A Companion to the French Revolution comprises twenty-nine newly-written essays reassessing the origins, development, and impact of this great turning-point in modern history. Examines the origins, development and impact of the French Revolution Features original contributions from leading historians, including six essays translated from French. Presents a wide-ranging overview of current historical debates on the revolution and future directions in scholarship Gives equally thorough treatment to both causes and outcomes of the French Revolution

The first major collection of essays to provide a comprehensive examination of the British literature of the French Revolution.

The Routledge Companion to the French Revolution in World History engages with some of the most recent trends in French revolutionary scholarship by considering the Revolution in its global context. Across seventeen chapters an international team of contributors examine the impact of the Revolution not only on its European neighbours but on Latin America, North America and Africa, assess how far events there impacted on the Revolution in France, and suggest something of the Revolution’s enduring legacy in the modern world. The Companion views the French Revolution through a deliberately wide lens. The first section deals with its global repercussions from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean and includes a discussion of major insurrections such as those in Haiti and Venezuela. Three chapters then dissect the often complex and entangled relations with other revolutionary movements, in seventeenth-century Britain, the American colonies and Meiji Japan. The focus then switches to international involvement in the events of 1789 and the circulation of ideas, people, goods and capital. In a final section contributors throw light on how the Revolution was and is still remembered across the globe, with chapters on Russia, China and Australasia. An introduction by the editors places the Revolution in its political, historical and historiographical context. The Routledge Companion to the French Revolution in World History is a timely and important contribution to scholarship of the French Revolution.

Who were the Jacobins and what are Jacobinism's implications for today? In a book based on national and local studies--on Marseilles, Nîmes, Lyons, and Paris--one of the leading scholars of the Revolution reconceptualizes Jacobin politics and philosophy and rescues them from recent postmodernist condescension. Patrice Higonnet documents and analyzes the radical thought and actions of leading Jacobins and their followers. He shows Jacobinism's variety and flexibility, as it emerged in the lived practices of exceptional and ordinary people in varied historical situations. He demonstrates that these proponents of individuality and individual freedom were also members of dense social networks who were driven by an overriding sense of the public good. By considering the most retrograde and the most admirable features of Jacobinism, Higonnet balances revisionist interest in ideology with a social historical emphasis on institutional change. In these pages the Terror becomes a singular tragedy rather than the whole of Jacobinism, which retains value today as an influential variety of modern politics. Higonnet argues that with the recent collapse of socialism and the general political malaise in Western democracies, Jacobinism has regained stature as a model for contemporary democrats, as well as a sober lesson on the limits of radical social legislation.

[This book] gives readers [an] introduction to the French Revolution that is also grounded in the latest ... scholarship ... The book presents a succinct narrative of the Revolution.-Back cover. [In this book, the authors] follow a wide range of events, including the social and cultural events as well as the military and political ones. Women's history and gender relations ... have been integrated into the general story.-Pref.

What was the French Revolution? Was it the triumph of Enlightenment humanist principles, or a violent reign of terror? Did it empower the common man, or just the bourgeoisie? And was it a turning point in world history, or a mere anomaly? E.J. Hobsbawm’s classic historiographic study—written at the very moment when a new set of revolutions swept through the Eastern Bloc and brought down the Iron Curtain—explores how the French Revolution was perceived over the following two centuries. He traces how the French Revolution became integral to nineteenth-century political discourse, when everyone from bourgeois liberals to radical socialists cited these historical events, even as they disagreed on what their meaning. And he considers why references to the French Revolution continued to inflame passions into the twentieth century, as a rhetorical touchstone for communist revolutionaries and as a boogeyman for social conservatives. Echoes of the Marseillaise is a stimulating examination of how the same events have been reimagined by different generations and factions to serve various political agendas. It will give readers a new appreciation for how the French Revolution not only made history, but also shaped our fundamental notions about history itself.

Containing essays by leading scholars representing a wide range of disciplines, this Companion offers new perspectives on the French Enlightenment. Clearly organized and easy to use, the volume provides a comprehensive overview of a period that marks the beginning of modern intellectual culture and political life.