The Great Nation - General Bibliography

Colin Jones, The Great Nation. France from Louis XV to Napoleon (1715-99).

GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
A. Primary Sources
B. Secondary Sources
Abbreviations
0.General
0.1 Overviews
0.2 Politics and the State
0.3 Kingship and Ceremony
0.4 Religion
0.5 Social and Economic
0.6 International Affairs and the Armed Forces
1. France in 1715
1.1 Louis XIV
1.2 Versailles and Court Culture under Louis XIV
1.3 The Making of Absolute Monarchy and the Nobility
1.4 War, Diplomacy and Foreign Policy before 1715
1.5 Opposition to Louis XIV
1.6 Protestantism before 1715
2. The Regency and the Advent of Fleury (1715-26)
2.1 The Regent and High Politics
2.2 Nobility and the Parlements
2.3 Jansenism to c. 1750
2.4 Population, Economy and Finance on the Eve of the Regency
2.5 John Law and the System
2.6 Louis XV and the Advent of Fleury
3. Fleury's France (1726-43)
3.1 Fleury and his Ministry
3.2 Administration
4. Unsuspected Golden Years (1743-56)
4.1 Louis XV and Government before the Seven Years War
4.2 War and Diplomacy
4.3 Rural France in Perspective
4.4 Trade, Industry and the Towns
5. An Enlightening Age
5.1 The Enlightenment: General
5.2 Diderot and the Encyclopédie
5.3 The Bourgeois Public Sphere
5.4 Religion, Nature and Science
5.5 Enlightenment Politics
6. Forestalling Deluge (1756-70)
6.1 Politics from the 1750s to the Triumvirate
6.2 The Seven Years War
6.3 State Finance from c. 1750
6.4 Choiseul and Post-War Recovery
7. The Triumvirate and its Aftermath (1771-84)
7.1 The Maupeou Revolution
7.2 Turgot, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette
7.3 The American War and State Finances
7.4 The Nobility
8. Bourbon Monarchy on the Rack (1784-8)
8.1 The Economy
8.2 The Social and Cultural Origins of the Revolution
8.3 Calonne and the Pre-Revolution
9. Revolution in Political Culture (1789-91)
9.1 The French Revolution: General
9.2 The French Revolution: Collections of Primary Sources
9.3 The French Revolution: Local Studies
9.4 The Political Crisis of 1789
9.5 Peasants and Towns in Revolt
9.6 The Work of the Constituent Assembly
9.7 (I) Counter-Revolution: General
9.7 (II) Counter-Revolution: The Religious Issue
9.7 (III) Counter-Revolution: The Vendée and Peasant Royalism
10. War and Terror (1795-9)
10.1 The Legislative Assembly
10.2 The Overthrow of the Monarchy and the Emergence of Terror
10.3 War and Diplomacy
10.4 The Great Terror and the Fall of Robespierre
11. The Unsteady Republic (1795-9)
11.1 Thermidorian and Directorial Politics
11.2 The Revolution and the Economy
11.3 The Culture of the Revolution
Conclusion: The Brumaire Leviathan and la Grande Nation

A. PRIMARY SOURCES
The range of primary sources available is immense, particularly on the period after 1750. I
can only indicate here those sources on which I have drawn most heavily in constructing the
political narrative.
Saint-Simon’s memoirs, available in numerous editions, is a brilliant source for
bridging the end of the reign of Louis XIV with the Regency. For the latter, see the
wonderful correspondence of the Princesse Palatine, the Regent’s mother, sampled in
Lettres de Madame, duchesse d’Orléans, née princesse Palatine, ed. O. Amiel (Paris,
1981). Useful too are Mémoires de la régence de SAR Monseigneur le duc d’Orléans
durant la minorité de Louis XV, roi de France (3 vols., La Haye, 1742-3); Mehmed efendi,
Le Paradis des infidèles. Un ambassadeur ottoman en France sous la Régence (Paris,
1981); and Madame de Staal-Delaunay, Mémoires, ed. G. Doscot (Paris, 1970).
Unpublished primary sources of particular value for this and the subsequent period are the
memoirs of the duke d’Antin (Bibliothèque Nationale, Manuscrits français. Nouvelles
acquisitions français 23729-37) and those of Richer d’Aubé, ‘Réflexions sur le
Gouvernement de France’ (ibid., Nouvelles acquisitions françaises 9511-16).
On the period from the death of Louis XIV to the Seven Years War, see esp. R.L.
de Voyer de Paulmy, marquis d’Argenson, Journal et mémoires, ed. E.J.B. Rathery (9 vols.,
Paris 1859-67); J. Buvat, Journal de la Régence, 1715-23, ed. E. Campardon (2 vols.,
Paris, 1865); C.P. d’Albert, duc de Luynes, Mémoires sur la cour de Louis XV (1735-58),
ed. L. Dussieux & E. Soulié (17 vols., Paris, 1860-5); E.J.F. Barbier, Histoire
chronologique et anecdotique du règne de Louis XV, ed. A. de La Villegille (4 vols., Paris,
1847-56); Mathieu Marais, Journal et mémoires de Mathieu Marais sur la régence et le
règne de Louis XV, ed. M. de Lescure (4 vols., Paris, 1863-8); P. Narbonne, Journal des
règnes de Louis XIV et XV de l’année 1701 à l’année 1744 (Paris, 1866); and F.J. de
Pierre, cardinal de Bernis, Mémoires et lettres, 1715-58, ed. F. Masson (2 vols., Paris,
1858).
For later in the eighteenth century, down to 1789, see also Mémoires du duc de
Choiseul, ed. J.P. Guicciardi (Paris, 1982); marquis de Bombelles, Journal, ed. J. Grassion
& F. Durif (2 vols., Geneva, 1978-82); duc de Croy, Journal inédit du duc de Croy, 1718-
84, ed. vicomte de Grouchy & P. Cottin (4 vols., Paris, 1906-07); F.V. Toussaint,
Anecdotes curieuses de la cour de France sous le règne de Louis XV (Paris, 1908); Félix,
comte de France d’Hézèques, Souvenirs d’un page de la cour de Louis XVI (Paris, 1904).
More street-level views are aired in S.P. Hardy, Mes loisirs: journal d’événements tels qu’ils
parviennent à ma connaissance, M. Tourneux & M. Vitrac (eds) (Paris, 1912); J.L.
Ménétra, Journal of My Life, ed. D. Roche (New York, 1986); and F.Y. Besnard,
Souvenirs d’un nonagénaire (2 vols., Paris, 1880). A superb, panoramic source too is L.S.
Mercier, Tableau de Paris (12 vols., Amsterdam, 1782-9), extracts of which are available
as Panorama of Paris, ed. J.D. Popkin (Philadelphia, 1999).
After 1789, the embarras de richesses becomes even more overwhelming. B.J.
Buchez & P.C. Roux (eds), Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française, ou Journal
des assemblées nationales depuis 1789 jusqu’en 1815 (40 vols., Paris, 1834-8) is an
improbable salmagundy of Revolutionary goodies, less consistent however than the utterly
overwhelming Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860 (96 volumes to date, Paris, 1867-
1990). One of my favourite texts is Nicolas Ruault, Gazette d’un parisien sous la Révolution:
lettres à son frère, 1783-96 (Paris, 1976). Others include A. Young, Travels in France in
the Years 1787, 1788 and 1789, ed. C. Maxwell (Cambridge, 1929) (superb on rural
France and the atmosphere of Revolution); marquis de Ferrières, Correspondance inédite ,
1789, 1790, 1791, H. Carré, ed. (Paris, 1932 (excellent on the Constituent Assembly);
Gouverneur Morris, A Diary of the French Revolution (2 vols., Westport, Ct, 1972) (the
US envoy, down to 1792); M.A. Baudot, Notes historiques sur la Convention nationale, le
Directoire. l’Empire et l’exil des votants (Paris, 1893) (extraordinary lapidary statements
and anecdotes); P. de Vaissière, Lettres d’aristocrates. La Révolution racontée par des
correspondances privées, 1789-94 (Paris, 1907) (stunningly graphic and moving accounts,
from prison or emigration); L.S. Mercier, Le Nouveau Paris (1797); and Chateaubriand’s
posthumous Mémoires d’outre-tombe (a fantasist, but a brilliant one).

B. SECONDARY SOURCES
I have chosen to highlight works in English wherever possible.

Abbreviations:
AESC Annales. Économies. Sociétés. Civilisations
AHR American Historical Review
AHRF Annales histororiques de la Révolution française
AMWS Annual Meeting of ther Western Society for French History.
Proceedings
BJRL Bulletin of John Rylands Library
EHR English Historical Review
FH French History
FHS French Historical Studies
HJ Historical Journal
JEcH Journal of Economic History
JMH Journal of Modern History
P&P Past and Present
RH Revue historique
RHMC Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine
TAPS Transactions of the American Philosophical Society
TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

0. GENERAL
0.1 Overviews: A. Cobban, A History of Modern France, vol. 1: Old Régime and
Revolution, 1715-99 (Harmondsworth, 1957) is the only work to have the chronology of
the present volume. For the Revolution, see below, but general treatments of the Bourbon
polity over the eighteenth century include W. Doyle (ed.), Old Régime France, 1648-1788
(Oxford, 2001); E. Le Roy Ladurie, The Ancien Régime. A History of France, 1610-1774
(Oxford, 1996); D. Roche, France in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass., 1998); C.B.A.
Behrens, The Ancien Régime (London, 1967); and J.B. Collins, The State in Early Modern
France (Cambridge, 1995). J. de Viguerie, Histoire et dictionnaire du temps des Lumières,
1715-89 (Paris, 1995) is a superb general work of reference. See also D. Richet, La
France moderne. L’Esprit des institutions (Paris, 1973); R.Descimon and A. Guéry, ‘Un
État des temps modernes’, in A. Burguière and J. Revel (eds), Histoire de la France. L’État
et les pouvoirs (Paris, 1989); M. Fogel, L’État dans la France moderne (de la fin du XVe
au milieu du XVIIIe siècle) (Paris, 1992); J. Meyer, Le Poids de l’État (Paris, 1983); and J.
Cornette, Absolutisme et lumières, 1652-1783 (Paris, 1993). The pathbreaking collection,
P. Nora (ed.), Les Lieux de mémoire (3 vols., new edn, Paris, 1997), provides fresh angles
of vision on numerous features of the Bourbon polity. See esp. from Vol. 1, ‘Les sanctuaires
royaux’ (C. Beaune), ‘Reims, ville du sacre’ (J. Le Goff), ‘Des limites d’État aux frontières
nationales’ (D. Nordman), ‘Versailles, fonctions et légendes’ (H. Himmelfarb); from Vol. 2,
‘La chaire, la tribune, le barreau’ (J. Starobinski), ‘Francs et Gaulois’ (K. Pomian), ‘Port-
Royal’ (C. Maire); and from Vol. 3, ‘Le roi’ (A. Boureau), and ‘L’État’ (A. Guéry).

0.2. Politics and the State: A superb conspectus over government from the royal point of
view is provided in M. Antoine, Louis XV (Paris, 1989: infuriatingly it has no footnotes.
Readers will forgive Antoine’s vehement anti-parlementary bias). See too his Le dur métier
du roi: études sur la civilisation politique de la France d’Ancien Régime (Paris, 1986).
Helpful too are J. Barbey, Être Roi. Le roi et son gouvernement en France de Clovis à
Louis XVI (Paris, 1992), B. Basse, La Constitution de l’ancienne France (Paris, 1986) and,
from an older tradition, F. Olivier-Martin, L’Organisation corporative de la France d’Ancien
Régime (Paris, 1938). R. Bonney, L’Absolutisme (Paris, 1989) is a useful introduction. The
works of Roland Mousnier exaggerate the absolutism of absolute monarchy, but still are
eminently consultable: The Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy, 1589-1789
(2 vols., Chicago, 1979, 1984). M. Antoine, Le Gouvernement et l’administration sous
Louis XV. Dictionnaire biographique (Paris, 1978) is a fine work of reference. For
government functions, see also M. Antoine, Le Conseil du Roi sous le règne de Louis XV
(Geneva, 1970); F. Mosser, Les Intendants de finance au XVIIIe siècle: Les Lefèvre
d’Ormesson et le ‘départment des impositions’ (1715-77) (Geneva, 1978); Y. Durand, Les
Fermiers généraux au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1971); and G.T. Mathews, The Royal General
Farms in Eighteenth-Century France (New York, 1958). On a crucial aspect of state and
society, W. Doyle, Venality: The Sale of Offices in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford,
1996). See too id., Officers, Nobles and Revolutionaries: Essays on Eighteenth-Century
France (London, 1995). H. Root, The Fountain of Privilege: Political Foundations of
Markets in Old Regime France and England (Berkeley, Ca, 1994) is an excellent revisionist
work. [For finance, see also 2.3, 2.5, 6.3, 7.3, 8.3]
For the outreach of government, see V.R Gruder, The Royal Provincial Intendants:
A Governing Elite in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca, NY, 1968) and, among case
studies, F.X. Emmanuelli, Un Mythe de l’abolutisme bourbonien: l’intendance du milieu du
XVIIe siècle à la fin du XVIIie siècle (Aix-en-Provence, 1981); H. Monin, Essai sur
l’histoire administrative du Languedoc pendant l’intendance de Basville (Paris, 1884); and
H. Fréville, L’Intendance de Bretagne, 1689-1790: essai sur l’histoire d’une intendance de
pays d’état au XVIIIe siècle (3 vols., Rennes, 1953). On representative estates, see J.R.
Major, Representative Government in Early Modern France (New Haven, Ct, 1980). An
excellent case study is provided by G. Bossenga, The Politics of Privilege: Old Régime and
Revolution in Lille (Cambridge, 1991). See too M. Bordes, L’Administration provinciale et
municipale en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1972). Essential on the Parlement of Paris is
J. de Flammermont, Les Remontrances du parlement de Paris au XVIIIe siècle (3 vols.,
Paris, 1888-98). See too J. Shennan, The Parlement of Paris (London, 1968); F. Bluche,
Les Magistrats du parlement de Paris au XVIIIe siècle (2nd edn, Paris, 1986); and D. Bell,
Lawyers and Citizens: The Making of a Political Elite in Old Régime France (Oxford,
1994).
0.3 Kingship and Ceremony: Crucial here in recent years has been the work of the ‘neoceremonialists’, who, following the pioneering work of E. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two
Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ, 1957) have stressed the
political and constitutional role of public ceremony. Among Anglo-Americans, important in
this respect are R. Giesey, The Royal Funeral Ceremony in Renaissance France (Geneva,
1960) S. Hanley, The Lit de Justice of the Kings of France: Constitutional Ideology,
Legend, Ritual and Discourse (Princeton, NJ, 1983), and R.A. Jackson, Vive le Roi! A
History of the French Coronation from Charles V to Charles X (Chapel Hill, NC, 1984),
and these may be supplemented by A. Boureau, Le Simple Corps du roi. L’impossible
sacralité des souverains français (XVe-XVIIIe siècles) (Paris, 1988). Indispensable too is
M. Bloch, The Royal Touch. Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France,
(London, 1973). See too H.H. Rowen, The King’s State: Proprietary Dynasticism in Early
Modern France (New Brunswick, 1980); A. Boureau & C.S. Ingerflom (eds), La Royauté
sacrée dans le monde chrétien (Paris, 1989); M. Valensise, ‘Le sacre du roi: stratégie
symbolique et doctrine politique de la monarchie française’, AESC, 41 (1986); and Le
Sacre des rois (Actes du colloque international d’histoire sur les sacres et couronnements
royaux, Reims, 1975). On the political culture of the king’s body more generally, see too the
excellent essays in S.E. Melzer & K. Norberg (eds), From the Royal to the Republican
Body. Incorporating the Political in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France (Berkeley,
1998). Also influenced by this approach is M. Fogel, Les Cérémonies de l’information dans
la France du XVIe au milieu du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1989).

0.4 Religion: J. Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire (London, 1977) is a
pioneering study of religious mentalités. R. Taveneaux, Le Catholicisme dans la France
classique, 1610-1715 (2 vols., Paris, 1980), F. Lebrun, Être chrétien en France sous
l’Ancien Régime (Paris, 1996) and P. Loupès, La Vie religieuse en France au XVIIIe siècle
(Paris, 1993) are handy overviews, all influenced by Delumeau’s approach. More oriented
on the clergy is B. Plongeron, La Vie quotidienne du clergé français au XVIIIe siècle (Paris,
1974). See too the superb overview of J. McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth-
Century France (2 vols., Oxford, 1998). On Jansenism, though focussed on 1789, D. Van
Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution from Calvin to the Civil Constitution,
1560-1791 (New Haven, 1996) reels back into the sixteenth century. [For other works on
Jansenism, see 2.3, 6.1]. R. Briggs, Communities of Belief: Cultural and Social Tensions in
Early Modern France (Oxford, 1989) is a highly useful collection of essays on different
aspects of religious history, while G. Bouchard, Le Village immobile. Senneley-en-Sologne
au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1972) is an exemplary local study. On post-Tridentine ‘baroque
piety’, see esp. M. Vovelle, Piété baroque et déchristianisation en Provence au XVIIIe
siècle (Paris, 1973), which also highlights the growth of religious unbelief. On political
aspects of the latter phenomenon, J. Merrick, The Desacralization of the French Monarchy
in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge, La, 1990). On Protestantism, the venerable E.G.
Léonard, Histoire générale du protestantisme (3 vols., Paris, 1961-4) is still usable, though
see too D. Ligou, Le Protestantisme en France de 1598 à 1715 (Paris, 1968).

0.5 Social and Economic: Although becoming dated, excellent syntheses on French social
and economic history are provided by F. Braudel & E. Labrousse (eds), Histoire sociale et
économique de la France. ii. 1660-1789 (Paris, 1970); P. Goubert, The Ancien Régime
(New York, 1970); and P. Goubert and D. Roche, Les Français et l’Ancien Régime (2
vols., Paris, 1984). These update (but largely stay within the paradigm mapped out in) the
classic E. Labrousse, Esquisse du mouvement des prix et des revenus en France au XVIIIe
siècle (Paris, 1933) and id., La Crise de l’économie française à la fin de l’Ancien Régime et
au début de la Révolution (Paris, 1944). For demographic issues, these works may be
supplemented by J. Dupâcquier (ed.), Histoire de la population française. ii. De la
Renaissance à la Révolution (Paris, 1988) and iii. De 1789 à 1914 (Paris, 1988). More
recent short overviews are P. Butel, L’Économie française au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1993)
and F. Bayard & P. Guignet, L’Économie française au XVIe-XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles (Paris,
1991). [See also 4.4., 8.1, 11.2]

0.6 International Affairs and the Armed Forces: There is solid coverage from J. Black,
From Louis XIV to Napoleon: The Fate of a Great Power (London, 1999); id., Natural and
Necessary Enemies: Anglo -French Relations in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1986); L.
Bély, Les Relations internationales en Europe (XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles) (Paris, 1992); and
J. Black (ed.), The Origin of Wars in Early Modern Europe (Edinburgh, 1987). See too J.
Bérenger & J. Meyer, La France dans le monde au XVIIIe siè cle (Paris, 1993) and F.
Cardini, La Culture de la guerre (Xe-XVIIIe siècles) (Paris, 1992). P. Kennedy, The Rise
and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000
(New York, 1987) is an interesting speculative study. Essential for the army is A. Corvisier,
L’Armée française de la fin du XVIIe siècle au ministère de Choiseul. le soldat (2 vols.;
Paris, 1964), and see too E.G. Léonard, L’Armée et ses problèmes au XVIIIe siècle (Paris,
1958) and M.S. Anderson, War and Society in the Old Régime, 1618-1789 (Stroud,
1998). On the navy, P. Bamford, Forests and French Sea-Power, 1660-1789 (Toronto,
1956). [See also 1.4, 6.2, 7.3, 10.3]

CHAPTER ONE: FRANCE IN 1715
1.1 Louis XIV: D.J. Sturdy, Louis XIV (Basingstoke, 1998) is a useful up-to-date survey.
The thematic approaches of P. Sonnino (ed.) The Reign of Louis XIV (London, 1990), J.
Rule (ed.), Louis XIV and the Craft of Kingship (Ohio, 1969) and R. Hatton (ed.), Louis
XIV and Absolutism (London 1976) make them particularly useful. Full-dress biographies
include J.F. Bluche, Louis XIV (Oxford, 1990); P. Goubert, Louis XIV and Twenty Million
Frenchmen (London, 1970); J.C. Petitfils, Louis XIV (Paris, 1995); and J.B. Wolf, Louis
XIV (London, 1970). The drama of the king’s death may be followed in countless memoirs:
besides Saint-Simon see esp. Baron de Breteuil, Mémoires, ed. E. Lever (Paris, 1992) and
La Mort de Louis XIV. Journal des Anthoine, ed. E. Drumont (Paris, 1880), and for the
context of the king’s health, M. Caroly, Le Corps du Roi Soleil. Grandeur et misères de Sa
Majesté Louis XIV (Paris, 1990). See also the king’s own thoughts on kingship, available in
P. Sonino (ed.), Mémoires for the Instruction of the Dauphin by Louis XIV (New York,
1970).
1.2 Versailles and Court Culture under Louis XIV: P. Burke, The Fabrication of Louis
XIV (London, 1992) is a stimulating introduction, which draws on the pioneering but still
useful N. Elias, The Court Society (Oxford, 1983) plus a good deal of excellent recent
scholarship. This includes J.M. Apostolides, Le Roi-machine. Spectacle et politique au
temps de Louis XIV (Paris, 1981); L. Marin, Portrait of the King (Minneapolis, 1988); J.P.
Neraudau, L’Olympe du Roi-Soleil: mythologie et idéologie royale au Grand Siècle (Paris,
1986); and D.L. Rubin (ed.), Sun King: The Ascendancy of French Culture during the Reign
of Louis XIV (London, 1992). Also worthy of note is N. Ferrier-Caverivière, L’Image de
Louis XIV dans la littérature française de 1660 à 1715 (Paris, 1981) and id., Le Grand roi
à l’aube des Lumières, 1715-51 (Paris, 1985).

1.3 The Making of Absolute Monarchy and the Nobility: An astringently critical
approach is provided by D. Parker, The Making of French Absolutism (London, 1983),
and id., Class and State in Ancien Régime France: The Road to Modernity? (London,
1996). Traditions of aristocratic opposition may be followed in the excellent A. Jouanna, Le
Devoir de la révolte. La noblesse française et la gestation de l’état moderne, 1559-1661
(Paris, 1989), which may be complemented by O. Ranum’s The Fronde: A French
Revolution, 1648-52 (New York, 1993). R.C. Mettam, Power and Faction in Louis XIV’s
France (Oxford, 1988) highlights the interpenetration of court and administration under
Louis XIV, while S. Kettering, Patrons, Brokers and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France
(Oxford, 1986) is useful on the provinces. Vital too in this respect is W.J. Beik, Absolutism
and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in
Languedoc (Cambridge, 1985: a path-breaking study). On the Intendants, see esp. R.
Bonney, Political Change in France under Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624-1661 (Oxford,
1978). For the Parlement, see A. Hamscher, ‘The Conseil privé and the Parlements in the
Age of Louis XIV: A Study in French Absolutism’, TAPS, 77 (1987).

1.4 War, Diplomacy and Foreign Policy before 1715: Besides general works [at 0.6],
see J. Cornette, Le Roi de guerre. Essai sur la souveraineté dans la France du Grand Siècle
(Paris 1993); and R. Hatton (ed.), Louis XIV and Europe (London, 1976). Useful too are
L. Bély, Espions et ambassadeurs au temps de Louis XIV (Paris, 1980); and for the navy,
G. Symcox, The Crisis of French Sea Power, 1688-97: From the Guerre d’Escadre to the
Guerre de Course (The Hague, 1974).

1.5 Opposition to Louis XIV: Important overviews are provided by L. Rothkrug,
Opposition to Louis XIV. The Political and Social Origins of the French Enlightenment
(Princeton, NJ, 1965); J. Klaits, Printed Propaganda under Louis XIV: Absolute Monarchy
and Public Opinion (Princeton, NJ, 1977); and I.O. Wade, The Intellectual Origins of the
French Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ, 1971). On the circle of the duke of Burgundy, see
generally G. Tréca, Les Doctrines et les réformes de droit public en réaction contre
l’absolutisme de Louis XIV dans l’entourage du duc de Bourgogne (Paris, 1909). See too
La Découverte de la France au XVIIe siècle (IXe Colloque de Marseille: Marseille 1980).
Other important studies include H.A. Ellis, Boulainvilliers and the French Monarchy.
Aristocratic Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca, NY, 1988); D. Venturino,
‘L’ideologia nobiliare nella Francia del antico regime’, Studi storici, 29 (1988); and T.E.
Kaiser, ‘The abbé de Saint-Pierre, public opinion and the reconstitution of the French
monarchy’, JMH, 55 (1983). On Fénelon, besides Francois de Fénelon, Telemachus, Son
of Ulysses,ed . P. Riley (Cambridge, 1994), see V. Kapp, ‘Télémaque’ de Fénelon. La
signification d’une oeuvre littéraire à la fin du siècle classique (Paris, 1982) and A.Chérel,
Fénelon au XVIIIe siècle en France (Paris, 1917).

1.6 Protestantism before 1715: D. Parker, ‘The Huguenots in seventeenth-century
france’, in A.C. Hepburn (ed.), Minorities in History (London, 1978) and M. Prestwich
(ed.), International Calvinism, 1534-1715, (Oxford, 1985). See too J. Garrisson, L’Édit de
Nantes et sa révocation (Paris, 1985); E. Labrousse, La Révocation de l’Édit de Nantes
(Paris, 1985); and M. Yardeni, Le Refuge protestant (Paris, 1985). [See too 0.4]

CHAPTER TWO: THE REGENCY AND THE ADVENT OF FLEURY (1715-26)
2.1 The Regent and high politics: There are three good biographical treatments of
Orleans: J.C. Petitfils, Le Régent (Paris, 1986); J. Shennan, Philippe, Duke of Orléans.
Regent of France, 1715-23 (London, 1979); and J. Meyer, Le Régent, 1674-1723 (Paris,
1985), to which may be added J. Meyer, La Vie quotidienne en France au temps de la
Régence (Paris, 1979) and the collection of essays, La Régence (Paris, 1970). Of older
works, H. Leclercq, Histoire de la Régence pendant la minorité de Louis XV (3 vols.; Paris,
1921-2) retains much of its utility.

2.2. Nobility and the Parlements: F.L. Ford, Robe and Sword: The Regrouping of the
French Aristocracy after Louis XIV (Cambridge, Mass., 1953) needs some revision, but is
still a useful introduction. In the absence of a decent full-length treatment of the Maine
conspiracy, see R.E.A. Waller, ‘Men of letters and the Affaire des princes under the
Regency of the duc d’Orléans’, European Studies Review, 8 (1978). For the Parlement of
Paris, see J. H. Shennan, ‘The Political Role of the Parlement of Paris, 1715-23’, HJ, 8
(1965) and J.D. Hardy, Judicial Politics in the Old Régime. the Parlement of Paris during the
Regency (Baton Rouge, La. 1967).

2.3 Jansenism to c. 1750: Superb recent works on eighteenth-century Jansenism include
Van Kley [see 0.4], and C. Maire, De la Cause de Dieu à la cause de la Nation. Le
jansénisme au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1998). Overviews are supplied by F. Hildesheimer, Le
Jansénisme en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1991) and W. Doyle, Jansenism
(Basingstoke, 2000). See too V. Durand, Le Jansénisme au XVIIIe siècle et Joachim
Colbert, Évêque de Montpellier (1696-1738) (Toulouse, 1907); E. Appolis, Le Jansénisme
dans le diocèse de Lodève au XVIIIe siècle (Albi, 1952); and also J. Carreyre, Le
Jansénisme durant la Régence. I. La politique janséniste du Régent, 1715-17 (Louvain,
1929). For the 1730-2 crisis, see J. Merrick, ‘“Disputes over words” and constitutional
conflict in France, 1730-2’, FHS,14 (1986). On Pâris and the convulsionary movement, see
esp. B.R. Kreiser, Miracles, Convulsions and Ecclesiastical Politics in Early Eighteenth-
Century Paris (Princeton, NJ, 1978); D. Vidal, Miracles et convulsions jansénistes au
XVIIIe siècle: le mal et sa connaissance (Paris, 1987); and C.L. Maire, Les
Convulsionnaires de Saint-Médard. Miracles, convulsions et prophéties à Paris au XVIIIe
siècle (Paris, 1985).

2.4 Population, Economy and Finance on the Eve of the Regency: M. Lachiver, Les
Années de misère: la famine au temps de Louis XIV, 1680-1720 (Paris, 1991) makes for
grim reading. G.W. Monahan, Year of Sorrows. The Great Famine of 1709 in Lyon
(Columbus, Ohio, 1993) offers a local perspective. These should be contextualised by the
general works cited above and, for the economic consequences of the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes, W.C. Scoville, The Persecution of the Huguenots and French Economic
Development, 1680-1720 (Berkeley & LA, 1960). Also on the economy, see J. Meuvret,
Études d’histoire économique (Paris, 1971); C.F. Lévy, Capitalistes et pouvoir au siècle des
lumières. Les fondateurs des origines à 1715 (Paris, 1969); and T.J. Schaeper, The
Economy of France in the Second Half of the Reign of Louis XIV (Montreal, 1980). C.W.
Cole, Colbert and a Century of French Mercantilism (2 vols.; New York, 1939) and id.,
French Mercantilism, 1683-1700 (New York, 1943) remain classics on mercantilism,
though the work of D. Dessert casts a rather sinister shadow over Colbert: see his Argent,
pouvoir et société au Grand Siècle (Paris. 1984), and id. & J.L. Journet, ‘Le Lobby
Colbert: un royaume ou une affaire de famille?’, AESC, 30 (1974), to which may be added
F. Bayard, Le Monde des financiers au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1988).
For financial policy, see M. & R. Bonney, Jean-Roland Malet, premier historien des
finances de la monarchie française (Paris, 1993); F. Bluche, J.F. Solnon, La Véritable
Hiérarchie sociale de l’ancienne France. Le tarif de la première capitation (1695) (Geneva,
1983); P. Harsin, Les Doctrines monétaires et financières du XVIe au XVIIIe sicle (Paris,
1928); and id., Crédit public et banque d’état en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris,
1933). On financial milieux see the classic H. Lüthy, La Banque protestante en France de la
Révocation de l’Edit de Nantes à la Révolution (2 vols., Paris, 1961), and G. Chaussinand-
Nogaret, Les Financiers de Languedoc au XVIIIe siècle (Paris,1970).

2.5 John Law and the System: T.E. Kaiser, ‘Money, despotism and public opinion in
early eighteenth-century France: John Law and the debate on royal credit’, JMH, 63 (1991)
is a stimulating account, especially on political issues, while A. Murphy, John Law,
Economic Theorist and Policy Maker (Oxford, 1997) is strong on the economics. E. Faure,
La Banqueroute de Law (17 juillet 1720) (Paris, 1977) tries to be comprehensive but is
uneven. The work of Pierre Harsin is particularly useful on Law and his context: to the
works cited above [2.4], add his ‘La Finance et l’état jusqu’au Système de La w’, in
Braudel & Labrousse, Histoire économique et sociale. Harsin has also edited John Law,
Oeuvres complètes (3 vols., Paris, 1934). On the American side of Law’s operations, see
esp. M. Giraud, Histoire de la Louisiane française (3 vols., Paris, 1955-74).

2.6 Louis XV and the Advent of Fleury: Antoine’s Louis XV outclasses other works on
this theme. J. Dureng, Le Duc de Bourbon et l’Angleterre (1723-6) (Paris, 1912) is a
limited but useful account. Best are the opening chapters of P.M. Campbell, Power and
Politics in Old Régime France, 1720-45 (London, 1996); and G. Hardy, Le Cardinal Fleury
et le mouvement janséniste (Paris, 1925).

CHAPTER 3: FLEURY’S FRANCE
3.1 Fleury and his ministry: No serviceable biography of Fleury exists. V. Verlaque,
Histoire du Cardinal de Fleury et de son administration (Paris, 1878) is weak. The history of
his ministry (in everything except foreign policy) has been completely overhauled by
Campbell, Power and Politics in Old Régime France [see 2.6] which has an excellent
bibliography. On religious policy, see also G. Hardy, Le Cardinal Fleury et le mouvement
janséniste (Paris, 1925). On foreign policy, there is A.M. Wilson, French Foreign Policy
during the Administration of Cardinal Fleury, 1726-43. A Study in Diplomacy and
Commercial Development (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), and the reevaluation by J. Black,
‘French foreign policy in the age of Fleury reassessed’, EHR, 103 (1988). For the
Parlement, see J.H. Shennan, ‘The political role of the Parlement of Paris under Cardinal de
Fleury’, EHR, 81 (1966), while on faction and its intersection with public opinion, see
J.M.J. Rogister, ‘A minister’s fall and its implications: the case of Chauvelin (1737-46)’, in
D.J. Mossop et al. (eds), Studies in the French Eighteenth Century Presented to John
Lough (Durham 1978). On police, E.G. Cruickshanks, ‘Public opinion in the 1740s: the
reports of the chevalier de Mouchy’, Bulletin of the Institute for Historical Research, 27
(1954). [On religion, see 0.4, 2.3]

3.2 Administration: On academies, see R. Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution:
The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666-1803 (Berkeley, Calif., 1971); D. Sturdy, Science
and Social Status: The Members of the Académie des Sciences, 1666-1750 (Woodbridge,
1995) and the masterly D. Roche, Le Siècle des Lumières en province: Académies et
académiciens provinciaux, 1680-1789 (2 vols., Paris, 1978). On measurement &
cartography, see N. Broc, La Géographie des philosophes: géographes et voyageurs
français au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1984); F. de Dainville, La Cartographie reflet de l’histoire
(Geneva, 1975); J.W. Konwitz, Cartography in France, 1660-1848, Science, Engineering
and Statecraft (London, 1987); and Espace français. Vision et aménagement, XVIe-XIXe
siècles (Paris, 1987). On new notions of state power, see M. Raeff, ‘The Role of the wellordered
police state in the development of modernity in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
Europe’, AHR, 80 (1975).

CHAPTER 4: UNSUSPECTED GOLDEN YEARS (1743-56)
4.1 Louis XV and Government before the Seven Years War: Besides Antoine’s
biography [0.2], see C. Jones, Madame de Pompadour: Images of a Mistress (2002); N.
Mitford, Madame de Pompadour (London, 1954); D. Gallet, Madame de Pompadour et le
pouvoir féminin (Paris, 1985); and E. Lever, Madame de Pompadour (Paris, 2000). For the
Metz incident, see T. Kaiser, ‘Louis le Bien-Aimé and the rhetoric of the royal body’, in
Melzer & Norberg, From the Royal to the Republican Body. Kaiser’s work is particularly
helpful: see also, for this period, his ‘Madame de Pompadour and the theatres of power’,
FHS, 19 (1996); and ‘The Drama of Charles Edward Stuart, Jacobite propaganda and
French political protest, 1745-50’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, (30), 1997. The child
abduction scare is analyzed in A. Farge & J. Revel, The Vanishing Children of Paris: Rumor
and Politics before the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1991). For the broader
Parisian context see A. Farge, Fragile Lives. Violence. Power and Solidarity in Eighteenth-
Century Paris (Cambridge, 1993) and D. Garrioch, Neighbourhood and Community in
Eighteenth-Century Paris, 1740-90 (Cambridge, 1986). See too J. de Viguerie, ‘Le Roi et
le public: l’exemple de Louis XV’, RH, 278 (1987). For relations with the Parlement, see J.
M.J. Rogister, Louis XV and the Parlement of Paris, 1737-55 (Cambridge, 1995); and id.,
‘The crisis of 1753-4 in France and the debate on the nature of the monarchy and the
fundamental laws’, in Herrschaftsverträge, Wahlkapitülationen und Fundamentalgestetze, ed.
R. Vierhaus (Göttingen, 1977) See too S. Pillorget, Claude-Henri Feydeau de Marville,
Lieutenant général de Police de Paris, 1740-7 (Paris, 1978).

4.2. War and Diplomacy: J. Black, ‘Mid Eighteenth-century conflict with particular
reference to the Wars of the Polish and Austrian Successions’, in id. (ed.), The Origin of
War in Early Modern Europe (Edinburgh, 1987); and M.S. Anderson, The War of Austrian
Succession, 1740-8 (London, 1995) are useful. On Maurepas, M. Filion, Maurepas,
ministre de Louis XV, 1715-49 (Montreal, 1967); id., La pensée et l’action coloniale de
Maurepas vis-à-vis du Canada (Montreal, 1972); and J. Pritchard, Louis XV’s Navy,
1748-62: A Study of Organization and Administration (Kingston, Ont., 1987). For the
armed forces, see 0.6, 1.4; and for state finance, 6.3]

4.3 Rural France in Perspective [See also 0.5, 8.1]: G. Duby & A. Wallon (eds),
Histoire de la France rurale. ii. L’Âge classique des paysans, 1348-1789 (Paris, 1975) may
be up-dated by P.T. Hoffman, Growth in a Traditional Society: The French Countryside,
1450-1815 (Princeton, NJ, 1996). Excellent local studies which revise our understanding
of the rural economy are L. Vardi, The Land and the Loom: Peasants and Profits in
Northern France, 1680-1800 ( Durham, NC, 1993), and H.L Root, Peasants and King in
Burgundy. Agrarian Foundations of French Absolutism (Berkeley, Ca, 1987). The latter
should be read alongside P. de Saint-Jacob, Les Paysans de la Bourgogne du Nord au
dernier siècle de l’Ancien Régime (Paris, 1960). Other valuable local studies include A.
Poitrineau, La Vie rurale en Basse-Auvergne au XVIIIe siècle (2 vols., Paris, 1965); G.
Frêche, Toulouse et la région Midi-Pyrénées au siècle des Lumières, vers 1670-1789
(Paris, 1974); J.M. Moriceau, Les Fermiers de l’Ile-de-France. L’ascension d’un patronat
agricole (XVe-XVIIIe siècle) (Paris, 1994); id. & G. Postel-Vinay, Ferme, entreprise,
famille: grande exploitation et changements agricoles. Les Chartier, XVIIe-XIXe siècles
(Paris, 1992); and G. Postel-Vinay, La Terre et l’argent: l’agriculture et le crédit en France
du XVIIIe siècle au début du XXe siècle (Paris, 1998). Still worth consulting are the
contrasting views of M. Morineau, Les Faux-semblants d’un démarrage économique:
agriculture et démographie en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1970) on one hand and, on
the other, J. Goy & E. Le Roy Ladurie, Les Fluctuations du produit de la dîme. Conjoncture
décimale et domaniale de la fin du moyen âge au XVIII siècle (Paris, 1972) and id,
Prestations paysannes, dîmes, rente foncière et mouvement de la production agricole à
l’époque préindustrielle (2 vols, Paris, 1982). For the poor, see the superb O. Hufton, The
Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 1750-89 (Oxford, 1974), complemented by C. Jones,
The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary
France (London, 1989); R.M. Schwartz, Policing the Poor in Eighteenth-Century France
(Chapel Hill, NC, 1988); and T. Adams, Bureaucrats and Beggars: French Social Policy in
the Age of Enlightenment (New York, 1990).

4.4 Trade, Industry and the Towns: G. Duby (ed.), Histoire de la France urbaine. iii. La
ville classique de la Renaissance aux Révolution (Paris, 1981) provides an excellent starting
point, alongside B. Lepetit, The Pre-Industrial Urban System: France, 1740-1840
(Cambridge, 1994); and P. Benedict (ed.), Cities and Social Change in Early Modern
France (London, 1989). See too id., ‘More than market and manufactory: the cities of early
modern France’, FHS, 20 (1997). Valuable local studies include R. Schneider, Public Life
in Toulouse, 1463-1789: From Municipal Republic to Cosmopolitan City (Ithaca, NY,
1989); id., The Ceremonial City. Toulouse Observed, 1738-80 (Princeton, NJ. 1995); J.P.
Bardet, Rouen aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1983); J.C. Perrot, Genèse d’une ville
moderne: Caen au XVIIIe siècle (2 vols., Paris, 1975). See too T.D. Hemming et al., The
Secular City. Studies in the Enlightenment (Exeter, 1994), while for disease and the
environment, see J. Riley, The Eighteenth-Century Campaign to Avoid Disease (London,
1987) and L. Brockliss & C. Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France (Oxford,
1997)
F. Crouzet, Britain Ascendant: Comparative Studies in Franco-British Economic
History (Cambridge, 1990) collects together Crouzet’s seminal essays, with updated
footnotes. For industry, T. Markovitch, Histoire des industries françaises. t. 1. Les industries
lainières de Colbert à la Révolution (Geneva, 1976) is pretty rough and ready. More subtle
are P. Minard, La Fortune du Colbertisme: état et industrie dans la France des Lumières
(1998); S. Chassagne, Oberkampf, un entrepreneur capitaliste au siècle des Lumières
(Paris, 1980); and J.P. Hirsch, Les deux rêves du commerce, entreprise et institutions dans
la région lilloise, 1780-1860 (Paris, 1991). For proto-industrialization, see esp. G.L.
Gullickson, Spinners and Weavers of Auffay: Rural Industry and the Sexual Division of
Labor in a French Village (Cambridge, 1986).
For the trades, Michael Sonenscher’s work is fundamental: The Hatters of
Eighteenth-Century France (Berkeley, Ca, 1987) and Work and Wages: Natural Law,
Politics and the Eighteenth-Century French Trades (Cambridge, 1989). See too R. Darnton,
The Great Cat Massacre and Other Essays in French Cultural History (London, 1984); S.
Kaplan, ‘The character and implications of strife among masters inside the guilds of
eighteenth-century Paris’, Journal of Social History, 19 (1986) and id., ‘Réflexions sur la
police du monde de travail, 1700-1815’, RH, 261 (1979). See also the testimony of a
master-glazier: Jean-Louis Ménétra, Journal of My Life, ed. D. Roche (New York, 1986).
For the longer perspective, W.H. Sewell, Work and Revolution in France: The Language of
Labor from the Old Régime to 1848 (Cambridge, 1980) is excellent.
For overseas trade, L. Hilaire-Pérez, L’Expérience de la mer: Les Européeens et les
espaces maritimes au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1997) is a valuable synthesis. See too P. Pluchon
(ed.), Histoire des Antilles et de la Guyane (Toulouse, 1982); J. Bosher, The Canada
Merchants, 1713-63 (Oxford, 1987); P. Butel, Les Négociants bordelais, l’Europe et les
Iles au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1974); and J.M. Price, France and the Chesapeake. A History
of the French Tobacco Monopoly (1674-1791) and of its Relationship to the British and
American Tobacco Trade (Ann Arbor, MI, 1973).
For communications, see esp. G. Arbellot, ‘La grande mutation des routes de
France au XVIIIe siècle’, AESC, 28 (1973) and D. Margairaz, Foires et marchés dans la
France préindustrielle (Paris, 1988). J.F. Bosher, The Single Duty Project. A Study of the
Movement for a French Customs Union in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1964) is a
useful related study. For domestic trade in non-subsistence commodities, see too T.
Brennan. Burgundy to Champagne. The Wine Trade in Early Modern France (Baltimore,
Md, 1997) and L.M. Cullen, The Brandy Trade under the Ancien Régime: Regional
Specialization in the Charente (Cambridge, 1998).

CHAPTER 5: AN ENLIGHTENING AGE [See too 1.6, 8.2]
5.1 The Enlightenment: General: The French Enlightenment is set in its European context
in D. Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1995); T. Munck, The Enlightenment: A
Comparative Social History, 1721-94 (London, 2000); R. Porter & M. Teich (eds), The
Enlightenment in National Context (Cambridge, 1981); and the highly evocative R. Pomeau,
L’Europe des Lumières. Cosmopolitisme et unité européenne au XVIIIe siècle (Paris,
1966). R. Porter, The Enlightenment (2nd edn, Basingstoke, 2001) is an excellent guide to
wider reading, and should be set against the same author’s Enlightenment: Britain and the
Creation of the Modern World (London, 2000). For the ‘mind of the Enlightenment’, E.
Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ. 1951) is a classic. Good
overviews on France are provided by N, Hampson, The Enlightenment (Harmondsworth,
1968) and P. Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (2 vols., New York, 1967. 1969).
D. Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment
(Ithaca, NY, 1994) focuses on the salons. S. Eliot & B. Stern (eds), The Age of
Enlightenment (2 vols., London 1979) is a good primer of primary sources.

5.2 Diderot and The Encyclopédie: Intellectual biographies of Diderot are provided by
A. Wilson, Diderot, the Testing Years, 1713-59 (Oxford, 1969) and P.N. Furbank,
Diderot, A Critical Biography (London, 1992). See too A. Strugnell, Diderot’s Politics. A
Study of Diderot’s Political Thought after the Encyclopédie (The Hague, 1973). Specifically
on relations with the Encyclopédie, see J. Proust, Diderot and the Encyclopédie (Paris,
1962); and, more recently, D. Brewer, The Discourse of Enlightenment in Eighteenth-
Century France: Diderot and the Art of Philosophizing (Cambridge, 1993). General
treatments include J. Lough, The Encyclopédie (London, 1971); and id., L’Encyclopédie
(Paris, 1965). R. Darnton. ‘Philosophers trim the tree of knowledge: The epistemological
strategy of the Encyclopédie’, in id., The Great Cat Massacre is an excellent snapshot of the
intellectual strategies of the Encyclopédistes, while for its commercial strategies, see the
same author’s The Business of Enlightenment. A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie,
1775-1800 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979).

5.3 The Bourgeois Public Sphere: The classic text is J. Habermas, The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Enquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society
(Cambridge, Mass., 1989). For expositions of the impact of Habermas’s approach, see
esp. D. Goodman, ‘Public sphere and private life: Toward a synthesis of current
historiographical approaches to the Old Regime’, History and Theory, 31 (1992); A de La
Vopa, ‘Conceiving a Public: ideas and society in eighteenth-century Europe, JMH, 64,
1992; B. Nathans, ‘Habermas’s “Public Sphere” in the era of the French Revolution’, FHS,
16 (1990). See too D. Castiglione & L. Sharpe (eds), Shifting the Boundaries.
Transformations of the Languages of Public and Private in the Eighteenth Century (Exeter,
1995). On sociability more broadly construed, see E. François & R. Reichardt, ‘Les
Formes de sociabilité en France du milieu du XVIIIe au milieu du XIXe siècle’, RHMC, 34
(1987).
On education, R. Chartier et al., L’Éducation in France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle
(Paris, 1976) provides a useful overview. For literacy, see F. Furet & M. Ozouf, Reading
and Writing: Literacy in France from Calvin to Jules Ferry (Cambridge, 1982). On letterwriting,
R. Chartier, Correspondence: Models of Letter-Writing from the Middle Ages to
the Nineteeth Century (Cambridge, 1997). For higher education and research, L. Brockliss,
French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Cultural History
(Oxford, 1987) and R. Taton (ed.), Enseignement et diffusion des sciences en France au
XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1964).
On the book trade, see H.J. Martin et al. (eds), Histoire de l’édition française. ii. Le
livre triomphant, 1660-1830 (Paris, 1984); H.J. Martin & R. Chartier, Le Livre français
sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris, 1984); D. Pottinger, The French Book-Trade in the Ancien
Régime, 1500-1789 (Cambridge, Mass., 1958); F. Furet et al., Livre et société dans la
France du XVIIIe siècle (2 vols., Paris, 1968, 1970); and R. Darnton, The Forbidden Best-
Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (London, 1996). R. Chartier, The Cultural Uses of
Print in Early Modern France (Princeton, NJ, 1987) is a thoughtful collection of essays. For
the lower end of the market, see G. Bollème, Les Almanachs populaires aux XVIIe et
XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1969) and L. Andries, La Bibliothèque bleue au XVIIIe siècle. Une
tradition éditoriale (Oxford, 1989).
As regards newspapers, J. Censer, The French Press in the Age of Enlightenment
(London, 1994) is a useful synthesis of recent scholarship, and may be read alongside G.
Feyel, L’Annonce et la nouvelle: la presse d’information en France sous l’Ancien Régime
(1661-1788) (Oxford, 2000). J. Sgard (ed.), Dictionnaire des journaux, 1600-1789 (2
vols., Oxford, 1991) and id., Dictionnaire des journalistes, 1600-1789 (2 vols., Oxford,
1999) are superb works of reference. Two exemplary studies on individual newspapers are
N.R. Gelbart, Feminine and Opposition Journalism in Old Régime France: Le Journal des
Dames (Berkeley, Ca, 1987) and J. Popkin, News and Politics in the Age of Revolution.
Jean Luzac’s Gazette de Leyde (Ithaca, NY, 1989).
For freemasonry, see M.C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment. Freemasonry and
Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Oxford, 1991) as well as R. Halévi, Les Loges
maçonniques dans la France d’Ancien Régime. Aux origines de la sociabilité démocratique
(Paris, 1984) and M. Agulhon, Pénitents et francs-maçons dans l’ancienne Provence (Paris,
1968).
For other venues of sociability and intellectual exchange, see T. Crow, Painters and
Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris (New Haven, Ct, 1985); T.E. Brennan, Public
Drinking and Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Princeton, NJ, 1988); R.M.
Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy: Popular Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Oxford,
1986); M. Root-Bernstein, Boulevard Theater and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century Paris
(Ann Arbor, MI, 1984); J. Lough, Paris Theatre Audiences in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries (Oxford, 1957); and J.S. Ravel, The Contested Parterre: Public
Theater and French Political Culture, 1680-1791 (Ithaca, NY, 1999).

5.4 Religion, Nature and Science: For religion, see [0.4, 1.6, 2.3], and for unbelief, R.R.
Palmer, Catholics and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-Century France (Princeton, NJ, 1939); and
A.C. Kors, Atheism in France, 2 vols., I. 1650-1729 (Princeton NJ 1990). For the
broader context, see M. Vovelle, ‘Le Tournant des mentalités en France: une sensibilité prérévolutionnaire’, Social History, 2 (1977). On science, G, Rousseau & R. Porter (eds), The
Ferment of Knowledge. Studies in the Historiography of Eighteenth-Century Science
(Cambridge, 1980) is a brilliant, though now slightly outdated bibliographically-oriented
overview. See too T.L. Hankins, Science and the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1985); W.
Clark et al., The Sciences in Enlightened Europe (Chicago, 1999). On Enlightenment views
of nature, A.O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass., 1970) is still a
decent starting point. Two older works, D. Mornet, Le Sentiment de la nature en France de
J.J. Rousseau à Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (Paris, 1907) and J. Ehrard, L’Idée de nature en
France dans la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1970) are updated in D.G.
Charlton, New Images of the Natural in France: A Study in European Cultural History,
1750-1800 (Cambridge, 1984). For science and nature, J. Roger’s Les sciences de la vie
dans la pensée française au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1963) should be complemented by his
outstanding intellectual biography, Buffon (Ithaca, NY, 1997). See too C. Glacken, Traces
of the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancien Times to the
End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley, Ca, 1967); N. Jardine et al. (eds), Cultures of
Natural History (Cambridge, 1995); and E.C. Spary, Utopia’s Garden. French Natural
History from the Old Regime to Revolution (Chicago, 2000).
For science and the wider public, see G.V. Sutton, Science for a Polite Society.
Gender, Culture and the Demonstration of Enlightenment (Boulder, Colorado, 1995) and R.
Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). Also
stimulating in this field are B.M. Stafford, Body Criticism. Imaging the Unseen in
Enlightenment Art and Medicine (Cambridge, Mass, 1991); and id., Artful Science:
Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education (Cambridge, Mass, 1994)
Enlightenment reflection on Europe in the global scale can be explored through the
works on science and natural history noted above, in addition to M. Duchet, Anthropologie
et histoire au siècle des Lumières (Paris, 1971) and E.A. Williams, The Physical and the
Moral. Anthropology, Physiology and Philosophical Medicine in France, 1750-1800
(Cambridge, 1994); G.S. Rousseau & R. Porter (eds), Exoticism in the Enlightenment
(Manchester, 1990); and A. Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain,
Britain and France, c.1500-c.1800 (New Haven, Ct, 1995). Racism is brought in line with
anti-semitism in P. Pluchon, Nègres et juifs au XVIIIe siècle: le racisme au siècle des
Lumières (Paris, 1984) and R.H. Popkin, ‘Medicine, racism, anti-semitism: a dimension of
Enlightenment culture’, in G.S. Rousseau (ed.), The Languages of Psyche. Mind and Body
in Enlightenment Thought (Berkeley, Ca, 1990). See too A. Hertzberg, The French
Enlightenment and the Jews (New York, 1968).
For science and gender, T. Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the
Greeks to Freud (London, 1990) has been criticized, but still is a valuable starting point. See
too L. Schiebinger, The Mind has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science
(Cambridge, Mass, 1989); id., Nature’s Body. Sexual Politics and the Making of Modern
Science (London, 1993); and B. Duden, The Woman beneath the Skin: A Doctor’s Patients
in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge, Mass., 1991). L. Steinbrugge, The Moral Sex:
Women’s Nature in the French Enlightenment (Oxford, 1995) may be read alongside S.
Tomaselli, ‘The Enlightenment debate on women’, History Workshop, 20 (1985). For sex,
see too G. Rousseau & R. Porter (eds), Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment
(Manchester, 1987).

5.5 Enlightenment Politics: N. Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France from the
Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ, 1980) provides the larger picture. M.
Cranston, Philosophers and Pamphleteers: Political Theorists of the Enlightenment (Oxford,
1986) is an excellent introduction to the main debates. See too M. Linton, The Politics of
Virtue in Enlightenment France (2001). Studies highlighting the politics in the career and
thinking of individual figures include:
· Voltaire: H.T. Mason, Voltaire, a Biography (Baltimore, Md, 1981); and P. Gay,
Voltaire’s Politics: The Poet as Realist (2nd edn, New York, 1959). [See too 6.4, for
the Calas Affair]
· Montesquieu: R. Shackleton, Montesquieu, a Critical Biography (Oxford, 1961);
J. Shklar, Montesquieu (Oxford, 1987); E. Carcassonne, Montesquieu et le problème de la
constitution française au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1927); and R. Kingston, Montesquieu and the
Parlement of Bordeaux (Geneva, 1996)
· Rousseau: M. Cranston, Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Work of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (London, 1983); R, Grimsley, The Philosophy of Rousseau (Oxford, 1973); J.
Starobinski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction (Chicago, 1988);
and M. Hulliung, The Autocritique of Enlightenment. Rousseau and the Philosophes
(Cambridge, Mass., 1994)
· La Mettrie: K. Wellman, La Mettrie: Medicine, Philosophy and Enlightenment (Durham,
NC, 1992)
· D’Holbach: A.C. Kors, D’Holbach’s Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris (Princeton, NJ,
1977)
On Physiocracy, the classic works are G. Weulersse, Le Mouvement
physiocratique en France de 1756 à 1770 (2 vols., Paris, 1910); id., La Physiocratie sous
les ministères de Turgot et de Necker, 1774-81 (Paris, 1950); id., Les Physiocrates à
l’aube de la Révolution (Paris, 1984). See too E. Fox-Genovese, The Origins of
Physiocracy: Economic Revolution and Social Order in 18th-Century France (Ithaca, NY,
1976); R. L. Meek (ed.), Turgot on Progress, Sociology and Economics (Cambridge,
1973); id.,The Economics of Physiocracy (London, 1962); and G. Vaggi, The Economics
of François Quesnay (Basingstoke, 1987). There is also much to be gleaned from C.
Larrère, L’Invention de l’économie au XVIIIe siècle: du droit naturel à la physiocratie
(Paris, 1992); and I. Hont & M. Ignatieff (eds), Wealth and Virtue. The Shaping of Political
Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983).
The most influential historian working on the relationship between Enlightenment and
Revolution in recent years has been Keith Michael Baker: see his Inventing the French
Revolution. Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century Cambridge, 1990).
Thematic approaches to the Enlightenment with a strong political (and often proto-
Revolutionary) dimension include D. Gordon, Citizens without Sovereignty. Equality and
Sociability in French Thought, 1670-1789 (Princeton, NJ, 1994); R. Mauzi, L’Idée de
bonheur dans la littérature et la pensée françaises au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1960); A.
Delaporte, L’Idée de l’égalité en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1987). M. Linton, ‘Virtue
rewarded? Women and the politics of virtue in eighteenth-century France’, History of
European Ideas, 26 (2000). This is taken into the Revolutionary era in C. Blum, Rousseau
and the Language of Politics in the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY, 1986) and N. Hampson,
Will and Circumstance: Montesquieu, Rousseau and the French Revolution (London, 1983).
Other political treatments include M.C. Jacobs, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists,
Freemasons and Republicans (London, 1981); F. Venturi, Utopia and Reform in the
Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1971); and K.M. Baker, ‘Transformations of classical
republicanism in eighteenth-century France’, JMH, 73 (2001).
On public opinion, K. Baker, ‘Public opinion as political invention’, in id., Inventing
the French Revolution and J.A.W. Gunn, Queen of the World: Opinion in the Public Life of
France from the Renaissance to the Revolution (Oxford, 1995). That ‘public’ opinion was
rarely intended to extend to the common people is highlighted in H.C. Payne, The
Philosophes and the People (New Haven, Ct, 1976). See too in this regard A. Farge,
Subversive Words: Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Century France (Cambridge, 1994).

CHAPTER 6: FORESTALLING DELUGE (1756-70)
6.1 Politics from the 1750s to the Triumvirate: There are two fine treatments of the
Damiens affair and its political fall-out: D. Van Kley, The Damiens Affair and the Unravelling
of the Ancien Régime, 1750-70 (Princeton, NJ. 1984); and P. Rétat, L’Attentat de
Damiens: discours sur l’événement au XVIIIe siècle (Lyon, 1979). See M. Foucault,
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Harmondsworth, 1979) for how it all ended.
The best guide to high politics over this period is J. Swann, Politics and the Parlement of
Paris under Louis XV, 1754-74 (Cambridge, 1995). See too J. Egret, Louis XV et
l’opposition parlementaire (Paris, 1970) and S.L. Kaplan, Bread, Politics and Political
Economy in the Reign of Louis XV (2 vols., The Hague, 1976).
On the parlements and Jansenism, see D.C. Hudson, ‘The parlementary crisis of
1763 and its consequences’, Canadian Journal of History, 7 (1972); D.C. Joynes,
‘Parlementaires, peers, and the parti janséniste: the refusal of the sacraments and the revival
of the ancien constitution in eighteenth-century France’, AMWS, 8 (1980); and J.M.J.
Rogister, ‘Louis-Adrien Le Paige and the attack on De l’Esprit and the Encyclopédie in
1759’, EHR, 92 (1977).

6.2 The Seven Years War: For the diplomatic and military dimensions of the war, we still
have to rely on R. Waddington, Louis XV et le renversement des alliances. Préliminaires de
la guerre de Sept Ans, 1754-6 (Paris, 1896) and id., La Guerre de Sept Ans (5 vols., Paris,
1899-1914). Aspects of the war are covered in J. Riley, The Seven Years War and the Old
Regime in France: The Economic and Financial Toll (Princeton, NJ, 1986) and L. Kennett,
The French Army in the Seven Years War (Durham, NC, 1967). [See too 0.6]
Political dimensions of the war are the focus of J. Swann, ‘Parlement, politics and
the parti janséniste: the Grand Conseil affair, 1755-6’, FH, 6 (1992); id., ‘Parlements and
the political crisis in France under Louis XV: the Besançon affair, 1757-61’, HJ, 37 (1994);
id., ‘Power and provincial politics in eighteenth-century France: The Varenne affair’, FHS,
21 (1998); D. Van Kley, ‘The prince de Conty versus Mme de Pompadour and the political
crisis of 1756-7 in France: an eighteenth-century Fronde manqué?’, AMWS, 8 (1980); and
J.D. Woodbridge, Revolt in Pre-Revolutionary France. The Prince de Conti’s Conspiracy
against Louis XV, 1755-7 (Baltimore, Md, 1995).

6.3 State Finance from c. 1750: An overview is provided by R.J. Bonney, ‘The
Eighteenth Century: the struggle for great power status and the end of the old fiscal regime’,
in id. (ed.), Economic Systems and State Finance (Oxford, 1995) and some of the
problems are highlighted in his stimulating ‘What’s new about the new French fiscal
history?’, JMH, 70 (1998). The state budget is best approached through M. Morineau,
‘Budgets de l’État et gestion des finances royales en France au XVIIIe siècle’, RH, 264
(1980); and A. Guéry, ‘Les finances de la monarchie française sous l’Ancien Régime’,
AESC, 33 (1978). M. Marion, Histoire financière de la France depuis 1715 (5 vols., 1923)
is still usable, as is id., Machault d’Arnouville. Étude sur l’histoire du contrôle générale des
finances de 1749 à 1754 (Paris, 1892), while M. Kwass, Privilege and the Politics of
Taxation in Eighteenth-Century France (Cambridge, 2000) is extremely helpful. For some
‘new fiscal history’, see D.R. Weir, ‘Tontines, public finance and Revolution in France and
England, 1688-1789’, JEcH, 49 (1989); id., ‘The financial market and government debt
policy in France, 1746-93’, JEcH, 52 (1992); J.C. Riley, ‘French finances, 1727-68’,
JMH, 59 (1987); and E.N. White, ‘Was there a solution to the Ancien Régime’s financial
dilemma?’, JEcH, 49 (1989). For financial administration, see J. Bosher, French Finances,
1770-95: From Business to Bureaucracy (Cambridge, 1970). A comparative picture is
provided by P. Mathias & P. O’Brien, ‘Taxation in Britain and France, 1715-1820’,
Journal of European Economic History (1976). For a brilliant conspectus over state finances
throughout the century from the perspective of the problem of the royal debt, see M.
Sonenscher, ‘The nation’s debt and the birth of the modern republic: The French fiscal
deficit and the politics of the Revolution of 1789’, History of Political Thought, 18 (1997).
[See also 2.4, 2.5, 7.3, 8.3]

6.4 Choiseul and Post-War Recovery: There is no scholarly biography of Choiseul, one
of the most important ministers of the reign of Louis XV. The early life is covered in the
quirky R. Butler, Choiseul, Father and Son, 1719-54 (Oxford, 1980). See too (but note the
publication date) G. Maugras, Le Duc et Duchesse de Choiseul, leur vie intime, leurs amis et
leur temps (Paris, 1902). For the new patriotism produced by the war, see esp. D. Bell, The
Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism in France, 1680-1800 (2002); and E.
Dziembowski, Un Nouveau patriotisme français, 1750-70: La France face à la puissance
anglaise à l’époque de la guerre de Sept Ans (Oxford, 1998). Still useful is W. Krause,
‘“Patriote”, “patriotique”, “patriotisme” à la fin de l’Ancien Régime’, in W.H. Barber et al.,
The Age of Enlightenment. Studies Presented to Theodore Besterman (Edinburgh, 1967).
Both dimensions of France’s engagement with English culture are covered by J. Grieder,
Anglomania in France, 1740-89. Fact, Fiction and Political Discourse (Geneva, 1985) and
F. Acomb, Anglophobia in France, 1763-89 (Durham, NC, 1950). The Siege of Calais
affair is discussed in Journal et Mémoires de Christophe Collé, ed. H. Bonhomme (3 vols.,
Paris, 1868); and A. Boes, ‘La Lanterne magique de l’histoire: essai sur le théâtre historique
de 1750 à 1789’, Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 231 (1982). Other
aspects of foreign relations may be followed in T. Hall, France and the Eighteenth-Century
Corsican Question (New York, 1971) and H.M. Scott, ‘The importance of Bourbon naval
reconstruction to the strategy of Choiseul after the Seven Years War’, International History
Review, 1 (1979).
For municipal reform, see M. Bordes, La Réforme municipale du contrôleur-général
Laverdy et son application, 1764-71 (Toulouse, 1968) against the background revealed in
N. Temple, ‘The control and exploitation of French towns during the Ancien Régime’,
History, 51 (1966). For reform through the Intendants, see M. Bordes, ‘Les Intendants de
Louis XV’, RH(1960) and id., ‘Les Intendants éclairés de la fin de l’Ancien Régime’, Revue
d’histoire économique et sociale (1961). For the wide role of the Lieutenant-Général de
Police in Paris, see A. Williams, The Police of Paris, 1718-89 (Baton Rouge, La, 1979).
For the growing state interest in scientific matters, see the brilliant C.C. Gillispie, Science
and Polity in France at the End of the Old Régime (Princeton, NJ, 1980).
For the expulsion of the Jesuits, the classic text is D. Van Kley, The Jansenists and
the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France, 1757-65 (New Haven, Ct, 1975), while for the
Calas Affair, see D. Bien, The Calas Affair: Persecution, Toleration and Heresy in
Eighteenth-Century Toulouse (Princeton, NJ, 1960). For a similar case, see E. Walter,
‘L’Affaire La Barre et le concept d’opinion publique’, in Le Journalisme d’Ancien Régime
(Lyon, 1982).
The troubles in Brittany may be followed in J. Rothney, The Brittany Affair and the
Crisis of the Ancien Régime (New York, 1969). Two older but still useful works are M.
Marion, La Bretagne et le duc d’Aiguillon, 1753-70 (Paris, 1898) and B. Pocquet, Le
Pouvoir absolu et l’esprit provincial: le duc d’Aiguillon et La Chalotais (3 vols., Paris, 1900-
01).

CHAPTER 7: THE TRIUMVIRATE AND ITS AFTERMATH (1771-83)
7.1. The Maupeou Revolution: D. Echeverria, The Maupeou Revolution: A Study in the
History of Libertarianism, France, 1770-4 (Baton Rouge, La, 1985) provides a useful
guide. See too L. Laugier, Un Ministere réformateur sous Louis XV: le Triumvirat (Paris,
1975) and id., Le Duc d’Aiguillon (Paris, 1984). Articles by W. Doyle collected in his
Officers, Nobles and Revolutionaries are also of value here. See too K.M. Baker (ed.),
‘The Maupeou Revolution: the transformation of French politics at the end of the Old
Régime’, Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques special issue, 18 (1992); and D. Bell,
‘Lawyers into demagogues: Chancellor Maupeou and the transformation of legal practice in
France, 1771-89’, P&P, 130 (1991). On the Paris Parlement, see J. Félix, Les Magistrats
du parlement de Paris, 1771-90 (Paris, 1990) and R. Villers, L’Organisation du parlement
de Paris et des conseils supérieurs d’après la réforme de Maupeou (Paris, 1937). See too
J.F. Bosher, ‘The French Crisis of 1770’, History, 57 (1972); D.C. Hudson, ‘In defence of
reform: French government propaganda during the Maupeou crisis’, FHS, 8 (1973); and
S.M. Singham, ‘Vox populi, vox Dei: les jansénistes pendant la révolution Maupeou’, in C.
Maire (ed.), Jansénisme et Révolution (Paris, 1990).

7.2 Turgot, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette: J. Hardman’s French Politics, 1774-89:
From the Accession of Louis XVI to the Fall of the Bastille (London, 1995) is a decent
overview. The same author’s Louis XVI (London 1993) is a valuable biography to which
his potboiler with the same title (Basingstoke, 2000) adds little. See too P. Girault de
Coursac, L’Éducation d’un roi: Louis XVI (Paris, 1972) and E. Lever, Louis XVI (Paris,
1985). For the queen, both E. Lever, Marie-Antoinette. the Last Queen of France (London,
2001) and A. Fraser, Marie-Antoinette (London, 2001) are serviceable biographies. More
interested in the queen’s reputation and representations are C. Thomas, The Wicked
Queen. The Origins of the Myth of Marie-Antoinette (New York, 1999); H. Fleischman,
Les pamphlets libertins contre Marie-Antoinette (Paris, 1908); and T. Kaiser, ‘Who’s afraid
of Marie-Antoinette? Diplomacy, Austrophobia and the queen’, FH, 14 (2000). See too M.
Price, The Fall of the French Monarchy (2002).
Turgot lacks a recent biography. In one’s absence, D. Dakin, Turgot and the Ancien
Régime in France (London, 1939) and E. Faure, La Disgrâce de Turgot (Paris, 1961) are
still serviceable. For Turgot’s impact on the world of work, see S.L. Kaplan, ‘Social
classification and representation in the corporate world of eighteenth-century Paris: Turgot’s
carnival’, in id. & C.J. Koepp (eds), Work in France: Representations, Meaning,
Organization, Practices (Ithaca, NY, 1986). For the increasingly fraught issue of grain
prices, see other work by Kaplan, notably Provisioning Paris. Merchants and Millers in the
Grain and Flour Trade during the Eighteenth Century (Ithaca, NY, 1984); The Bakers of
Paris and the Bread Question, 1700-75 (Durham, NC, 1996); and ‘The famine plot
persuasion in eighteenth-century France’, TAPS, 72 (1982). See also C.A. Bouton, The
Flour War: Gender. Class and Community in Late Ancien Régime French Society
(Philadelphia, 1993) and J. Miller, Mastering the Market: The State and the Grain Trade in
Northern France, 1700-1860 (Cambridge, 1999).
On Necker, see J. Egret, Necker, ministre de Louis XVI (Paris, 1975); R.D.
Harris, Necker, Reform Statesman of the Old Régime (Berkeley, Ca, 1979); and H.
Grange, Les Idées de Necker (Paris, 1974). Parlementary politics are covered in B. Stone,
The Parlement of Paris, 1774-89 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1981); id., The French Parlements and
the Crisis of the Old Régime (Chapel Hill. NC, 1986); and W. Doyle, The Parlement of
Bordeaux and the End of the Old Régime, 1771-90 (London, 1974). For the primacy of
Vergennes, see J.F. Labourdette, Vergennes. ministre principal de Louis XVI (Paris, 1990);
M. Price, Preserving the Monarchy: The Comte de Vergennes, 1774-87 (Cambridge,
1995); and id. & J. Hardman (eds), Louis XVI and the Comte de Vergennes:
Correspondence, 1774-87 (Oxford, 1998).

7.3 The American War and State Finances: The best works are J.R. Dull, The French
Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774-87 (Princeton,
NJ, 1975); L. Kennett, The French Forces in America, 1780-83 (London, 1977); O.T.
Murphy, Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes: French Diplomacy in the Age of
Revolution, 1719-87 (Albany, NY, 1982); and id., The Diplomatic Retreat of France and
Public Opinion on the Eve of the French Revolution, 1783-89 (Washington, DC, 1997).
See too R.R. Crout, ‘In search of a “just and lasting peace”: the Treaty of 1783, Louis XVI,
Vergennes and the regeneration of the realm’, International History Review, 5 (1983). On
state finances (besides works cited 6.3, 8.3], see R.D. Harris, ‘French Finances and the
American War, 1777-83’, JMH, 48 (1976); and id., ‘Necker’s Compte Rendu of 1781: a
reconsideration’, ibid., 42 (1970).

7.4 The Nobility: A good starting-point is C. Petitfrère, Le Scandale du ‘Mariage de
Figaro’. Prélude à la Révolution française? (Brussels, 1989). G. Chaussinand-Nogaret
provides an overview which over-stresses the dynamism of the nobility: The French Nobility
in the Eighteenth Century. From Feudalism to Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1985). This
should now be compared with J. Smith, The Culture of Merit: Nobility, Royal Service and
the Making of Absolute Monarchy in France, 1600-1789 (Ann Arbor, MI, 1996), and, on
economic activity, with G. Richard, Noblesse d’affaires au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1974). M.
Reinhard, ‘Elite et noblesse dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle’, RHMC, 3 (1956) is
still worth consulting, as is the classic text by C. Lucas, ‘Nobles, bourgeois and the origins
of the French Revolution’, originally P&P, 60 (1973), and much reprinted elsewhere since
then. In the same vein, see too G.V. Taylor, ‘Types of capitalism in eighteenth-century
France’, EHR, 79 (1964) and id., ‘Noncapitalist wealth and the origins of the French
Revolution’, AHR, 72 (1967).
On elite mobility, the work of David Bien and his pupils is invaluable. See esp. D.
Bien, ‘La réaction aristocratique avant 1789: l’exemple de l’armée’, AESC, 29 (1974); id.,
‘The Army in the French Enlightenment: reform, reaction and Revolution’, P & P, 85
(1979); id., ‘The secrétaires du Roi: absolutism, corps and privilege under the Ancien
Régime’, in A. Cremer & E. Hinrichs (eds), Vom Ancien Regime zur franzözischen
Revolution (Gottingen, 1978); id., ‘Manufacturing nobles: The Chancelleries in France to
1789’, JMH, 61 (1989); and G. Bossenga, ‘From Corps to Citizenship: the Bureaux des
Finances before the French Revolution’, JMH, 58 (1986).
For examples of provincial nobilities, see R. Forster, The Nobility of Toulouse in the
Eighteenth Century (Baltimore, Md, 1960); id., The House of Saulx-Tavannes (Baltimore,
Md. 1971); and J. Meyer, La Noblesse bretonne au XVIIIe siècle (2 vols., Paris, 1966).
For the noble as seigneur, O. Hufton, ‘The seigneur and the rural community in eighteenthcentury
France: the seigenurial reaction. A reappraisal’, TRHS, 5th series, 29 (1979); J.
Dewald, Pont-Saint-Pierre, 1389-1789: Lordship, Community and Capitalism in Early
Modern France (Berkeley, Ca., 1987); and H. Root, ‘Challenging the seigneurie:
community and contention on the eve of the French Revolution’, JMH, 57 (1985). See too
J.Q.C. Mackrell, The Attack on Feudalism in Eighteenth-Century France (London, 1973).

CHAPTER 8: BOURBON MONARCHY ON THE RACK (1783-8)
8.1. The Economy: Ernest Labrousse’s magisterial and still highly influential work (Esquisse
du mouvement, Crise de l’ économie : see 0.5) has been subject to a great deal of criticism:
see esp. D. Weir, ‘Les Crises économiques et les origines de la Révolution française’,
AESC, 46 (1991) and two articles by Louis Cullen, ‘History, economic crises, and
revolutions: understanding eighteenth-century France’, Economic History Review, 46
(1993); and id., ‘La crise économique de la fin de l’Ancien Régime’ in J.P. Poussou,
L’Économie française du XVIIIe au XX siècle: perspectives nationales et internationales.
Mélanges offerts à François Crouzet (Paris, 2000). D. Landes ‘The statistical study of
French crises, Journal of Economic History, 10 (1950) is still worth consulting. See too
C.Jones & R. Spang, ‘Sans-culottes, sans café, sans tabac: shifting realms of necessity and
luxury in eighteenth-century France’, in M. Berg & H. Clifford (eds), Consumers and
Luxury: Consumer Culture in Europe, 1650-1850 (Manchester, 1999). On a different tack,
but also undermining the Labrousse approach is P. Hoffman, G. Postel-Vinay & J.L.
Rosenthal, ‘Information and economic history: How the credit market in Old Regime Paris
forces us to rethink the transition to capitalism’, AHR, 104 (1999).
The study of eighteenth-century consumerism was pioneered by D. Roche, in The
People of Paris: An Essay in Popular Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Leamington Spa,
1987). See now the same author’s The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien
Régime (Cambridge, 1994); and id., A History of Everyday Things: The Birth of
Consumption in France, 1600-1800 (Cambridge, 2000). Also of value are A. Pardailhé -
Galabrun, The Birth of Intimacy: Privacy and Domestic Life in Early Modern Paris (London,
1991) and two articles by C. Fairchilds: ‘The production and marketing of populuxe goods
in eighteenth-century Paris’, in J.Brewer & R. Porter (eds), Consumption and the World of
Goods (London, 1993), and ‘Marketing the Counter-Reformation: religious objects and
consumerism in early modern France’, in C. Adams et al., Visions and Revisions of
Eighteenth-Century France (Philadelphia, 1997). See too M. Martin, ‘Consuming Beauty:
The Commerce of Cosmetics in France’ (PhD dissertation, University of California, Irvine,
2000. Useful overviews of the evidence are provided by J. Cornette, ‘La Révolution des
objets: le Paris des inventaires après decès (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles)’, RHMC, 36 (1989)
and B. Garnot, La Culture matérielle en France aux XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris,
1995). See too C. Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets: The Marchands Merciers
of Eighteenth-Century Paris (London, 1996).
On the production side, see, for the ‘industrious revolution’, J. de Vries, ‘Between
purchasing power and the world of goods: understanding the household economy in early
modern Europe’, in Brewer and Porter (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods. For
the world of work (besides 4.5], see M. Sonenscher, ‘French journeymen, the courts and
the French trades, 1781-91’, P&P, 114 (1987); and R. Fox & A. Turner (eds), Luxury
Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Régime Paris (Aldershot, 1998).

8.2 The Social and Cultural Origins of the Revolution: For the revolution in the smile,
see C. Jones, ‘Pulling teeth in eighteenth-century Paris’, P&P, 166 (2000). My earlier
efforts to try to reconceptualize the problem of the origins of the Revolution of 1789 in terms
of growing commercialism and consumerism are: C. Jones, ‘Bourgeois Revolution revivified:
1789 and social change’, in C. Lucas (ed.), Rewriting the French Revolution (Oxford,
1991); and ‘The Great Chain of Buying: Medical Advertisment, the Bourgeois Public
Sphere and the Origins of the French Revolution’, AHR, 101 (1996).
The classic text on the Revolution’s origins, D. Mornet’s Les Origines intellectuelles
de la Révolution française (Paris, 1933) has been revised and updated in R. Chartier’s fine
The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution (Durham NC, 1991). Culture is less to the
fore in two other foundational texts, G. Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution
(Princeton, NJ, 1947) and W. Doyle, The Origins of the French Revolution (3rd edn.,
Oxford, 1999). The political culture approach is laid out in K. Baker, Inventing the French
Revolution [cited 5.5]. To works cited above under the Enlightenment [esp. 5.3, 5.5] may
be added others with a stronger pre-1789 flavour, notably J.R. Censer & J.D. Popkin
(eds), Press and Politics in Pre-Revolutionary France (Berkeley, Ca, 1987); the important
S. Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Pre-Revolutionary
Paris, (Berkeley, Ca, 1993); and W. Weber, ‘La Musique ancienne in the waning of the
Ancien Régime’, JMH, 56 (1984). Revising Darnton’s approach to ‘Grub Street’ are L.
Wilson, Women and Medicine in the French Enlightenment: The Debate over Maladies des
Femmes (Baltimore, Md, 1993) (on mesmerism), and, more generally, D. McMahon, ‘The
Counter-Enlightenment and the low life of literature in Pre-Revolutionary France’, P&P, 159
(1998). See also K. Baker, Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics
(Chicago, 1975); M. Fitzsimmons, ‘Privilege and polity in France, 1786-91’ AHR, 92
(1987); and T. Luckett, ‘Hunting for spies and whores: a Parisian riot on the eve of the
French Revolution’, P&P, 156 (1997).
On the bourgeoisie in general, see above, under ‘nobility’ [7.4] - a revealing
comment about recent historiography. E.G. Barber, The Bourgeoisie in Eighteenth-Century
France (Princeton, NJ, 1955) is badly showing its age, B. Groethuysen, Origines de l’esprit
bourgeois en France (Paris, 1927) perhaps less so. D. Garrioch, The Formation of the
Parisian Bourgeoisie, 1690-1830 (Cambridge, Mass., 1996) shows a revival of interest,
though his assumption that ‘there was no Parisian bourgeoisie in the eighteenth century’ (p.
1) seems a little arch. See too C. Adams, A Taste for Comfort and Stature: A Bourgeois
Family in Eighteenth-Century France (Philadelphia, 2000); R. Forster, Merchants,
Landlords, Magistrates: The Depont Family in Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore, Md,
1980); P.W. Bamford, Privilege and Profit. A Business Family in Eighteenth-Century
France (Philadelphia, 1988).
On the professional groupings, see the overview in Jones, ‘Bourgeois Revolution
revivified’, and G. Geison (ed.), Professions and the French State, 1700-1900
(Philadelphia, 1984). For the medical professions, see C. Jones, ‘The Médecins du Roi at
the end of the Ancien Régime and in the French Revolution’, in V. Nutton (ed.), Medicine at
the Courts of Europe, 1500-1837 (London 1990); id., ‘The Medicalization of Eighteenth-
Century France’, in R. Porter & A. Wear (eds), Problems and Methods in the History of
Medicine (London, 1987); and id. & Brockliss, The Medical World of Early Modern
France , esp. Part II, as well as T. Gelfand, Professionalizing Modern Medicine: Paris
Surgeons and Medical Science and Institutions in the Eighteenth Century (Westport, Ct,
1980); M. Ramsey, Professional and Popular Medicine in France, 1770-1830: The Social
World of Medical Practice (Cambridge, 1988); and J.P. Goubert (ed.), La Médicalisation
de la société française, 1770-1830 (Waterloo, Ont., 1982). For law, besides Bell, Lawyers
and Citizens, see L. Berlanstein, The Barristers of Toulouse in the Eighteenth Century
(1740-93) (Baltimore, Md, 1975); M. Gresset, Gens de justice à Besançon: de la conquête
par Louis XIV à la Révolution, 1674-1789 (Paris, 1978); M. Fitzsimmons, The Parisian
Order of Barristers and the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass, 1987); and F. Delbeke,
L’Action politique et sociale des avocats au XVIIIe siècle (Louvain, 1927). For the
bureaucracy, V. Azimi, Un modèle administratif de l’Ancien Régime: les commis de la ferme
générale et de la régie générale des aides (Paris, 1987) plus Durand on Les Fermiers
généraux, and Matthews, The Royal General Farms. For the church, T. Tackett’s study
Priest and Parish in Eighteenth-Century France: A Social and Political Study of the Curé in a
Diocese in Dauphiné, 1750-91 (Princeton, NJ, 1977) and his ‘The Citizen-priest: politics
and ideology among the parish clergy of eighteenth-century Dauphiné’, Studies in
Eighteenth-Century Culture, 7 (1978) may be complemented by J. McManners, French
Ecclesiastical Society under the Ancien Régime: A Study of Angers in the Eighteenth
Century (Manchester, 1960). For the army, besides D. Bien and E.G. Léonard, see S.F.
Scott, ‘The French Revolution and the professionalization of the French officer corps’, in M.
Janowitz & J. van Doorn (eds), On Military Ideology (Rotterdam, 1971). See too the
excellent K. Alder, Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-
1815 (Princeton, NJ, 1997). For the refraction of these currents in the world of journalism,
see esp. D.G. Levy, The Ideas and Careers of Samuel-Nicolas-Henri Linguet (Urbana, Ill.,
1980); R. Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Régime (Cambridge, Mass.,
1982); and E. Eisenstein, Grub Street Abroad. Aspects of the French Cosmopolitan Press
from the Age of Louis XIV to the French Revolution (Oxford, 1992). And for related
moves regarding professional acting, see A. Goodden, ‘Actio’ and Persuasion: Dramatic
Performance in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford, 1986).

8.3 Calonne and the Pre -Revolution: The historiography on the Diamond Necklace
Affair has been thoroughly revised as a result of S. Maza, ‘The Diamond Necklace Affair,
1785-6’, in id., Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Pre-
Revolutionary France (Berkeley, Ca, 1993). See also R. Brown, ‘The Diamond Necklace
Affair revisited’, Renaissance and Modern Studies, 33 (1989). Still worth consulting is F.
Funck-Brentano, L’Affaire du Collier (Paris, 1901) - the only full-dress study. R. Lacour-
Gayet, Calonne (Paris, 1963) is a solid biography, while J. Egret, The French Pre-
Revolution, 1787-8 (Chicago, 1977) is an unmatched classic on the last years of the
absolute monarchy. The political context for this is set up well in P.M. Jones, Reform and
Revolution in France: The Politics of Transition, 1774-91 (Cambridge, 1995) and D.K.
Jarrett, The Begetters of Revolution. England’s Involvement with France, 1759-89
(London, 1973). The British perspective may also be followed in O. Browning (ed.),
Despatches from Paris, 1784-90 (2 vols., London, 1909-10), and A. Young, Travels in
France in the Years 1787, 1788 and 1789, ed. C. Maxwell (Cambridge, 1929).
The Assembly of Notables can be followed though P. Chevallier (ed.), Journal de
l’Assemblée des Notables de 1787 (Paris, 1960), and V. Gruder, ‘Paths to political
consciousness: the Assembly of Notables of 1787 and the Pre-Revolution in France’, FHS,
13 (1984). See too A. Goodwin, ‘Calonne, the Assembly of Notables of 1787 and the
origins of the Révolte nobiliaire’, EHR, 61 (1946); E. Eisenstein, ‘Who intervened in
1788?’, AHR, 71 (1965)’ and K. Margerison, Pamphlets and Public Opinion: the
Campaign for a Union of Orders in the Early French Revolution (West Lafayette, Ind.,
1998). The provincial dimension of the Pre-Revolution has been tracked by J. Egret in a
number of publications (see e.g. RHMC, 2 [1954]; AHRF, 26 [1954]; and RH, 221
[1955]). See too M. Cubells, Les Horizons de la liberté. Naissance de la Révolution en
Provence, 1787-9 (Aix-en-Provence, 1987).
The religious dimension of the pre-Revolutionary crisis is highlighted in D. Van Kley,
‘The Estates General as ecumentical council: The constitutionalism of corporate consensus
and the Parlement’s ruling of 25 September 1788’, JMH, 61 (1989); while the ecclesiastical
input can be followed in N. Aston, The End of an Elite. The French Bishops and the Coming
of the French Revolution, 1786-90 (Oxford, 1992) and M.G. Hutt, ‘The curés and the
Third Estate: the ideas of reform in the pamphlets of the French lower clergy in the period,
1787-9’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 8 (1957).
The financial atmosphere of the 1780s is summoned up in J.C. Riley, ‘Dutch
investment in France, 1781-7’, JEcH, 33 (1973) and G.V. Taylor, ‘The Paris Bourse on the
Eve of the Revolution, 1781-9’, AHR, 67 (1962). See too the work of T. Luckett, esp.
‘Crises financières dans la France du XVIIIe siècle’, RHMC, 43 (1996); and id., ‘“There is
no money here”: money famine and tax revolt in early modern France’, in J.L. du Gaetani,
Money: Lure, Lore and Literature (Westport, Ct, 1994). K. Norberg, ‘The French fiscal
crisis of 1788 and the financial origins of the Revolution of 1789’, in id. & P. Hoffman (eds),
Fiscal Crises, Liberty and Representative Government, 1450-1789 (Stanford, Ca., 1994) is
a helpful updating.

CHAPTER 9: A REVOLUTION IN POLITICAL CULTURE (1789-91)
9.1 The French Revolution: General: The best, most up-to-date general work is W.
Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (Oxford, 1989). The four volumes of
the series The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture (Oxford,
1987-94) provide a superb overview of knotty problems: vol 1: The Political Culture of the
Old Regime, ed. K.M. Baker (1987); vol. 2: The Political Culture of the French Revolution,
ed. C. Lucas (1988), vol. 3: The Transformation of Political Culture, 1789-1848, eds. F.
Furet & M. Ozouf (1989); and vol. 4: The Terror, ed. K.M. Baker (1994).
Useful works of reference include C. Jones, The Longman Companion to the
French Revolution (London, 1989); S.E. Scott & B. Rothaus (eds), Historical Dictionary of
the French Revolution (2 vols., Westport, Ct, 1984); and F. Furet & M. Ozouf (eds), A
Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (London, 1989). Highly useful too are J.
Godechot, Les Institutions de la France sous la Révolution et l’Empire (Paris, 1968) and the
the still-progressing Atlas de Révolution française, general editors S. Bonin & C. Langlois
(Paris, 1987-), 11 volumes of which have appeared thus far. A good website on the
Revolution is to be found at http://chnm.gmu.edu/Revolution. This is linked to J.R. Censer &
L. Hunt, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution (2001).
The following general works all have many virtues: G. Lefebvre, The French
Revolution (2 vols., New York, 1962); A. Soboul, The French Revolution, 1787-99
(London, 1974); N. Hampson, A Social History of the French Revolution (London, 1963);
M.J. Sydenham, The French Revolution (London, 1965); F. Furet & D. Richet, The French
Revolution (London, 1970); D. Sutherland, France, 1789-1815: Revolution and Counter-
Revolution (London, 1985: esp. good on social dimensions and counter-revolution); F.
Furet, The French Revolution, 1770-1814 (Oxford, 1996); and S. Schama, Citizens. A
Chronicle of the French Revolution (London, 1989: if flawed as a result of the author’s
obsession with violence, still a brilliantly evocative read). Short thematic approaches include
A. Forrest, The French Revolution (Oxford, 1995) and D. Andress, French Society in
Revolution (Manchester, 1999).
Of major interpretative works, essential reading are L. Hunt, Politics, Culture and
Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, Ca, 1984); id., The Family Romance of the
French Revolution (London, 1992); D. Outram, The Body and the French Revolution. Sex,
Class and Political Culture (London, 1989); A. de Baecque, The Body Politic: Corporeal
Metaphor in Revolutionary France, 1770-1800 (Stanford, 1997); and T. Skocpol, States
and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China (Cambridge,
1979: see also the critique of the work in W.H. Sewell, ‘Ideologies and social revolutions:
reflections on the French case’, JMH, 57 [1985]). Thematic histories of the Revolution
include P. Gueniffey, Le Nombre et la raison: la Révolution française et les élections (Paris,
1993); M. Crook, Elections in the French Revolution: An Apprenticeship in Democracy,
1789-99 (Cambridge, 1996); T. Margadant, Urban Rivalries in the French Revolution
(Princeton, NJ, 1992); I. Woloch, The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic
Order, 1789-1820s (New York, 1994); and F. Aftalion, The French Revolution: An
Economic Interpretation (Cambridge, 1990) (in fact a rather narrow monetarist approach,
and not fully replacing the ancient M. Marion, Histoire financière de la France and S.E.
Harris, The Assignats [Cambridge, Mass., 1930]). The works of Richard Cobb provide
inimitable perspectives on the French Revolution both from the ‘bottom up’ and the ‘outside
in’: they may be sampled in two recent readers of his work The French and their Revolution
(London, 1997) and id., Paris and the Revolution (London, 1998).
Of works of historiography and reassessment of the Revolution’s significance, the
best starting points are A. de Tocqueville, The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution
(New York, 1954) and the works of writings of Marx, outlined in F. Furet, Marx and the
French Revolution (Chicago, 1988). Two particularly influential works are A. Cobban, The
Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1999) and F. Furet,
Interpreting the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1981). Recent historiographical updates are
provided by T.C.W. Blanning, The French Revolution: Class War or Culture Clash?
(Basingstoke, 1998) and G. Lewis, The French Revolution: Rethinking the Debate (London,
1993). These may be supplemented with any of the readers which supply collections of
recent articles of major significance: see esp. P.M. Jones (ed.), The French Revolution in
Social and Political Perspective (London, 1996); G. Kates (ed.), The French Revolution:
Recent Debates and New Controversies (London, 1998); and R. Schechter, The French
Revolution (Oxford, 2001).

9.2 The French Revolution: Collections of Primary Sources: Good document
collections are French Revolution Documents, vol. 1. ed. J.M. Roberts (covering 1787 to
1792) (Oxford, 1966); and vol. 2, ed. J. Hardman (covering 1792 to 1795) (Oxford,
1973); and J. Hardman, The French Revolution Sourcebook (London, 1999). See also C.
Jones (ed.), The French Revolution: Voices from a Momentous Epoch, 1789-94 (London,
1988).

9.3 The French Revolution: Local Studies: From the late 1960s local studies provided
the channel through which much of the most pathbreaking work on the social and political
history of the Revolution was done. For these, see below, plus the following works: G.
Bossenga, The Politics of Privilege: Old Regime and Revolution in Lille (Cambridge, 1991);
M. Crook, Toulon in War and Revolution. From the Ancien Régime to the Restoration,
1780-1820 (Manchester, 1991); W. Edmonds, Jacobinism and the Revolt of Lyons, 1789-
93 (Oxford, 1990); A. Forrest, Society and Politics in Revolutionary Bordeaux (Oxford,
1975); id., The Revolution in Provincial France: Aquitaine, 1789-99 (Oxford, 1996); P.R.
Hanson, Provincial Politics in the French Revolution: Caen and Limoges, 1789-94 (Baton
Rouge, La, 1989); O. Hufton, Bayeux in the Late Eighteenth Century. A Social Study
(Oxford, 1967); T. Le Goff, Vannes and its Region: A Study of Town and Country in
Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford, 1981); C. Lucas, The Structure of the Terror: The
Example of Javogues and the Loire (Oxford, 1973); M. Lyons, Revolution in Toulouse: An
Essay on Provincial Terrorism (Bern, 1978); and W. Scott, Terror and Repression in
Revolutionary Marseille (London, 1973). See also H.C. Johnson, The Midi in Revolution. A
Study of Regional Political Diversity, 1789-93 (Princeton, NJ, 1986); and P. Dawson,
Provincial Magistrates and Revolutionary Politics in France, 1789-95 (Cambridge, Mass.,
1972).

9.4 The Political Crisis of 1789: Lefebvre’s Coming of the French Revolution and
Doyle’s Origins [see above, 8.2] provide useful overviews. On the cahiers, see now G.
Shapiro & J. Markoff, Revolutionary Demands. A Content Analysis of the Cahiers de
Doléances of 1789 (Stanford, 1998). Also helpful are R. Robin, La société française en
1789: Semur-en-Auxois (Paris, 1970); G.V. Taylor, ‘Revolutionary and non-revolutionary
content in the cahiers of 1789’, French Historical Studies, 7 (1972); and R. Chartier,
‘Culture, lumières, doléances: les cahiers de 1789’, RHMC, 28 (1981).
Necker’s role in events is followed in R. Harris, Necker and the Revolution of 1789
(Lanham, Md, 1986). Growing patriot organisation is analysed in D Wick, A Conspiracy of
Well-Intentioned Men. The Society of Thirty and the French Revolution (New York, 1987).
See too W.J. Sewell, A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution. The Abbé Siéyès and ‘What is
the Third Estate?’ (Durham, NC, 1994). The role of the first two Orders is picked out in
M.G. Hutt, ‘The role of the curés in the Estates General’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 6
(1955) and J. Murphy & P. Higonnet, ‘Les Députés de la noblesse aux Etats-généraux de
1789’, RHMC, 20 (1973).
J. Godechot, The Taking of the Bastille, July 14 1789 (London, 1970) is a classic,
while M. Price, ‘The “Ministry of the Hundred Hours”: a reappraisal’, French History, 4
(1990) provides some interesting speculations. A good local perspective is offered in R.B.
Rose, ‘How to make a revolution: The Paris districts in 1789’, BJRL 59 (1977). For the
Bastille legend, see M. Cottret, La Bastille à prendre. Histoire et mythes de la forteresse
royale (Paris, 1986) and H. Lüsebrink & R. Reichardt, The Bastille: A History of a Symbol
of Despotism and Freedom (Durham, NC, 1997). For the Gardes-Françaises, see J.
Chagniot, Paris et l’armée au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1985).
T. Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary. The Deputies of the French National
Assembly and the Emergence of a Revolutionary Culture, 1789-91 (Princeton, NJ, 1996)
has already become a classic for the politics of the 1789 crisis at the centre, and it may be
supplemented with P. Kessel, La Nuit du 4 août 1789 (Paris, 1969); J. Egret, La
Révolution des notables: Mounier et les monarchiens (Paris, 1950); and R.H. Griffiths, Le
Centre perdu: Malouet et les Monarchiens dans la Révolution française (Grenoble, 1988).
The Rights of Man are put into context by D. Van Kley (ed), The French Idea of Freedom:
The Old Regime and the Declaration of Rights of 1789 (Stanford, Ca, 1994).

9.5 Peasants and Towns in Revolt: J. Markoff, The Abolition of Feudalism. Peasants,
Lords and Legislators in the French Revolution (Philadelphia, 1996) provides a superb
fresco, drawing on peasant cahiers as well as rebellions. G. Lefebvre’s great work, The
Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France (London, 1973) may now be
supplemented by C. Ramsay, The Ideology of the Great Fear. The Soissonnais in 1789
(Baltimore, 1992). See too A. Davies, ‘The origins of the French peasant revolution of
1789’, History, 49 (1964). On the peasantry in 1789 and beyond, P.M. Jones, The
Peasantry in the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1988) provides even-handed treatment.
See too J. Boutier, ‘Jacqueries en pays croquant: les révoltes paysannes en Aquitaine’,
AESC 34 (1979). For the municipal revolution, L. Hunt, ‘Committees and communes: local
politics and national revolution in 1789’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 18
(1976) and id, Revolution and Urban Politics in Provincial France. Troyes and Reims,
1786-90 (Stanford, Ca, 1978). For the immediate aftermath to 1789 - less peaceful than
usually accounted - see S.F. Scott, ‘Problems of law and order during 1790, the “peaceful”
year of the French Revolution’, AHR, 80 (1975), and B.M. Shapiro, Revolutionary Justice
in Paris, 1789-90 (New York, 1993).

9.6 The Work of the Constituent Assembly: Besides Tackett’s major study, political
assessments are supplied by N. Hampson, Prelude to Terror: The Constituent Assembly
and the Failure of Consensus, 1789-91 (New York, 1988); H.B. Applewhite, Political
Alignment in the French National Assembly, 1789-91 (Baton Rouge, La, 1993); M.P.
Fitzsimmons, The Remaking of France: The National Assembly and the Constitution of
1791 (Cambridge, 1991); and E.H. Lemay & A. Patrick, Revolutionaries at Work: The
Constituent Assembly, 1789-91 (Oxford, 1996). See also G. Michon, Essai sur l’histoire du
parti Feuillant. Adrien Duport (Paris, 1924). M. Vovelle, The Fall of the French Monarchy,
1787-92 (Cambridge, 1984) is a good background narrative, while M. Price, The Fall of
the French Monarchy (2002) highlights the major players..
For the growth of popular radicalism, see below [10.3, 10.4]. For the Champ de
Mars massacre, D. Andress, Massacre at the Champ de Mars. Popular Dissent and
Political Culture in the French Revolution (Woodbridge, 2000), which can be read with
profit alongside A. Mathiez, Le Club des Cordeliers pendant la crise de Varennes et le
massacre du Champ de Mars (Paris, 1910); and G.A. Kelly, ‘Bailly and the Champ de
Mars Massacre’, JMH, 52 (1980).

9.7 (1) Counter-Revolution: General: J. Godechot, The Counter-Revolution: Doctrine
and Action, 1789-1804 (New York, 1971) provides a solid start. A welcome resurgence
of interest in the émigrés is marked by K. Carpenter: see her Refugees of the French
Revolution: Émigrés in London, 1789-1802 (Basingstoke, 1999); id. & P. Mansel (eds),
The French Émigrés and the Struggle against the Revolution, 1789-1815 (Basingstoke,
1999). S. Burrows, French Exile Journalism and European Politics, 1792-1814
(Woodbridge, 2000) is also a welcome addition to a thin literature. See also P. Mansel, The
Court of France, 1789-1830 (Cambridge, 1988) and id., Louis XVIII (London, 1981). On
covert operations, see E. Sparrow, Secret Service. British Agents in France, 1792-1815
(Woodbridge, 1999); H. Mitchell, The Underground War against Revolutionary France:
The Missions of William Wickam, 1794-1800 (Oxford, 1965); C. Duckworth, The
d’Antraigues Phenomenon (Newcastle, 1986); and M. Elliott, Partners in Revolution: The
United Irishmen and France (New Haven 1982). For the scale of the emigration, see D.
Greer, The Incidence of the Emigration during the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.,
1951).

9.7(II) Counter-Revolution: The Religious Issue: The core issue of the Civil
Constitution is adeptly handled by T.Tackett, Religion, Revolution and Regional Culture in
Eighteenth-Century France. The Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791 (Princeton, NJ, 1986). This
may be now contextualised in the very wide-ranging N. Aston, Religion and Revolution in
France, 1789-1804 (Basingstoke, 2000) - though still of use are J. McManners, The
French Revolution and the Church (London, 1969) and R. Gibson, A Social History of
French Catholicism 1789-1914 (London, 1989. The interface with Catholic-Protestant
dissension is covered in G. Lewis [see 9.7(III)] and J.N. Hood, ‘Protestant-Catholic
relations and the roots of the first popular counter-revolutionary movement in France’, JMH,
43 (1971); and id., ‘Revival and mutation of old rivalries in Revolutionary France’, P&P, 82
(1979).

9.7(III) Counter-Revolution: The Vendée and Peasant Royalism: T.J.A. Le Goff &
D. Sutherland, ‘Religion and rural revolt in the French Revolution: an overview’, in J.M. Bak
& G. Benecke (eds), Religion and Rural Revolt (Manchester, 1984) provides a good
contextual introduction to the issue, which has focused on the west of France. See too the
same authors’s ‘The Revolution and the rural community in eighteenth-century Brittany’,
P&P, 62 (1974) and ‘The social origins of Counter-Revolution in western France’, P&P,
99 (1983). Essential reading too are C. Tilly, The Vendée (Cambridge, Mass., 1964); H.
Mitchell, ‘The Vendée and Counter-Revolution’, FHS, 5 (1968); D, Sutherland, The
Chouans: The Social Origins of Popular Counter-Revolution in Upper Brittany, 1770-96
(Oxford, 1982); A. Goodwin, ‘Counter-revolution in Brittany: the royalist conspiracy of the
marquis de la Rouerie, 1791-3’, BJRL, 39 (1957); M. Hutt, Chouannerie and Counter-
Revolution, Puisaye, the Princes and the British Government in the 1790s (Cambridge,
1983); and J.C. Martin, La Vendée et la France (Paris, 1987). For outside western France,
see esp. C. Lucas, ‘The Problem of the Midi in the French Revolution’, Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 28 (1978) and G. Lewis, The Second Vendée: The
Continuity of Counter-Revolution in the Department of the Gard, 1789-1815 (Oxford,
1978).

CHAPTER 10: WAR AND TERROR (1791-5)
10.1 The Legislative Assembly: C.J. Mitchell, The French Legislative Assembly of 1791
(New York, 1988) is a slightly arid account. Much may still be gleaned from M.J.
Sydenham, The Girondins, (London, 1961). G. Kates, The Cercle Social, the Girondins and
the French Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 1985) shows the link between Girondin high politics
and the growth of popular radicalism from 1789-90. See also on the latter theme, R.B.
Rose, The Making of the Sans-Culottes: Democratic Ideas and Institutions in Paris, 1789-
92 (Manchester, 1983) and J. Censer, Prelude to Power: The Parisian Radical Press,
1789-91 (Baltimore, Md, 1976).

10.2 The Overthrow of the Monarchy and the Emergence of Terror: M. Bouloiseau,
The Jacobin Republic, 1792-4 (Cambridge, 1983) and M. Reinhard, La Chute de la
monarchie: 10 Août 1792 (Paris, 1969) are useful overviews. See too F. Braesch, La
Commune du 10 août (Paris, 1911). P. Caron, Les Massacres de Septembre (Paris, 1936)
has been (possibly over-) heavily criticized by F. Bluche, Septembre 1792: Logiques d’un
massacre (Paris, 1986).
On the king’s trial, D.P. Jordan, The King’s Trial (Berkeley, Ca, 1979); M. Walzer,
Regicide and Revolution: Speeches at the Trial of Louis XVI (Cambridge, 1974); and A.
Soboul, Le Procès du Louis XVI (Paris, 1966); while S. Dunn, The Deaths of Louis XVI:
Regicide and the French Political Imagination (Princeton, NJ, 1994) provides a broader
perspective. On the Girondin/Montagnard dispute [besides works cited 10.1], see esp. A.
Patrick, ‘Political divisions in the French National Convention, 1792-3’, JMH, 41 (1969);
and id., The Men of the First French Republic (Baltimore, Md., 1972), plus P. Higonnet’s
‘The social and cultural antecedents of Revolutionary discontinuity: Montagnards and
Girondins’, EHR, 100 (1985). Also on the Jacobins, see Higonnet’s Goodness beyond
Virtue: Jacobins during the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1998) and M.
Kennedy’s two-volumed The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution. i. The First Years
and ii. The Middle Years (Princeton. NJ, 1982, 1988).

10.3 War and Diplomacy: T.C.W Blanning’s work has completely renewed and refreshed
the debates: The Origin of the French Revolutionary Wars (London, 1986); and The French
Revolutionary Wars, 1787-1802 (London, 1996). See too J. Black, British Foreign Policy
in an Age of Revolution, 1783-93 (New York, 1994); and P. Schroeder, The
Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848 (Oxford, 1994). There is still much to be
gleaned too from R.R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution (2 vols., Princeton,
NJ, 1959-64). For the army, S.F. Scott, The Response of the Royal Army to the French
Revolution (Oxford, 1978); J.A. Lynn, The Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and
Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France, 1791-4 (Urbana, Ill., 1984); J.P. Bertaud,
The Army of the French Revolution: From Citizen-Soldiers to Instrument of Power
(Princeton, NJ, 1988); A. Forrest. The Soldiers of the French Revolution (Durham, NC,
1990); and id., Conscripts and Deserters: The Army and French Society during the
Revolution and Empire (Oxford, 1989). Two excellent recent works in this area which
illuminate far more than the army are H.G. Brown, War, Revolution and the Bureaucratic
State: Politics and Army Administration in France, 1791-99 (Oxford, 1995) and K. Alder,
Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815 (Princeton, NJ,
1997). On the navy, see W.S. Cormack, Revolution and Political Conflict in the French
Navy, 1789-94 (New York, 1995) and N. Hampson, La Marine de l’an II: Mobilisation de
la flotte de l’Océan, 1793-4 (Paris, 1959).

10.4 The Great Terror and the Fall of Robespierre: R.R. Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled:
The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 1941) is still a wonderful
read. Biographical treatment of some of the principals is provided by L. Gershoy, Bertrand
Barère: A Reluctant Terrorist (Princeton, NJ, 1962); D.P. Jordan, The Revolutionary
Career of Maximilien Robespierre (New York, 1985); and N. Hampson, who has authored
The Life and Opinions of Maximilien Robespierre (London, 1974); Danton (London,
1978); and Saint-Just (Oxford, 1991). See too the collection of essays, C. Haydon & W.
Doyle (eds), Robespierre (Cambridge, 1999), and M. Reinhard, Le Grand Carnot (2 vols.,
Paris, 1952).
For the Terror as theory and practice, see the excellent P. Gueniffey, La Politique
de la terreur: Essai sur la violence révolutionnaire, 1789-94 (Paris, 2000), plus short
treatments by H. Gough, The Terror in the French Revolution (Basingstoke, 1998) and N.
Hampson, The Terror in the French Revolution (London, 1981), along wit h F. Feher, The
Frozen Revolution: an Essay on Jacobinism (Cambridge, 1987). For the statistical
approach, D. Greer, The Incidence of the Terror in the French Revolution (Cambridge,
Mass., 1935) is unsurpassed. On dechristianisation, M. Vovelle, Religion et Révolution: la
déchrstianisation de l’an II (Paris, 1976) provides an overview. For the logic of the
Revolutionary Tribunal, see C. Hesse, ‘La preuve par la lettre: pratiques juridiques au
Tribunal Révolutionnaire de Paris, 1793-4’, Annales, Histoire, Sciences Sociales 51 (1996).
For the Federalist revolt, see M.H. Crook, ‘Federalism and the French Revolution:
The Revolt of Toulon in 1793’, History, 65 (1980); B. Edmonds, ‘“Federalism” and urban
revolution in France in 1793’, JMH, 55 (1983); A. Goodwin, ‘The Federalist movement in
Caen during the French Revolution’, BJRL, 42 (1960); and many of the works noted above
[10.3]. Also on the provinces, Lucas, The Structure of the Terror is an exemplary study.
Terror sunny side up is served by J.P. Gross, Fair Shares for All: Jacobin Egalitarianism in
Practice (Cambridge, 1997), which may be supplemented by id., ‘Progressive taxation and
social justice in eighteenth-century France’, P&P, 140 (1993); and by C. Jones, Charity
and Bianfaisance. The Treatment of the Poor in the Montpellier Region, 1740-1815
(Cambridge, 1982).
On the Parisian popular movement (besides works cited above [10.3], see A.
Soboul, Les Sans-Culottes parisiens en l’an II (Paris, 1958), part of which is in translation
as The Parisian Sans-Culottes and the French Revolution (Oxford, 1964). For a superb
documentary collection, see A. Soboul & W. Markov (eds), Die Sansculotten von Paris
(Berlin, 1957). From much the same corner comes G. Rudé, The Crowd in the French
Revolution (Oxford, 1959); and the Anglo-French comparative approach of G. Williams,
Artisans and Sans-Culottes (London, 1968). See too H. Burstin, Le Faubourg Saint-Marcel
à l’époque révolutionnaire (Paris, 1983); R. Monnier, Le Faubourg Saint-Antoine, 1789-
1815 (Paris, 1981); and id ., L’Espace public démocratique: essai sur l’opinion à Paris de la
Révolution au Directoire (Paris, 1994). Also well worth consulting are R. Cobb, The
People’s Armies (London, 1987); M. Slavin, The French Revolution in Minature: Section
Droites-de-l’Homme, 1789-95 (Princeton, NJ, 1984); and R.B. Rose, ‘Nursery of sans -
culottes: the Société patriotique of the Luxembourg section, 1792-5’, BJRL, 64 (1981).
R.C. Cobb’s superb The Police and the People: French Popular Protest, 1789-1820
(Oxford, 1970) is critical of Soboul’s approach, though not as much as R.M. Andrews,
‘Social structures, political elites and ideology in revolutionary Paris, 1792-4’, Journal of
Social History, 19 (1985); and M. Sonenscher, ‘Artisans, sans-culottes and the French
Revolution’ in A. Forrest & P.M. Jones (eds), Reshaping France. Town, Country and
Region during the French Revolution (Manchester, 1991).
On the run-up to 9 Thermidor, see N. Hampson, ‘François Chabot and his plot’,
TRHS, 5th series, 26 (1976), M. Lyons, ‘The 9 Thermidor: motives and effects’, European
Studies Review, 5 (1975), G. Lefebvre, ‘Sur la loi de 22 prairial, an II’, in id., Études sur la
Révolution française (Paris, 1963). On the big day itself, see F. Brunel, Thermidor. La
Chute de Robespierre (Brussels, 1989) and R. Bienvenu (ed.), The Ninth of Thermidor.
The Fall of Robespierre (New York, 1968).

CHAPTER 11: THE UNSTEADY REPUBLIC (1795-9)
11.1 Thermidorian and Directorial Politics: There are two very good social-historical
treatments of the Directory: M. Lyons, France under the Directory (Cambridge, 1975) and
D. Woronoff, The Thermidorean Regime and the Directory, 1794-9 (Cambridge, 1984).
See too M.J. Sydenham, The First French Republic, 1792-1804 (London, 1974), and B.
Baczko, Ending the Terror: The French Revolution after Robespierre (Cambridge, 1994). A
thoughtful recent contribution is J. Livesey, Making Democracy in the French Revolution
(2002). Valuable perspectives are also offered in C. Lucas, ‘The First Directory and the
rule of law’, FHS, 10 (1977); L. Hunt, D. Lansky & P. Hanson, ‘The failure of the liberal
republic in France, 1795-9: The road to Brumaire’, JMH, 51 (1979); J. Livesey, ‘Agrarian
ideology and commercial republicanism in the French Revolution’, P&P, 157 (1997); and S.
Desan, ‘Reconstituting the social after the Terror: family, property and the law in popular
politics’. P&P, 164 (1999).
For politics on the Left, see R.B. Rose, Gracchus Babeuf. The First Revolutionary
Communist (London, 1978); R. Andrews, ‘Réflexions sur la conjuration des Égaux’,
AESC, 29 (1974); and I. Woloch, Jacobin Legacy: The Democratic Movement under the
Directory (Princeton, NJ, 1970). For royalism and counter-revolutionary plotting, besides
the works cited above, see H. Mitchell, ‘Vendémiaire: a reevaulation’, JMH, 30 (1958). On
Revolutionary cults and the Catholic revival, A. Mathiez, La Théophilanthropie et le culte
decadaire, 1796-1801 (Paris, 1904); and J. Livesey, ‘The sovereign as God?
Theophilanthropy and the politics of the Directory, 1795-9’, Historical Studies, 20 (1997).
On foreign policy, S.T. Ross, Quest for Victory. French Military Strategy, 1792-9
(London, 1973; S.S. Biro, The German Policy of Revolutionary France (2 vols.,
Cambridge, Mass., 1957), and R. Guyot, Le Directoire et la paix de l’Europe (Paris, 1911)
may be set against the wider perspectives of J. Godechot, La Grande Nation: l’expansion
révolutionnaire de la France dans le monde de 1789 à 1799 (2 vols., Paris, 1956). On the
Egyptian campaign, see H. Laurens, L’Expédition d’Egypte, 1798-1801 (Paris, 1989).
On the growth of the bureaucracy, see esp. H.G. Brown [cited 10.3] and C.H.
Church, Revolution and Red Tape: The French Ministerial Bureaucracy, 1770-1850
(Oxford, 1981). These should be read alongside M. Bruguière, Gestionnaires et profiteurs
de la Révolution (Paris, 1986).

11.2 The Revolution and the Economy: R. Sédillot, Le Coût de la Révolution française
(Paris 1987) is a brisk but overblown account. More balanced overviews are supplied by
D. Woronoff, ‘L’Industrialisation de la France de 1789 à 1815: un essai de bilan’, Revue
économique, 40 (1989); L. Bergeron, ‘The Revolution: catastrophe or new dawn for the
French economy?’, in Lucas (ed.), Rewriting the French Revolution; and G. Lemarchand,
‘Du féodalisme au capitalisme: à propos des conséquences de la Révolution sur l’évolution
de l’économie française’, AHRF, 272 (1988). On the rural economy, P.M. Jones, The
Peasantry in the French Revolution and A. Ado, Paysans en Révolution. terre, pouvoir et
jacquerie, 1789-94 (Paris, 1996) offer contrastive views. See too local studies, notably, G.
Lefebvre, Les Paysans du Nord pendant la Révolution française (Paris, 1924); J.P.
Jessenne, Pouvoir au village et Révolution. Artois 1760-1848 (Lille, 1987); J.J. Clère, Les
Paysans de la Haute-Marne et la Révolution française (Paris, 1988); M. Brunet, Le
Roussillon. Une société contre l’État, 1780-1820 (Toulouse, 1986); and G. Lemarchand,
La Fin du féodalisme dans le pays de Caux, 1640-1795 (Paris, 1989). On industry,
Crouzet’s work is fundamental. See too D. Woronoff. L’Industrie sidérurgique en france
pendant la Révolution et l’Empire (Paris, 1984); G. Lewis, The Advent of Modern
Capitalism in France, 1770-1840: The Contribition of Pierre-François Tubeuf (Oxford,
1992); and L. Bergeron, Banquiers, négociants et manufacturiers parisiens du Directoire à
l’Empire (Paris, 1978).
For nobles, see P. Higonnet, Class, Ideology and the Rights of Nobles during the
French Revolution (Oxford, 1981) and R. Forster, ‘The survival of the nobility during the
French Revolution’, P&P, 37 (1967). And for the poor, see A. Forrest, The French
Revolution and the Poor (Oxford, 1981) and C. Jones, ‘Picking up the pieces: the politics
and the personnel of social welfare from the Convention to the Consulate’ in C. Lucas & G.
Lewis (eds), Beyond the Terror: Essays in French Social and Regional History, 1794-1815
(Cambridge, 1983).

11.3 The Culture of the Revolution: E. Kennedy, A Cultural History of the French
Revolution (New Haven Ct, 1989) and F.W.J. Hemmings, Culture and Society in France,
1789-1848 (Leicester, 1987) provide a good introduction. Particularly good on the press
are J. Popkin, Revolutionary News: The Press in France, 1789-99 (Durham NC, 1990); H.
Gough, The Newspaper Press in the French Revolution (London, 1988); H. Chisick (ed.),
The Press in the French Revolution (Oxford, 1991); and P. Rétat (ed.), La Révolution du
journal, 1789-94 (Paris, 1989). See too J. Popkin, The Right-Wing Press in France, 1792-
1800 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1980). On political theatre, see also M. Carlson, The Theatre of the
French Revolution (Ithaca, NY, 1966) and on festivals M. Ozouf, Festivals and the French
Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1988); and D.L. Dowd, Pageant-Master of the Republic:
Jacques-Louis David and the French Revolution (Lincoln, Nebraska. 1948). On language
and rhetoric more generally, L. Hunt’s striking , The Family Romance of the French
Revolution may be read alongside M. Agulhon, Marianne into Battle: Republican Imagery
and Symbolism in France, 1789-1880 (Cambridge, 1981); M.H. Huet, Mourning Glory:
The Will of the French Revolution (Philadelphia, 1997); and J. Renwick (ed.), Language
and Rhetoric of the Revolution (Edinburgh, 1990). Also of value are J. Harris, ‘The red cap
of liberty: a study of dress worn by French Revolutionary partisans, 1789-94’, Eighteenth-
Century Studies, 14 (1981); L. Mason, Singing the French Revolution. Popular Culture and
Politics, 1787-99 (Ithaca, NY, 1996); D. Arasse, The Guillotine and the Terror (London,
1989); and the still unsurpassed H. Parker, The Cult of Antiquity and the French
Revolutionaries: A Study in the Development of the Revolutionary Spirit (Chicago, 1937).
The booming literature on women and the French Revolution may be sampled in the
following works: D.G. Levy et al., Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-95 (Urbana, Ill.,
1979); S.E. Melzer & L. Rabine (eds, Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution
(New York, 1992); M Yalom, Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women’s Memory
(London, 1995); D. Godineau, The Women of Paris and their French Revolution
(Berkeley, Ca, 1998); H.B. Applewhite & D.G. Levy (eds), Women and Politics in the Age
of the Democratic Revolution (Ann Arbor, MI, 1990); and C. Hesse, The Other
Enlightenment: How French Women became Modern (2001). A broader spectrum is
sketched in by the influential J. Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the
French Revolution (Ithaca, NY, 1988). A contrasting approach is offered by O. Hufton,
Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution (Toronto, 1992). See too
J.F. Traer, Marriage and the Family in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca, NY, 1980) and
R. Phillips, Family Breakdown in Late Eighteenth-Century France: Divorce in Rouen, 1792-
1803 (Oxford, 1980)
Olwen Hufton has stressed the role of women in religion throughout the 1790s, and
particularly under the Directory’. Her classic article, ‘Women in Revolution, 1789-96’,
P&P, 53 (1971) can be supplemented by id., ‘The reconstruction of a church, 1796-1801’,
in Lewis and Lucas, Beyond the Terror. The role of women emerges strongly in the also in
S. Desan, ‘Redefining Revolutionary Liberty: The rhetoric of religious revival during the
French Revolution’, JMH, 60 (1988) and id., Reclaiming the Sacred: Lay Religion and
Popular Politics in Revolutionary France (Cornell, NY, 1990). On Protestantism, there are
only slim pickings in B. Poland, French Protestantism and the French revolution, 1685-1815
(Princeton, NJ, 1957). On the Jewish question, G. Kates, ‘Jews into Frenchman: nationality
and representation in Revolutionary France’, in F. Feher (ed.), The French revolution and
the Birth of Modernity (Berkeley, Ca, 1990) and R.F. Necheles, ‘L’emancipation des juifs,
1787-95’, AFRF, 48 (1976).
For foreigners, see S. Wahnich, L’impossible citoyen. L’étranger dans le discours
de la Révolution française (Paris, 1997); M. Rapport, Nationality and Citizenship in
Revolutionary France. The Treatment of Foreigners, 1789-99 (Oxford, 2000); and N.
Hampson, The Perfidy of Albion: French Perceptions of England during the French
Revolution (Basingstoke, 1998).
The reorganization of education and science is dealt with in a number of works. R.R.
Palmer, The Improvement of Humanity: Education and the French Revolution (Princeton,
NJ, 1985) is a solid work. See esp. N. & J. Dhombres, Naissance d’un nouveau pouvoir.
Science et savants en France, 1793-1824 (Paris, 1989); S. Moravia, Il pensiero degli
Ideologues (Florence, 1974); P. Huard, Sciences, médecine et pharmacie de la Révolution
à l’Empire (Paris, 1970); M.S. Staum, Cabanis: Enlightenment and Medical Philosophy in
the French Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 1980); id., Minerva’s Message: Stabilizing the French
Revolution (Montreal, 1997); and D. Outram, ‘Politics and vocation: French science, 1793-
1830’, British Journal for the History of Science, 13 (1980). For broader claims, see M.
Foucault, Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (london, 1973); id.,
Folie et déraison. Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (Paris, 1961); and id., Discipline and
Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Harmondsworth. 1979).

CONCLUSION: THE BRUMAIRE LEVIATHAN AND LA GRANDE NATION
J. Tulard, Napoleon: The Myth of the Saviour (London 1984) is the best biography (though
readers should beware the awful translation). The European context is provided by M.G.
Broers, Europe under Napoleon (London, 1996); G. Ellis, The Napoleonic Empire
(London, 1990); and S.J. Woolf, Napoleon’s Integration of Europe (London, 1991). The
impact of the Revolution on the Napoleonic regime is dealt with well in M. Lyons, Napoleon
Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution (New York, 1994). See too L.
Bergeron, France under Napoleon (Princeton, NJ, 1981); and the classic G. Lefebvre,
Napoleon (2 vols., London, 1969). For high politics, see I. Woloch, Napoleon and his
Collaborators: The Making of a Dictatorship (New York, 2001). See too F. Bluche, Le
Bonapartisme: aux origines de la droite autoritaire (1800-50) (Paris, 1980). For the thread
of political contestation, see B.Fontana, Benjamin Constant and the Post-Revolutionary
World (New Haven, Ct, 1991), and for the longer term, see R. Magraw, France 1815-
1914: The Bourgeois Century (London, 1983) and id., France, 1800-1914. A Social
History (2002).