In the last twenty years, scholars have rushed to re-examine revolutionary experiences across the Atlantic, through the Americas, and, more recently, in imperial and global contexts. While Revolution has been a perennial favourite topic of national historians, a new generation of historians has begun to eschew traditional foundation narratives and embrace the insights of Atlantic and transnational history to re-examine what is increasingly called ‘the Age of Revolution’. This volume raises important questions about this new turn, and contributors pay particular attention to the hidden peoples and forces at work in this Revolutionary world. From Indian insurgents in Columbia and the Andes, to the terror exercised on the sailors and soldiers of imperial armies, and from Dutch radicals to Senegalese chiefs, these contributions reveal a new social history of the Age of Revolution that has sometimes been deliberately obscured from view. This book was originally published as a special issue of Atlantic Studies.

Much of the historiography on the age of democratic revolutions has seemed to come to a halt until recent years. Historians of this period have tried to develop new explanatory paradigms but there are few that have had a lasting impact. David A. Bell and Yair Mintzker seek to break through the narrow views of this period with research that reaches beyond the traditional geographical and chronological boundaries of the subject. Rethinking the Age of Revolutions brings together some of the most exciting and important research now being done on the French Revolutionary era, by prominent historians from North America and France. Adopting a variety of approaches, and tackling a wide variety of subjects, such as natural rights in the early modern world, the birth of celebrity culture and the phenomenon of modern political charisma, among others, this collection shows the continuing vitality and importance of the field. This is an important book not only for specialists, but for anyone interested in the origins of some of the most important issues in the politics and culture of the modern West.

The 20th Century was pre-eminently an age of revolutions - in Russia, China, Cuba and elsewhere - that fundamentally transformed the nature of politics and social arrangements. As we enter a new century, has it got harder for revolutions to occur in the new unipolar, globalized world? Here, John Foran asks: is the era of revolution over?; if so, why?; and if not, what might the revolutions of the future?

Historians generally—and Marxists in particular—have presented the revolution of 1789 as a bourgeois revolution: one which marked the ascendance of the bourgeois as a class, the defeat of a feudal aristocracy, and the triumph of capitalism. Recent revisionist accounts, however, have raised convincing arguments against the idea of the bourgeois class revolution, and the model on which it is based. In this provocative study, George Comninel surveys existing interpretations of the French Revolution and the methodological issues these raise for historians. He argues that the weaknesses of Marxist scholarship originate in Marx’s own method, which has led historians to fall back on abstract conceptions of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Comninel reasserts the principles of historical materialism that found their mature expression in Das Kapital; and outlines an interpretation which concludes that, while the revolution unified the nation and centralized the French state, it did not create a capitalist society.

Arrival in Paris -- Life in Paris before the Revolution -- Making a Living -- Understanding the World -- The World Changes -- Days of Glory -- Rumor and Revolution -- Becoming a Radical -- Days of Sorrow.

Publisher description

This book challenges the traditional historiography of the Scientific Revolution, probably the single most important unifying concept in the history of science. Usually referring to the period from Copernicus to Newton (roughly 1500 to 1700), the Scientific Revolution is considered to be the central episode in the history of science, the historical moment at which that unique way of looking at the world that we call 'modern science' and its attendant institutions emerged. It has been taken as the terminus a quo of all that followed. Starting with a dialogue between Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs and Richard S. Westfall, whose understanding of the Scientific Revolution differed in important ways, the papers in this volume reconsider canonical figures, their areas of study, and the formation of disciplinary boundaries during this seminal period of European intellectual history.