (1996)

M.P. Fitzsimmons, The Night the Old Regime Ended. August 4, 1789, and the French Revolution (2003)

P. Kessel, La Nuit du 4 août 1789 (Paris, 1969)

Town and Country

L. Hunt, ‘Committees and communes: local politics and national revolution in 1789’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 18 (1976)

L. Hunt, Revolution and Urban Politics in Provincial France. Troyes and Reims,

1786-90 (1978)

A. Crubaugh, ‘Local Justice and Rural Society in the French Revolution’, Journal of Social History (2000).

P.M. Jones, Liberty and Locality in Revolutionary France: Six Villages Compared, 1760-1820 (2003)

P.M. Jones, ‘Towards a Village History of the French Revolution. Some problems of method, FH, 14 (2000)

J. Maciak, ‘Of News and Networks. The communication of political information in the rural south-west during the French Revolution’, FH, 15 (2001)

McPhee, Peter, ‘”The Misguided Greed of Peasants’’? Popular attitudes to the environment in the Revolution of 1789’, FHS, 24 (2001)

N. Plack, ‘Drinking the Fruits of Revolution: Common land privatisation and the expansion of viticulture in Languedoc, c.1789-1820’, European Review of History, 13 (2006).

Assembly Politics

T. Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary. The Deputies of the French National

Assembly and the Emergence of a Revolutionary Culture, 1789-91 (1996)

J. Egret, La Révolution des notables: Mounier et les monarchiens (1950)

R.H. Griffiths, Le Centre perdu: Malouet et les Monarchiens dans la Révolution française (1988)

N. Hampson, Prelude to Terror: The Constituent Assembly and the Failure of Consensus, 1789-91 (1988)

H.B. Applewhite, Political Alignment in the French National Assembly, 1789-91 (1993)

M.P. Fitzsimmons, The Remaking of France: The National Assembly and the Constitution of 1791 (1991)

M. Fitzsimmons, ‘Privilege and polity in France, 1786-91’ AHR, 92 (1987)

E.H. Lemay & A. Patrick, Revolutionaries at Work: The Constituent Assembly, 1789-91 (1996)

The Wider Scene

L.G. Shapiro & J. Markoff, Revolutionary Demands. A Content Analysis of the Cahiers de Doléances of 1789 (1998).

G.V. Taylor, ‘Revolutionary and non-revolutionary content in the cahiers of 1789’, FHS, 7 (1972)

R. Chartier, ‘Culture, lumières, doléances: les cahiers de 1789’, RHMC, 28 (1981).

S.F. Scott, ‘Problems of law and order during 1790, the “peaceful”year of the French Revolution’, AHR, 80 (1975)

B.M. Shapiro, Revolutionary Justice in Paris, 1789-90 (1993).

M. Vovelle, The Fall of the French Monarchy, 1787-92 (1984)

M. Price, The Fall of the French Monarchy (2002)

D. Andress, ‘Neighbourhood Policing in Paris from Old Regime to Revolution: The exercise of authority by the district de Saint-Roch, 1789-1791’, FHS, 29 (2006)

D.L. Clifford, ‘Can the Uniform Make the Citizen? Paris, 1789-1791’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 34 (2001)

M. Edelstein, ‘Laying the Foundations for the Regeneration of the Empire’: The first municipal elections in the biggest cities of France during the Revolution’, French History, 17 (2003)

T. Tackett, ‘Collective Panics in the Early French Revolution, 1789–1791: A comparative perspective’, French History, 17 (2003)

The Work of Reform

I. Woloch, The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789-1820s (1994)

P.M. Jones, Reform and Revolution in France: The Politics of Transition, 1774-91 (1995)

M. Crook, Elections in the French Revolution: An Apprenticeship in Democracy,

1789-99 (1996)

T. Margadant, Urban Rivalries in the French Revolution (1992)

P. Gueniffey, Le Nombre et la raison: la Révolution française et les élections (1993)

F. Aftalion, The French Revolution: An Economic Interpretation (1990)

Forrest, Alan, Paris, the Provinces and the French Revolution (2004).

Sahlins, P., Unnaturally French: Foreign citizens in the Old Regime and after (2004)

Cowens, Jon, To Speak for the People: Public Opinion and the Problem of Legitimacy in the French Revolution (2001).

B. Lepetit, The Pre-Industrial Urban System: France, 1740-1840 (1994)

Religion

N. Aston, Religion and Revolution in France, 1789-1804 (2000)

J. McManners, The French Revolution and the Church (1969)

R. Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism 1789-1914 (1989).

T. Tackett, Priest and Parish in Eighteenth-Century France: A Social and Political Study of the Curé in a Diocese in Dauphiné, 1750-91 (1977)

T. Tackett, ‘The Citizen-priest: politics and ideology among the parish clergy of eighteenth-century Dauphiné’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 7 (1978)

J. McManners, French Ecclesiastical Society under the Ancien Régime: A Study of Angers in the Eighteenth Century (1960)

J. McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France. (1999).

C. Hodson, ‘"In Praise of the Third Estate": Religious and Social Imagery in the Early French Revolution’,Eighteenth-Century Studies, 34 (2001)

G. Lewis, The Second Vendée (1978)

J.N. Hood, ‘Protestant-Catholic relations and the roots of the first popular counter-revolutionary movement in France’, JMH, 43 (1971)

J.N. Hood, ‘Revival and mutation of old rivalries in Revolutionary France’, P&P, 82

(1979)

Civil Constitution of the Clergy in Context

T. Tackett, Religion, Revolution and Regional Culture in Eighteenth-Century France. The Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791 (1986)

E.F. Johnson, ‘The Sacred, Secular Regime: Catholic ritual and revolutionary politics in Avignon, 1789-1791’, FHS, 30 (2007)

A. Sepinwall, The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution (2005)

R. Hermon-Belot, L’Abbé Grégoire: la politique et la vérité (2000).

M. Price, The Fall of the Monarchy (2002)

C. Lucas (ed.), The Political Culture of the French Revolution (=FRMPC 3).

W.J. Sewell, A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution. The Abbé Siéyés and ‘What is the Third Estate’? (1994)

D. Van Kley (ed.), The French Idea of Freedom: The Old Régime and the Declaration of Rights of 1789 (1994)

N. Hampson, Prelude to Terror: The Constituent Assembly and the Failure of Consensus, 1789-91 (1988)

A. Wills, Crime and Punishment in Revolutionary Paris (1981)

National & Provincial Politics

P.M. Jones, Reform and Revolution in France, 1774-91 (1995)

J.Markoff, The Abolition of Feudalism. Peasants, Lords and Legislators in the French Revolution (1996)

T. Tackett, ‘Conspiracy obsession in a time of revolution: French elites and the origins of terror, 1789-92’, AHR, (2000)

T. Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary: The Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Emergence of Revolutionary Culture, 1789-91 (1996)

M.P. Fitzsimmons, The Remaking of France. The National Assembly and the Constitution of 1791 (1991)

E.H. Lemay & A. Patrick, Revolutionaries at Work: The Constitutent Assembly 1789-91 (1996)

P. Higonnet, Goodness beyond Virtue: Jacobins during the French Revolution (1998)

M. Crook, Elections in the French Revolution (1996)

Parisian Politics

D. Clifford, ‘The National Guard and the Parisian community, 1789-90’, FHS (1990)

S. Maza, ‘The social imaginary of the French Revolution: The Third Estate, the National Guard and the absent bourgeoisie’, in C. Jones & D. Wahrman (eds), An Age of Cultural Revolution. Britain and France, 1750-1820 (2002)

D.L. Clifford, ‘Can the uniform make the citizen? Paris, 1789-91’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 34 (2001)

R.B. Rose, ‘The Paris district and district democracy, 1789-90’, BJRL, 59 (1977)

C Hodson, ‘In Praise of the Third Estate: religious and social imagery in the early French Revolution’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 34 (2001)

G. Kates, The Cercle Social, the Girondins, and the French Revolution (1985)

R.B. Rose, The Making of the Sans-Culottes (1983)

R.B. Rose, ‘Nursery of sans-culottes: the société patriotique of the Luxembourg section, 1792-5’, BJRL, (1982-3)

B. Shapiro, Revolutionary Justice in Paris, 1789-90 (1993)