Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 976 pages
• Published by: Vintage March 17, 1990
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0679726101
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0679726104
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.7 inches
• Weighs: 3.6 pounds

From Publishers Weekly
In what PW called a "sprawling, provocative, sometimes infuriating chronicle that stands much conventional wisdom on its head," Schama argues that the Revolution did not produce a "patriotic culture of citizenship" but was preceded by one.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
YA-- This well-written, thoroughly documented book should be on every high-school library shelf. It explains the self-destructive, bloody orgy that occurred in France but not in England or Prussia, countries in similar states of poverty and with similarly deprived, disenfranchised populaces. Schama theorizes that the cause of France's revolution lies in the self-deception of the ruling intelligentsia, who believed that they could make a Utopian France by allowing controlled violence, murder, and the destruction of property in the name of liberty, and all to exist simultaneously with good government. Schama presents Talleyrand, Lafayette, and others with more understanding than they are given in most histories, setting them amidst a web of violence of their own making. This book speaks to today's world, as nations strive to move from despotism to democracy. A more modern view of these same problems is found in Z. Brzezinski's The Grand Failure (Scribners , 1989) .
-Barbara Batty, Port Arthur I.S.D., TX
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
This is a popular work of history, and it is easy to see why. 1) Schama has a wonderful eye for anecdote, starting with the tale of the plaster elephant at the site of the Bastille, to how Talleyrand could not conduct a proper mass to save his life, to how Lafayette tried to escape from the Austrians and all too typically failed. 2) The book is lavishly illustrated with many compelling contemporary images. Not only do we see the passion for science in chandeliers resembling Montgolfier balloons, but we see the patriotic enthusiasm in revolutionary coffee cups and the revolutionary calendar. We are also blessed with Schama's skill as an art historian. Everyone recognizes David's The Oath of the Horatii, but how many now the bloodthirsty conclusion to the tale? Schama does, and this helps his point about the sanguinary and murderous side with the obsession with classical virtue. 3) Schama is a very effective writer, and few will be able to read his accounts of the September Massacres or the suppression of the Vendee or the execution of the Malesherbes family during the terror without a shudder of revulsion. Moreover he is capable of discussing a wide variety of topics, whether it is the nature of the fiscal crisis of the Bourbon monarchy or the cultural construction of the citizen. 4) In contrast to Richard Pipes' The Russian Revolution, Schama is able to consult the most recent literature to support his attack on the French revolution. He cites Chaussinand-Nogaret on the progressive, entrepreneurial and capitalist nature of the aristocracy. He builds on Darnton to emphasize the pornographic libels against Marie Antoinette. He builds on the Anglo-American empiricists like Behrens and Doyle to attack the idea of a bourgeois revolution, and the ideological emphasis of Furet and Baker to argue that 1789 was merely the Terror with a lower death count. 5) The result is a work with a compelling thesis, that the Ancien Regime was in many ways a progressive regime, advancing towards capitalism, abolishing torture and increasing toleration for Protestants. Unfortunately bad luck and ideological fanaticism caused the revolution to go wildly off course, ending in a disaster of massacre, bloodshed and ruin. So what's wrong with the book? 1) Well, anecdote can be misleading. At one point in order to emphasize the Convention's proto-totalitarian nature he points to their discussion of a deputy's plans to take children away from their parents so that they could be educated by the state. But Isser Woloch and Jean-Pierre Gross have shown that this particular discussion was more an act of respect to the deputy, who had recently been assassinated, than a serious proposal. Their actual plans for public education were far more moderate and liberal. And while readers may agree with Schama that it is of great symbolic importance that the great painter Delacroix was fathered by Talleyrand, Delacroix's most recent biographer, Barthelmy Jobert strongly argues that it didn't happen. 2) Schama's emphasis on culture and ideology as the winds that smashed the revolution against the rocks are full of problems. American revolutionaries also cited classical antiquity with apparently no ill effects. The two most famous sayings of the American Revolution, "Give me liberty or give me death," "I regret that I only have one life to give to my country," both come from Addison's Cato. Can it really be said that everyone lost their heads over Rousseau, when his admirers, like the Masons and the quasi-Protestant Jansenists, split both ways when the revolution came? 3) It is one thing to quote recent scholarship. But other recent scholarship strongly points out the problems with Schama's account. Gwynne Lewis has pointed out that the nobility cannot really be said to be as capitalist and entrepreneurial as Schama believes. Timothy Tackett has pointed out that the revolutionary deputies were not so besotted with abstract ideology as revisionists believe, while the nobility's deputies were richer, of older lineage, and more Catholic and less liberal than Schama would lead us to believe. Alan Spitzer has pointed out that the evidence of a fundamental fiscal crisis cannot be so easily disposed with. He also points out that one reason why foreign trade collapsed so heavily in the 1790s was because so much of it depended on slavery, which the Convention abolished. Barry Shapiro has pointed out that counter-revolutionary plots were not a paranoid delusion, and that the revolutionary government in its first years had a moderate and responsible attitude towards them. Paul Spagnoli has pointed out that the revolutionary decades saw a clear increase in life expectancy which was not matched in the rest of Europe. Allan Kulikoff has pointed out that the American republic took decades to recover from its own brutal war of American independence. 4) Schama's basic position is elitist and shallow. He equates progress with unregulated markets, views popular movements for democracy with contempt and suspicion and enthuses over a forward looking bureaucracy/elite which could have solved France's problems if political discussion had not gotten in the way. One should point out that Spain, Italy, Germany and Japan have tried this path to the modern state, and they ended up with fascism. Russia tried this path and the State collapsed so badly that only Lenin's Bolsheviks could pick up the pieces. If we are to praise this neo-Burkean vision of the Revolution, we should remember that shortly after Burke's own death 50,000 Irish would be slaughtered by the forces of Order, leaving a legacy of rancid sectarianism for future centuries.