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Social Interpretation of the French Revolution Is One of the Acknowledged Classics of Post-War Historiography

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Social Interpretation of the French Revolution Is One of the Acknowledged Classics of Post-War Historiography Alfred Cobban's Social Interpretation of the French Revolution is one of the acknowledged classics of post-war historiography. This 'revisionist' analysis of the French Revolution caused a furore on first publication in 1964, challenging as it did established ortho- doxies during the crucial period of the Cold War. Cobban saw the French Revolution as central to the 'grand narrative of modern history', but provided a salutary corrective to many celebrated social explanations, determinist and otherwise, of its origins and development. A generation later this concise but powerful inter- vention is now reissued with a new introduction by Gwynne Lewis, providing students with both a context for Cobban's own arguments and an assessment of the course of Revolutionary studies in the wake of The Social Interpretation. This book remains a handbook of revisionism for Anglo-Saxon scholars, and is essen- tial reading for all students of French history at undergraduate level and above. The late ALFRED COBBAN was Professor of French History at University College, London. His many books include Aspects of the French Revolution (Jonathan Cape, 1968) and A History of Modern France (Penguin, 1957). GWYNNE LEWIS was Professor of History at the University of Warwick and is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Southampton. His publications include The Second Vendee (Oxford, 1978) and The French Revolution: Rethinking the Debate (Routledge, 1993). THE SOCIAL INTERPRETATION OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION BY ALFRED COBBAN Second edition WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GWYNNE LEWIS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521661515 1st edition © Cambridge University Press 1964 2nd edition © Cambridge University Press 1999 introduction © Gwynne Lewis 1999 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1964 Reprinted 1965 First paperback edition 1968 Reprinted 1986, 1987, 1988 Second edition 1999 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library ISBN-13 978-0-521-66151-5 hardback ISBN-10 0-521 -66151 -X hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-66767-8 paperback ISBN-10 0-521-66767-4 paperback Transferred to digital printing 2006 CONTENTS PREFACE Pagevii KEY TO REFERENCES xi INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION BY GWYNNE LEWIS x iii I THE PRESENT STATE OF HISTORY I II HISTORY AND SOCIOLOGY 8 III THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL HISTORY 15 IV THE MEANING OF FEUDALISM 25 V THE ATTACK ON SEIGNIORIAL RIGHTS 36 VI WHO WERE THE REVOLUTIONARY BOURGEOIS? 54 VII ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION 68 VIII A BOURGEOISIE OF LANDOWNERS 8l IX COUNTRY AGAINST TOWN 91 X SOCIAL CLEAVAGES AMONG THE PEASANTRY 107 XI THE SANS-CULOTTES 120 XII A REVOLUTION OF THE PROPERTIED CLASSES I32 XIII POOR AGAINST RICH I45 XIV CONCLUSION 162 INDEX 175 V PREFACE T is only fitting that this book should begin with an expression of the author's gratitude to the founder of Ithe Wiles Lectures, to the Vice-Chancellor of The Queen's University, Belfast, and to Professor Michael Roberts and his colleagues, both for the invitation to deliver the lectures and for everything that makes them such an enjoyable occasion for the lecturer. I must also thank my friends and fellow-students of the history of the French Revolution, who honoured me by attending the lectures and discussing them with me afterwards. The intention of the founder of the Wiles Lectures, as I understand it, was not to endow detailed research, but to promote reflection about historical problems. In my lectures, and in the book which is based on them, I have tried to meet this requirement while recognising the risks it brings with it. In the first place, this is bound to be in some respects a critical activity. Historical research can be, and perhaps usually is, done within the limits of an accepted pattern. Reflection about history brings with it the possibility of wanting to change the pattern. When, as in the case of the French Revolution, it is a well- established pattern, consolidated by a series of great historians, with long accepted theoretical implications, any attempt to question it is likely to meet with auto- matic and authoritative resistance. The resistance will be all the stronger if it seems that a formula which appeared vii Preface to explain the revolution satisfactorily is being discarded, without another being provided to take its place. This, I fear, is what I am doing. Indeed, it would be self- defeating if I were merely to try to replace one dogma with another. The positive views I have expressed are tentative throughout. They represent what the evidence—or rather such part of it as I have been able to examine— seems to indicate. I am acutely aware that I am far from having exhausted even the printed sources available. There are also a host of local studies, in the admirable local historical journals of France, which can throw im- portant light on general problems, but which historians, perhaps under the illusion that any unprinted document, however insignificant, is a more valuable historical source than anything printed, however important, have been apt to neglect. I have not attempted to make an exhaustive study of any single aspect of the revolution. I am quite prepared to discover that on more than one point the samples I have been able to take are not representative and have misled me. My object has been to examine the broad bases of revolutionary history and on these to adduce only sufficient evidence to suggest the need for a new approach. I have confined myself to social problems because these are the ones which, it seems to me, have most relevance to the present state of historiography. Finally, one cannot criticise an historical interpretation without appearing to criticise the historians who have held it. If I have been led to disagree sometimes with the interpretation of a great historian like Georges Lefebvre, or with that of historians, such—to name only two—as viii Preface M. Bouloiseau and M. Soboul, for whose work I have great respect, this in no way represents a failure to recog- nize its value. In particular, it should be obvious to any reader that without the work of Lefebvre this book would be greatly impoverished. If I have disagreed with some of his interpretations, it has often been on the ground of evidence supplied by himself. This, I fear, might not have given him pleasure, but it is testimony to him none the less. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE A.C. LONDON January 1963 IX KEY TO REFERENCES The full title of books and articles is given the first time each one appears in the notes. For the first references to titles subsequently abridged see as follows— L'ancien moniteur [49]. Aulard, La Revolution frangaise et le regime feodal [42]. Bigo, Les bases historiques de la finance moderne [85]. Bligny-Bondurand, Cahiers de Nimes [100]. Bois, Pay sans de I'Ouest [19]. Boissonade, Cahiers d'Angouleme [99]. Bouloiseau, Cahiers de Rouen [37]. Bourgin, Le Partage des liens communaux [no]. Braesch, I78g> I'annee cruciate [63]. Carre, La Noblesse de France et Vopinion publique [29]. Champion, La France d'apres les cahiers [37]. Chassin, Les Elections et les cahiers de Paris [31]. Cobb, Les armies revolutionnaires [124]. Crouzet, 'Les consequences economiques de la Revolution' [73]. Desplaces de Charmasse, Cahiers d'Autun [34]. Doniol, La Revolution frangaise et lafeodalite [36]. Etienne, Cahiers de Metz et de Nancy [51]. Ferrieres, Marquis de, Correspondance inedite [33]. Ford, Robe and Sword [46]. Forster, Nobility of Toulouse [30]. Fourastie, Cahiers de Cahors [46]. Garaud, La Revolution et la propriete fonciere [28]. Gerbaux et Schmidt, Comites a"agriculture et de commerce [63]. Grille, Introduction aux Memoires [29]. Guerin, Bourgeois et 'bras nus' [n]. Herbert, Fall of Feudalism [46]. Jouanne, Cahiers d'Alengon [50]. Labasse, La commerce des soies d Lyon [75]. Labrousse, La Crise de X economie frangaise [44]. xi Key to References Laurent, Reims et la region remoise [37]. Lefebvrc, Etudes [8]. Lefebvre, 'Le my the de la Revolution francaise' [10]. Lefebvre, Pay sans du Nord [38]. Lheritier, La fin de Vancien regime [60]. Lizerand, he regime rural de Vancienne France [27]. Loriquet, Cahiers du Pas-de-Calais [34]. Martin, Cahiers de Mirecourt [38]. Mege, Cahiers d'Auvergne [49]. Methivier, Vancien regime [36]. Nussbaum, Commercial policy in the French Revolution [69]. Picard, Les Cahiers de fjSg [62]. Plaisse, La baronnie de Neubourg [33]. Reinhard, 'Sur l'histoire de la Revolution francaise' [25]. Rude, The Crowd in the French Revolution [122]. Sagnac et Caron, Les comites des droits jeodaux [27]. Saint-Jacob, Les pay sans de la Bourgogne [45]. Savina et Bernard, Cahiers de Quimper et de Concarneau [46]. Se*e, L* Evolution commerciale et industrielle [63]. Sentou, 'Impots et citoyens actifs' [30]. Soboul, Precis [8]. Soboul, Les sans-culottes parisiens [122]. xu INTRODUCTION Gwynne Lewis I Cobbanism N 6 May 1954, Professor Alfred Cobban gave his inau- gural lecture at University College London before an Oinvited audience that included M. Massigli, the French Ambassador to Britain. The lecture, entitled provocatively, 'The Myth of the French Revolution' cast doubt, if not on the actual occurrence of'1789' as a major political event, then certainly on the social and class interpretation placed upon it by those legen- dary French socialist historians of the Third Republic, Jean Jaures, Albert Mathiez, and Georges Lefebvre.
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