From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French Kings, Nobles, and Estates Book

[1,400 dead isn't very many by contemporary standards, but I ask you to bear in mind that the modern age was only just beginning, in the future people would do better.

p242 Schama makes the argument that partial reforms succeeded only in alienating in particular the traditional financial backers of the government thus undermining the government and precipitating the revolutionary situation - if that is his view then most of the preceding 242 pages are redundant to his narrative

keen to grab an american audience?


capitalism and market economy as colonial venture into France profounde
narrative an insidious form

What is argument ie financial crisis - a failure of brinkmanship and people management? A long term crisis waiting to burst open, a failure of imagination/guts/ confidence? Some combination of these?
when discussing the unrest on the streets in Grenoble got the feeling that he thinks that an initially resolute handing with soldiers - a flash of cold steel, the whiff of gunpowder and everything would have been fine... (hide spoiler)]