The French Historiography Thread!

[Menang]

Hey Revs students of 2011!

I did Revs this year, and I have nothing to do except count down until the 13th for results, so here is my collection of historian's quotes (in chronological order) for France. Hopefully you'll find it useful next year.

AoS1
Soboul

“The Enlightenment undermined the ideological foundations of the established order.”

Lefebvre

“The ultimate cause of the revolution was the rise of the Bourgeois.”

Schama

“It was in the Church, more than any other group in France, that the separation between rich and poor was most bitterly articulated.”

“[there was] enough for the government to function for one afternoon.”

(on the economic crisis up to 1789)

Fenwick & Anderson

“The decision [the declaration of the national assembly] marked the beginnings of the real revolution and it was largely as a result of the indecision of Louis XVI”

Doyle

“[the Storming of the Bastille] was the climax of the popular movement.”

Lefebvre

“[the Great Fear] allowed the peasants to realise their strength.”

Rude (on the August Decrees)

“…having won its victory over “privilege” and “despotism”, the Bourgeois now wanted peace and quiet in order to proceed with its task of giving France a constitution.”

Furet

“The August Decrees were an improvised parliamentary reaction to an emergency situation.”

AoS2
The October Days
McPhee

“The Revolution of the Bourgeois deputies had only been secured by the active intervention of the people of Paris.”

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy
Rude

“More serious perhaps was the division caused among the clergy by the new Church settlement… These dissensions would, In themselves, have made it impossible to arrest the course of the Revolution.”

McPhee

“Mounting clerical opposition to these changes ultimately focused on the CoCC voted on 12th July 1790… However, in applying popular sovereignty to the choice of priests and bishops, the Assembly crossed the narrow line separating temporal and spiritual life.”

“In the end, it proved impossible to reconcile a church based on divinely ordained hierarchy... with a revolution based on popular sovereignty.”

Furet

“It is clear that refusal to take the Oath was the first sign of popular resistance to the revolution… the religious element was immediately transformed into a political issue because both the monarchy and the revolution had turned the catholic Church into an auxiliary of the state.”

Doyle

“The French Revolution had many turning points; but the oath of the clergy was; if not the greatest, unquestionably one of the. It was certainly the Constituent Assembly’s most serious mistake. For the first time, it forced fellow citizens to choose: declare themselves publicly for or against the new order.”

Bosher

"...aroused the determined hostility of at least half the French clergy and of the entire Church abroad... This was fated to divide the nation more than any other single measure."

The Flight to Varennes
Soboul

“From this moment the King appeared as the most dangerous foe to the mass of the people; the Flight to Varennes had finally torn off the mask and revealed him in his true colours.

Richet

“By fleeing, one King renounced his sovereignty, while another king, the people, looked on.”

Tackett

“The events of that night would prove a turning point in the history of the Revolution and the of the French monarchy, with an enormous immediate impact on Paris, and on the National Assembly and indeed on the whole of France and Europe.”

Declaration of War on Austria
Mathiez

“But this war, which was desired by all parties except the Mountain… as a move in their internal policy, was to falsify all the calculations of those who brought it about.”

The August Insurrection
McPhee

“[the Revolution] was now armed, democratic and republican.”

Worrall

“[pushed the revolution] dramatically to the left.”

Doyle

“It was the bloodiest day of the Revolution so far, but also one of the most decisive. Though the King and his family remained unscathed, his authority fell with his palace… few believed that he would ever sit on the throne again, unless with foreign aid.”

Hampson

“For the Parisian nobility, it was 10 August 1792, rather than 14 July 1789, that marked the end of the Ancien Regime.”

Furet

“The period following 10 August… was marked by a duality of power: Paris and the Assembly. The legal government of the Legislative Assembly, which had only a month more to run, was counterbalanced by the urban dictatorship of tan insurrectionist Commune which had emerged from 10 August.”

September Massacres
Stewart

“…they must be understood in light of circumstances. They were occasioned by fear and hysteria. To the average Frenchman they doubtless seemed a regrettable but unavoidable necessity.”

Schama

“… a good case… might be made for seeing the September Massacres as an event which… exposed a central truth of the French Revolution: its dependence on organised killing to accomplish political ends. For however virtuous the principles of kingless France were supposed to be, their power to compel allegiance depended, from the very beginning, on the spectacle of death.”

Rude

"And yet, whatever their origins and as unsavoury as they were, the massacres were an event of some importance: they appeared to complete the destruction of the enemy... Thus the Republic, proclaimed that autumn, became established on what seemed a solid enough foundation - by the victory of the Revolution over its enemies at home and abroad."

The Terror
Lefebvre

“In reality the government lost control of the repression... like administration, it was decentralised by the emergency."

Furet

“In other words, it ruled through fear, making the threat of death hang over all servants of the state and citizens alike.”

“In 1793 terrorist discourse was in the mouths of nearly all the leaders of the Revolution. Conceived in order to exterminate aristocracy, the Terror ended as a means of subduing wrongdoers and combatting crime. From now on it coincided with and was inseparable from the Revolution, because there was no other way of someday moulding a republic of citizens.”

McPhee

“The central purpose of the Terror was to institute the emergency and draconian measures necessary at a time of military crisis.”

Worrall

“The Terror should be viewed as an outgrowth of the siege mentality that gripped Paris in Year II…. As a response to pressure from the sans-culottes for total solutions to total problems… and as a reaction to the exigency of war, rebellion and counter revolution… The machinery of the Terror was fashioned in an atmosphere of patriotic exaltation, suspicion and violence."

Mathiez

“The dictatorship of a party or a class is as a rule only established by force, and in time of war this is necessarily so. Revolutionary government had as its inevitable accompaniment the Terror.”

“The fever of patriotism, the approach of the enemy, and the sound of tocsin lulled the men’s consciences to sleep.”

Hampson

“The massacres contributed to divide the revolutionary leaders as well as to envenom the relations between the Girondin and the Parisian sans-culottes.”

Lewis

“The institutions of the Terror had been created long before Robespierre joined the government on 26th July 1793.”

Law of 14 Frimaire
Fenwick & Anderson

“It marked the end of anarchy and severely curtailed the power of the sans-culottes movement.”

Schama

“[it ended]… the anarchic process by which zealots could take the law into their own hands.”

Thermidor
Furet

“The Thermidoreans brought back and would give lasting life to that new race of political men… conservative revolutionaries.”

Cobban

“There was little to admire in them; no motive higher than self-preservation inspired their desperate attack, no ideals justified their executions, no laurels crowned their victory.”

Doyle

“The ninth of Thermidor marked not so much the overthrow of one man or a group of men as the rejection of a form of government.”

Hibbert

“The destruction of the Robespierrists and the wholesale purge of the Commune soon resulted in the Revolution’s lurching to the Right.”

Insurrection of 12 Germinal
Rude

“It was essentially a social protest, inspired by hunger and hatred of the new rich.”

Hibbert

“To the sans-culottes it seemed that the gap between rich and poor was becoming as wide as it had been before the Revolution.”

Insurrection of 1 Prairial
Lefebvre

“This date marked the end of the revolution; its mainspring had been broken.”

Insurrection of 13 Vendemaire
Hibbert

“So fast was the tide of reaction flowing, indeed, that the royalists began to hope for a restoration.”

White Terror
Furet

“… the two Terrors were truly opposite and comparable, and the blood split gives some idea of the extraordinary social violence which runs through the years of the Revolution. However… the white Terror was never institutional, it had no courts and no administration; it was never sanctioned by instruments of justice or law.”

Constitution of the Year III
McPhee

“[the Constitution was] a return to the provisions of 1791… in this sense the Constitutions marks the end of the Revolution.”

Furet

“[the Constitution was an attempt] to signpost the new road which had been opened up in 1789 and lost in 1793.”

Hibbert

“…the Constitution… in effect returned the country’s political economic leadership to men who were reasonably well off.”

Sutherland

"[power to chose deputies lay in the hands of] the rich rentier Bourgeoisie, rich tenant farmers and former nobility, who were eligible as long as none of their relatives was an emigre."

Overall
Doyle

"Was, then, the revolution worth it in material terms? For most ordinary French subjects turned by it into citizens, it cannot have been."

[RandomEgg]

Awesome quotes! 

This will definitely help for next year!

[lilaznkev1n]

Nice quotes
Will help me when I get to the russian revolution..currently doing the american revolution

[Menang]

Nice quotes
Will help me when I get to the russian revolution..currently doing the american revolution

These quotes are actually for the French Revolution.

I do have a collection of Russian Revolution quotes, though. I might start a new thread for that tomorrow.

[lilaznkev1n]

opps sorry typo
what i meant was the french revolution

[Menang]

Sure
In that case, enjoy!

Anyone feel free to add your own favourite quotes - in this thread and the Russian one!

[Tammi224]

These Quotes are amazing and so helpful considering i have my historiography SAC next thursday :]

[Menang]

Glad you found them useful Tammi!

[mchouse911]

Here's my collection of historiography for AOS 1. Sorry if some of them are repeated.

[mchouse911]

Assembly of Notables 22 February 1787

McPhee
•   Two long term factors
1.   Long term pressures of royal state making, which reduced the nobility’s autonomy
2.   Challenge from a wealthier larger and more critical bourgeoisie and an openly disaffected peasantry towards aristocratic conceptions of property, hierarchy and social order

Doyle
•   “Assembly was a turning point.” Marked beginning of political crisis (political struggle) that could only be resolved by revolution.
•   Convoked to deal with financial problems, the 3 month sitting revealed to the country the seriousness of the problem
•   “They concluded that the disorder in the finances was the result of incompetent government; they asked for independent safeguards against further incompetence. They were offered none.”
•   Involved public opinion in politics and interest was sustained.
•   Problem
o   Calonne had many personal enemies including the Parlement of Paris
o   “If Calonne’s proposal had come from anybody else there is no doubt that the Notables would have welcomed warmly.”

Schama
•   Nobility and clergy were not only willing to bring an end to their own privileges, but were more radical and egalitarian than expected. “Social personality of Notables…strong sense of the redundancy of privilege.”

Furet
•   “By opposing a single and proportional tax, they were protecting their own interests and at the same time gratifying public opinion.”

Adcock
•   Meeting of a specific number of people to represent the wishes of society in general.
•   Highly formalised and controlled process

Marxists
•   All history, class struggle. Notable’s main purpose to defend own privileges
•   Quarrel between King and nobility = Revolution
•   “After criticizing the planned tax, demanded a statement of the Treasury’s accounts. The resulting paralysis of the monarchy as a result of the quarrel between the King and then nobility led to the Revolution.” – Soboul
•   “Notables refused to endorse ministerial reforms because of their own cherished fiscal immunities were threatened.” – Rude

Andress
•   “Rejected…methods of past and state’s solution.”
•   Notables raised issue of excessive state spending -> criticized court.
•   Evident in September 1788, no intention of renouncing privileges of a corporate social order.

[mchouse911]

Third Lit de Justice 8 May 1788 (Parlement of Paris exiled)

Doyle
•   “This bankruptcy was not only financial but political, and intellectual too. It had collapsed in every sense.”

Schama
•   The scope of the parlements power was broad. They heard civil and criminal cases but they also became a forum for political statements because of their remonstrances
•   They claimed the principle of assent. ie. Their agreement with the monarch was conditional rather than absolute
•   It would have been foolish for them to lead a general rebellion as they would be executed.

Fenwick and Anderson
•   “The Revolution had begun.”

[mchouse911]

Day of Tiles 7 June 1788

Schama
•   “Signifies breakdown of royal authority.” Break down in relationship/authority and military force sustained.
•   No representation
•   Normal people
•   Succeeded to call for Estates-General

Furet
•   “A national will was taking shape, behind anti-absolutist unanimity.”

[mchouse911]

Pamphlet wars 1788

Marxists
•   Class struggle where Third estate challenged the aristocratic order for power.
•   Revolution proceeded in distinct phases and by separate classes. – Rude

Schama
•   Assembly of notables the first revolutionaries, intent on doing away with much of the old structure of France to bring about a more liberal political and economic regime.

Jones
•   Meetings often run by peasants’ major adversaries: the mayor or a seigneurial representative
•   Ample evidence to show that peasants were prepared to amend the documents submitted to them when they imperfectly coincided with local needs

[mchouse911]

Writing of the cahiers de doleances January 1789

McPhee
•   “Mass politicization of social friction.”
•   “Resentment of seigneuralism above all bonded rural communities together against their lords.”
•   “People were being consulted about reform proposals, not about whether they wanted a revolution… only later to become the focus of concerted action.”

Schama
•   “While the cahiers of the liberal nobility offered an alluring picture of a briskly modernizing France that would consummate the great alterations by shaking off restrictions like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, those of the Third Estate wanted, very often, to return to the cocoon.”

[mchouse911]

Convening of Estates-General 1 May 1789

McPhee
•   “The convening of the Estates-General had served to focus noble, bourgeois, and peasant images of a regenerated France with dramatic clarity.”
•   “Facilitated…tensions at every level at French society and revealed social divisions, which challenged the idea of a society with orders.”

Doyle
•   “In August 1788, the old monarchy collapsed. It was not overthrown by the opposition to its policies, much less by revolutionaries dedicated to its destruction. It fell because of its inner contradictions.”

Furet
•   “Estates General…planned to regain control of state.”
Sutherland
•   “Absolutism had collapsed.”

Soboul
•   “The bourgeoisie, the leading element of the Third Estate, now took over. Its aim was revolutionary… Before long, however, it was carried forward by the pressure of the masses, the real motive force behind the Revolution.”