Citizens (book)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution | |
 Citizens |
|
| Author | Simon Schama |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | The French Revolution |
| Genre(s) | History |
| Publisher | Random House |
| Publication date | 1989 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-679-72610-1 |
| Preceded by | ? |
| Followed by | ? |
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution is a book by the historian Simon Schama. It was published in 1989, the bicentenary of the French Revolution, and like many other works in that year, was highly critical of its legacy[1]. "The terror, declared Schama in the book, was merely 1789 with a higher body count; and 'violence ... was not just an unfortunate side effect ... it was the Revolution's source of collective energy. It was what made the Revolution revolutionary'."[2] In short, “From the very beginning [...] violence was the motor of revolution.”[3]
Schama's view of the Revolution as an event possessing ideological undercurrents that shaped much of the events of the 1790s has been criticised in recent years. Most recently, historian Timothy Tackett, in his study on the flight of Louis XVI to Varennes, has placed emphasis on the circumstances shaping the course of the Revolution at multiple stages. Tackett claims that to argue, as did Schama, that the Enlightenment principles espoused in 1789 somehow prefigured or foreshadowed 1793 and 1794 is to ignore the major circumstantial factors of this period, such as international war, counter-revolution and of course the flight of the king. Tackett argues that "any explanation of how the liberal, humanitarian revolution of 1789 was transformed into the Terror of 1793-94 would have to take into account a variety of factors: the state of war existing between France and much of Europe; the organized efforts of dissident opponents to launch a counterrevolution; the terrible factionalism that beset the revolutionary leaders themselves; and the emergence of an obsessive fear of conspiracy -- real or imagined -- that helped fuel the factionalism and justify popular violence."[4]
Schama might riposte (and this argument is made in Citizens) that the Revolutionary War was the logical corollary of the universalistic language of the Declaration of Right, and of the universalistic principles of the Revolution which led to inevitable conflict with old-regime Europe. He might add that the 'obsessive fear of conspiracy' showed itself in 1789 with the Great Fear, and before in conspiracy theories about aristocratic grain hoarding - the difference between that and the paranoia of 1793-94 being one of magnitude, not nature.
[edit] References
- ^ Doyle, William. The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press (2001), p. 105. "The bicentenary, in fact, released a torrent of vituperative publishing, most of it denouncing one aspect or another of the Revolution and its legacy."
- ^ Doyle, p. 102.
- ^ Schama, Simon. Citizens. Quoted in: Davies, Norman. Europe: A History. Pimlico (1997), p. 690.
- ^ Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight. (Cambridge (MA): Harvard UP, 2003), 2.
