The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution

A 1999 reissue of a classic text on the French revolution, with an introduction by Gwynne Lewis.

Alfred Cobban (Author), Gwynne Lewis (Introduction by)

9780521667678, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 May 1999

232 pages
21.3 x 14 x 1.5 cm, 0.29 kg

'This book will be both stimulating and challenging to all those who have so far accepted the orthodox 'bourgeois versus aristocrat' theory.' The Times Educational Supplement

Alfred Cobban's The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution is one of the acknowledged classics of post-war historiography. This 'revisionist' analysis of the French Revolution caused a furore on first publication in 1964, challenging as it did established orthodoxies during the crucial period of the Cold War. Cobban saw the French Revolution as central to the 'grand narrative of modern history', but provided a salutary corrective to many celebrated social explanations, determinist and otherwise, of its origins and development. A generation later this concise but powerful intervention was reissued in this 1999 edition with an introduction by Gwynne Lewis, providing students with both a context for Cobban's own arguments, and assessing the course of Revolutionary studies in the wake of The Social Interpretation. This book remains a handbook of revisionism for Anglo-Saxon scholars, and is essential reading for all students of French history at undergraduate level and above.

Preface
Introduction Gwynne Lewis
1. The present state of history
2. History and sociology
3. The problem of social history
4. The meaning of feudalism
5. The attack on seigneurial rights
6. Who were the revolutionary bourgeois?
7. Economic consequences of the Revolution
8. A bourgeoisie of landowners
9. Country against town
10. Social cleavages among the peasantry
11. The sans-culottes
12. A revolution of the propertied classes
13. Poor against rich
14. Conclusion
Index.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], European history [HBJD]