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Political History of The French Revolution Since 1989: AUL Anson
Political History of The French Revolution Since 1989: AUL Anson
HANSON
Among other trends in the historiography of the French Revolution since its
bicentennial, we have seen a revived interest in the political history of the pe-
riod, with important work on both sides of the Atlantic broadening our under-
standing both geographically and chronologically. With the demise of the
Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution as a bourgeois revolution usher-
ing in the capitalist era, 1789 has come to be seen as the birth of modern de-
mocracy, a view put forward in contrasting ways by both Lynn Hunt and Keith
Baker.1 Baker’s work explored a variety of ways in which political discourse
emerged in the final decades of the Old Regime to both shape and presage the
crisis that would erupt in 1789, while Hunt’s work applied both a cultural and a
Revolution in the past forty years, followed up a first book on Bordeaux with a
volume devoted to the history of the Revolution throughout the Aquitaine.
Forrest emphasized that local politics in the region was more than a pale reflec-
tion of, or reaction to, Parisian politics and argued that the region’s reputation
for political moderation did at times turn toward outright royalism. He followed
that volume with a book that very explicitly attempted to link provincial and
Parisian politics over the course of the Revolution.5
1793 extending through the summer of 1794, when the deputies of the National
Convention turned on each other.19 Works on the Terror, not surprisingly, are
often polemical. Patrice Gueniffey, following in the path of his mentor, François
Furet, sees the Terror as the logical culmination of the revolutionary project, a
product essentially of Jacobin ideology.20 In stark contrast, Sophie Wahnich
argues that the Terror was a defense of the sovereignty that the people had
claimed and won between 1789 and 1792—necessary, then, but not inevita-
other, on economic reforms and the division of common lands in the country-
side that led to what he characterizes as “commercial republicanism.”28 Jon
Cowans, more critical of the Directory regime than Livesey, has explored the
manner in which public opinion shaped, and was shaped by, representative poli-
tics. He argues, in part, that by turning away from the ideal of popular sover-
eignty, the Directors ultimately undermined their own legitimacy.29
Howard Brown has proposed a different explanation for the failure of the
Endnotes
Address correspondence to Paul Hanson, Department of History and Anthropology, Butler
University, 4600 Sunset Ave., Indianapolis, IN 46208. Email: phanson@butler.edu.
1. Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, CA, 1984);
Keith Baker, Inventing the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1990); this was also a theme of
one of three international conferences in the years leading up to the Bicentennial, the
papers from which were published in C. Lucas, ed., The Political Culture of the French
Revolution (Oxford, 1988).
2. Hunt, Politics, Culture and Class: 221.
3. Paul R. Hanson, Provincial Politics in the French Revolution: Caen and Limoges,
1789–1793 (Baton Rouge, 1989); and Hanson, The Jacobin Republic under Fire: The
Federalist Revolt in the French Revolution (University Park, PA, 2003).
4. Antonino de Francesco, Il Governo Senza Testa (Naples, 1992). For our exchange of
views, see A. de Francesco, “Popular Sovereignty and Executive Power in the Federalist
Revolt of 1793,” French History 5, no. 1 (1991): 74–101, and P. R. Hanson, “The
Federalist Revolt: An Affirmation or Denial of Popular Sovereignty?” French History 6,
no. 3 (1992): 335–55.
5. Alan Forrest, The Revolution in Provincial France: Aquitaine, 1789–1799 (Oxford,
1996), and Paris, the Provinces and the French Revolution (London, 2004). See also his first
book, Society and Politics in Revolutionary Bordeaux (Oxford, 1975).
6. W. D. Edmonds, Jacobinism and the Revolt of Lyon, 1789–1793 (Oxford, 1990).
7. Jacques Guilhaumou, Marseille republicaine, 1791–1793 (Paris, 1992).
8. D. M. G. Sutherland, Murder in Aubagne: Lynching, Law, and Justice during the French
Revolution (Cambridge, 2009).
9. M. L. Kennedy, The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution, 1793–1795 (New York,
2000). The first two volumes were published by Princeton University Press in 1982 and
1988.
10. Patrice Higonnet, Goodness beyond Virtue: Jacobins during the French Revolution
(Cambridge, MA, 1998).
11. Peter Jones, Liberty and Locality in Revolutionary France: Six Villages Compared,
1760–1820 (Cambridge, 2003).
Political History of the French Revolution 591
12. Peter McPhee, Revolution and Environment in Southern France: Peasants, Lord, and
Murder in the Corbières, 1780–1830 (Oxford, 1999); and Living the French Revolution,
1789–1799 (New York, 2006).
13. Hans Jürgen Lüsebrink and Rolf Reichardt, The Bastille: A History of a Symbol of
Despotism and Freedom (Durham, NC, 1997).
14. William H. Sewell, Jr., “Historical Events as Transformations of Structures: Inventing