The Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution

Edited by David Andress

Oxford Handbooks

A comprehensive guide to the history of the French Revolution
Contains over thirty contributions from an international team of leading scholars
Challenges readers to think about new ways of understanding and sets out an agenda for future research possibilities
Addresses the structural and political contexts to explore the origins, events, and ongoing legacies of the French Revolution in transnational and global contexts.

The Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution

Edited by David Andress

Description

The Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution brings together a sweeping range of expert and innovative contributions to offer engaging and thought-provoking insights into the history and historiography of this epochal event. Each chapter presents the foremost summations of academic thinking on key topics, along with stimulating and provocative interpretations and suggestions for future research directions.

Placing core dimensions of the history of the French Revolution in their transnational and global contexts, the contributors demonstrate that revolutionary times demand close analysis of sometimes tiny groups of key political actors - whether the king and his ministers or the besieged leaders of the Jacobin republic - and attention to the deeply local politics of both rural and urban populations. Identities of class, gender and ethnicity are interrogated, but so too are conceptions and practices linked to citizenship, community, order, security, and freedom: each in their way just as central to revolutionary experiences, and equally amenable to critical analysis and reflection.

This volume covers the structural and political contexts that build up to give new views on the classic question of the 'origins of revolution'; the different dimensions of personal and social experience that illuminate the political moment of 1789 itself; the goals and dilemmas of the period of constitutional monarchy; the processes of destabilisation and ongoing conflict that ended that experiment; the key issues surrounding the emergence and experience of 'terror'; and the short- and long-term legacies, for both good and ill, of the revolutionary trauma - for France, and for global politics.

The Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution

Edited by David Andress

Oxford Handbooks

Part 1: Origins
1:Economic and Demographic Developments, Silvia Marzagalli
2:The Bourgeoisie, Capitalism, and the Origins of the French Revolution, Lauren R. Clay
3:Nobility, Jay M. Smith
4:The monarchy, Joël Félix
5:Books, Philosophy, Enlightenment, Simon Burrows
6:Tumultuous Contexts and Radical Ideas (1783-89). The 'Pre-Revolution' in a Transnational Perspective, Annie Jourdan
7:The Diplomatic Origins of the French Revolution, Thomas E. Kaiser
Part 2: The Coming of Revolution
8:The View from Above, John Hardman
9:The View from Below: the 1789 cahiers de doléances, Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire
10:A Social Revolution? Rethinking Popular Insurrection in 1789, Peter McPhee
11:A Personal Revolution: National Assembly Deputies and the Politics of 1789, Micah Alpaugh
Part 3: Revolution and Constitution
12:Sovereignty and Constitutional Power, Michael P. Fitzsimmons
13:The New Regime: Political Institutions and Democratic Practices under the Constitutional Monarchy, 1789-91, Malcolm Crook
14:Revolution and Changing Identities in France, 1787-1799, Jeremy D. Popkin
15:Religion and Revolution, Edward J. Woell
16:Urban Violence in 1789, D. M. G. Sutherland
17:Revolution, race and slavery, Manuel Covo
Part 4: Counter-revolution and collapse
18:Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Ambrogio Caiani
19:Emigration in Politics and Imaginations, Kirsty Carpenter
20:Challenges in the Countryside, 1790-2, Noelle Plack
21:Club, Party and Faction, Charles Walton
22:Military Trauma, Alan Forrest
Part 5: The New Republic
23:Politics and Insurrection: The Sans-culottes, The 'Popular Movement' and the People of Paris, David Andress
24:War and Diplomacy (1792-1795), Marc Belissa
25:From Faction to Revolt, Paul Hanson
26:What was the Terror?, Dan Edelstein
27:Terror and Politics, Marisa Linton
28:Reckoning with Terror: Retribution, Redress, and Remembrance in Post-Revolutionary France, Ronen Steinberg
29:Jacobinism from Outside, Mike Rapport
Part 6: After Thermidor
30:Thermidor and the Myth of Rupture, Laura Mason
31:The Politics of Public Order, 1795-1802, Howard G. Brown
32:The New Elites: Questions about political, social and cultural reconstruction after the Terror, Jean-Luc Chappey
33:Napoleon, The Revolution, and The Empire, Philip Dwyer
34:Lasting Political Structures, Isser Woloch
35:Lasting Economic Structures: Successes, Failures, and Revolutionary Political Economy, Jeff Horn
36:Did Everything Change? Rethinking Revolutionary Legacies, Jennifer Heuer
37:Global Conceptual Legacies, David A. Bell

The Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution

Edited by David Andress

Oxford Handbooks

Author Information

Edited by David Andress, Professor of Modern History, University of Portsmouth

David Andress received his DPhil from the University of York in 1995, and has worked at the University of Portsmouth for the last twenty years. He has published widely on the French Revolution, from micro-studies of Parisian responses in 1789-91 to introductory textbooks, and from monographs to major syntheses and works of comparative history. His most recent major contribution was as editor of the volume Experiencing the French Revolution (2013).

Contributors:

Micah Alpaugh, University of Central Missouri
David Andress, University of Portsmouth
Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire, Institut Universitaire de France
Marc Belissa, Université Paris-Ouest Nanterre La Défense
David A. Bell, Princeton University
Howard G. Brown, Binghampton University
Simon Burrows, University of Western Sydney
Ambrogio Caiani, University of Kent
Kirsty Carpenter, Massey University
Jean-Luc Chappey, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Lauren R. Clay, Vanderbilt University
Manuel Covo, Université Paris-Ouest Nanterre La Défense
Malcolm Crook, Keele University
Philip Dwyer, University of Newcastle
Dan Edelstein, Stanford University
Joël Félix, University of Reading
Michael P. Fitzsimmons, Auburn University, Montgomery
Alan Forrest, University of York
Paul Hanson, Butler University, Indianapolis
John Hardman, Emeritus, University of Edinburgh
Jennifer Heuer, University of Massachusetts
Jeff Horn, Manhattan College
Annie Jourdan, University of Amsterdam
Thomas E. Kaiser, University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Marisa Linton, Kingston University
Silvia Marzagalli, Institut Universitaire de France
Laura Mason, Johns Hopkins University
Peter McPhee, University of Melbourne
Noelle Plack, Newman University
Jeremy D. Popkin, University of Kentucky
Mike Rapport, University of Glasgow
Jay M. Smith, University of North Carolina
Ronen Steinberg, Michigan State
D. M. G. Sutherland, University of Maryland
Charles Walton, Yale University
Edward J. Woell, Western Illinois University
Isser Woloch, Columbia University

The Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution

Edited by David Andress

Oxford Handbooks

Reviews and Awards

"This handbook is a gem ... a superb reference work that doubles as a good read for anyone interested in this massive and complex subject ... Essential." - G. P. Cox, CHOICE

"The great success of this Handbook is to present a picture of the Revolution, and its historiography, as the hectic criss-crossing of many individual paths: this bustling, confusing, noisy, and fearful time of upheaval is well conveyed in these pages. The reader is given good directions to follow one, or many, of these paths in the ample footnotes and readings ... The Handbook offers a convenient and scholarly starting-point or refresher on many different aspects of that turbulent epoch and on its repercussions, one which will be valuable in teaching and research. The editor and his collaborators are to be congratulated." - Dr Anne Byrne, Reviews in History

"David Andress, the editor, and his contributors should be warmly congratulated for providing generally excellent summaries of recent research on the French Revolution, together with stimulating suggestions for further investigation." - Roger Price, Intelligence and National Security

"an excellent volume with a consistently high level of contribution." - Neil Davidson, H-France Review

"This collection provides an excellent overview of the current state of French Revolution scholarship." - Liam Chambers, BARS Review