Historicising the French Revolution - Hardcover

Carolina Armenteros; Tim Blanning; Isabel Noronha-DiVanna

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847186408 ISBN 13: 9781847186409

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008

Synopsis

Three decades ago, Francois Furet famously announced that the French Revolution was over. Napoleon's armies ceased to march around Europe long ago, and Louis XVIII even returned to occupy the throne of his guillotined brother. And yet the Revolution s memory continues to hold sway over imaginations and cultures around the world. This sway is felt particularly strongly by those who are interested in history: for the French Revolution not only altered the course of history radically, but became the fountainhead of historicism and the origin of the historical mentality. The sixteen essays collected in this volume investigate the Revolution s intellectual and material legacies. From popular culture to education and politics, from France and Ireland to Poland and Turkey, from 1789 to the present day, leading historians expose, alongside graduate students, the myriad ways in which the Revolution changed humanity s possible futures, its history, and the idea of history. They attest to how the Revolution has had a continuing global significance, and is still shaping the world today.

About this title

Review

"The essays in this absorbing volume are in large part the work of a young new generation of historians, and they show how thinking about the French Revolution has evolved over the two decades since the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989. The Revolution emerges as a continuing vital force shaping modern political culture, within France and without. The volume will be compulsory reading for all historians concerned with the origins of the modern era." - Colin Jones, author, The Great Nation. France 1715-99. "This is an innovative and important collection of essays at the cutting-edge of recent scholarship on the French Revolution." - Ruth Scurr, author, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution. "The French Revolution is not over, as Francois Furet famously declared on its bicentenary, for its history is still a source of intense and wide-ranging debate. The innovatory studies published here, initially presented at a Cambridge conference, explore the meaning of the Revolution rather than its events. The authors, mostly young scholars from Europe and America, demonstrate that research into the subject remains both extremely lively and highly relevant." - Malcolm Crook, editor, Revolutionary France 1780-1880 "This is a substantial volume of essays, with some thought-provoking contributions being especially noteworthy as many of the authors are still (or were at the time of writing) completing their doctorates. [...] [It will] certainly merit the attention of anyone interested in the continuing historical legacy of 1789." - David Andress, University of Portsmouth, European History Quarterly, 41 (2).

Synopsis

Three decades ago, Francois Furet famously announced that the French Revolution is over. But is it? It is true that Napoleon's armies ceased to march around Europe long ago, and that even Louis XVIII returned to occupy the throne of his guillotined brother. Yet the memory of the most written-about event in human history continues to hold sway over our imaginations, and over cultures around the earth. In this sense, it is still shaping our world. This is felt particularly strongly by those who are interested in history: for the French Revolution not only altered the course of history radically, but was itself the fountainhead of historicism, and of the historical mentality.The sixteen essays collected in this volume investigate the legacy of the French Revolution in both our mental and material worlds. From popular culture to education and politics, from France and Ireland to Poland and Turkey, from 1789 to our day, leading historians expose, alongside graduate students, the myriad ways in which the Revolution changed our possible futures, our history, and our idea of history.

The authors' internationally diverse origins - Brazil, Germany, Canada, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, Turkey, and France itself - also testify to the Revolution's continuing global significance. Together, the essays in this volume both argue and testify to the fact that, although the French Revolution is indeed over as a historical fact, it lives on as an object of investigation that prompts us to reconsider our pasts in order to recreate our futures.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1847186408
• ISBN 13: 9781847186409
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 345
• Editor: Carolina Armenteros, Tim Blanning, Isabel Noronha-DiVanna