Reviews for Aspects of the French Revolution

The average rating for Aspects of the French Revolution based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-03-12 00:00:00 Steven Cosnett This valedictory volume of articles on the French Revolution and its histories by the distinguished English historian of France, Alfred Cobban (1901-1968), is chiefly of value today for the insight it provides into the fervent historiographical debate in the postwar years between those who still advocated a socio-economic explanatory framework for the Revolution, principally Marxist, and those revisionists, of whom Cobban was numbered, who focused upon political and ideological explanations. Several of these essays are historiographical, including a brief essay on Carlye's notorious narrative of the Revolution and a study of revolutionary history writing from the contemporary works of Burke and Young, through Taine and the early nineteenth century, and onto the mid-twentieth century and the triumph of George's Lefevre's historical sociology, with its supremely researched and non-doctrinaire Marxist interpretation, while others are expositions and defences of Cobban's own revisionism. So, in what way was Cobban revisionist? Firstly, he was non-Marxist, which was unusual amongst historians of his generation, and so rather than propounding a thesis that the French Revolution was both a product of and catalyst for socio-economic change as part of the determinist development from so-called feudalism to capitalism driven by class conflict, he suggested that economic change provided more the background to than cause of the Revolution, both predating and extending beyond it into the following century, and that the principal means of understanding the Revolution is through analysis of its political progress as a series of revolutionary episodes within the historical period we define as the French Revolution. For Cobban and the revisionists, the French Revolution, precipitated by the bankruptcy of the French state, and which begins with the attempt of the nobility and parlements to usurp royalist government in 1787-8, is a political discourse in which successive governments labour to establish a political and institutional structure that best represents the fundamental politio-ideoligical shift from a descending, absolutist theory of government to an ascending, democratic one concomitant with a series of primarily political crises. What Cobban points out, particularly in the 'Myth of the French Revolution' is how, after a right-wing reaction, a socio-economic orthodoxy emerged in revolutionary historiography in the nineteenth century, and how this came to be buttressed by the intellectual authority of Marxism, in spite of Marx writing little on the French Revolution, until it became the paradigm within which the Revolution was conceived, that is that the revolutionary period marked the transition from a feudal to a capitalist economy and the control of government from a privileged nobility to the capitalist bourgeoisie. However, as Cobban several times shows, this interpretation is flawed due to a methodological error whereby the social and economic differentiations of mid-nineteenth century, industrial France are erroneously and unhistorically retroactively applied to the very different society of the late eighteenth century. The trouble for Marxists is that the industrial capitalism they regard as the structural cause of the Revolution actually post-dates it and the Napoleonic age, while many of the attempts at free market and economic reform sponsored by the royal government predate it and were only implemented by the revolutionaries, where they did, in furtherance and continuity with these pre-revolutionary intentions within a society, that while non-industrialised, was already recognisably capitalist in terms of a money economy based upon exchange and increasingly upon cash rents rather than labour services, that is, upon seignuerial dues based upon property and tenancy rather than feudal obligations based upon personal services. Further, Cobban shows, in support of De Tocqueville's examination of how the centralised government of the Revolution was but the fulfillment of the precepts of the administrative monarchy, how not only was there a great deal of continuity between the pre-revolutionary, revolutionary, and Napoleonic political systems, but also an extraordinary continuity in personnel, with many of those who held government or municipal office in the Revolution and under the Empire having held similar offices before 1789. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, it seems. Besides the historiographical essays, this collection includes several articles which deal with the Revolution itself, including five published in the 'English Historical Review': one on local government, two on the political ideas of Robespierre, and two on the role of the British Secret Service in France before and during the Revolution. The piece on local government is a useful examination of the difficulties encountered and the different, failed, solutions attempted in reconciling the centralisation of the republican administration with the particularities and democratic impulses of the regions and the localities. The research on the circumscribed role of British intelligence before the onset of war reveals both the limited aims and capabilities of the Westminster government and how Britain pursued a neutral policy towards the Revolution, neither stirring up revolt to destabilise the state nor offering military support to the royalists, in the period while England and France were at peace. The well sourced examinations of Robespierre's thought not only provide a solid grounding in his ideology of the General Will adopted from Rousseau, political virtue, and popular sovereignty, but how they came to be affected by Robespierre's taking on executive functions as a member of the Committee of Public Safety under the Convention at time of war, at home and abroad, and how, thereby, in practice he diverted considerably from the principles he had enunciated while in opposition at the same time as seeking to justify his different positions within the same utilitarian, rationalist, and Rousseau-ist paradigm. All five of these are valuable examples of Cobban's historical craft and in their deep research are useful correctives further revealing, in both historical theory and practice, both the need for and the justification of the revisionism applied to the then prevailing, but faulty, historiographical orthodoxies.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-03-15 00:00:00 Tristan Burns Great if you're looking for information, which I was. Not so great if you're looking for an interesting read.