
Interpreting the French Revolution
Translation by Elborg Forster
Francois Furet(Author)
Cambridge University Press
Published on 24. September 1981
Book
Paperback/Softback
216 pages
978-0-521-28049-5 (ISBN)
Description
The French Revolution is an historical event unlike any other. It is more than just a topic of intellectual interest: it has become part of a moral and political heritage. But after two centuries, this central event in French history has usually been thought of in much the same terms as it was by its contemporaries. There have been many accounts of the French Revolution, and though their opinions differ, they have often been commemorative or anniversary interpretations of the original event. The dividing line of revolutionary historiography, in intellectual terms, is therefore not between the right and the left, but between commemorative and conceptual history, as exemplified respectively in the works of Michelet and Tocquevifle. In this book, Francois Furet analyses how an event like the French Revolution can be conceptualised, and identifies the radically new changes the Revolution produced as well as the continuity it provided, albeit under the appearance of change. This question has become a riddle for the European left, answered neither by Marx nor by the theorists of our own century. In his analysis of the tragic relevance of the Revolution, Furet both refers to contemporary experience and discusses various elements in the work of Alexis de Tocclueville and that of Augustin Cochin, which has never been systematically applied by historians of the Revolution. Furet's book is based on the complementary ideas of these two writers in an attempt to cut through the apparent and misleading clarity of various contradictory views of the Revolution, and to help decipher some of the enigmatic problems of revolutionary ideology. It will be of value to historians of modern Europe and their students; to political, social and economic historians; to sociologists; and to students of political thought.
Reviews / Votes
' ... a milestone in the historiography of the French Revolution.' William Doyle, History TodayMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
358 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-521-28049-5 (9780521280495)
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Schweitzer Classification
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Francois Furet
Interpreting the French Revolution
Book
09/1981
Cambridge University Press
€46.51
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Previous edition

Francois Furet
Interpreting the French Revolution
Book
09/1981
Cambridge University Press
€46.51
Article exhausted; check for reprint
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Content
Preface; Part I. The French Revolution is Over: Part II. Three Approaches to the history of the French Revolution: 1. The revolutionary catechism; 2. De Tocqueville and the problem of the French Revolution; 3. Augustin Cochin: the theory of Jacobinism.