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Ideology and politics in the French Revolution

Though political fashions come and go, and with them the focus of historical interest, these three books all serve to demonstrate how for historians of revolutionary France politics has retained its primacy. Social historians may explain that politics in terms of class interest, and cultural historians examine the revolution in the wider context of literacy and symbolism, yet in times of revolution political actions remain centre-stage. What changes dramatically, of course, is the focus of political interest, the kind of politics which is deemed a fruitful subject for analysis. And here these three books reveal wide divergences, even though in their different ways they are written by historians with more than a wisp of sympathy for the revolutionaries' intentions. Whereas Morris Slavin remains faithful to the Parisian sans-culottes and to the popular movement dissected by Albert Soboul to whose overall analysis he closely adheres Bronislaw Baczko is far more influenced by questions of political theory and of Jacobin culture, while Michael Fitzsimmons is fascinated by the liberal instincts of the early revolutionaries, their essential optimism in that first glad morning of revolutionary enthusiasm, and their deep commitment to constitutional propriety. All share the conviction that the key to understanding the revolution lies in the study of political action.