Popular Dissent and Political Culture in the French Revolution. by David Andress (Suffolk, England: the Royal Historical Society, 2000
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200 journal of social history fall 2002 provide clear representations of the trends that undergird Arrom's argument. Well, chosen illustrations vividly depict street scenes and the Poor House's pres, ence in the urban landscape. Interested readers can find full transcriptions of the institution's by-laws at the website with URL http://www.brandeis.edutarrom/. While the author adeptly reveals the human dimensions of bishops and bureau, crats and provides colorful vignettes of Mexico City life, she has pitched her book to the advanced student and specialist. Those readers will appreciate the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jsh/article/36/1/200/970424 by guest on 27 September 2021 many ways that her thorough and thoughtful institutional history illuminates intersections of state and class formation. University of Massachusetts at Boston AnnS. Blum Massacre at the Champ de Mars: Popular Dissent and Political Culture in the French Revolution. By David Andress (Suffolk, England: The Royal Historical Society, 2000. x plus 239pp. $60.00). On 17July 1791, a Parisian crowd clashed with the city's National Guard at the Champ de Mars (now the site of the EiffelTower). The result was a "massacre" of the crowd and one of the best known incidents of the French Revolution. The reputation of Lafayette, the commander of the Guard, never recovered from this episode, at least among Parisians. Aside from its impact on Lafayette, historians have contended that the confrontation was important for revealing a "critical" (3) juncture in both national and Parisian politics that would shape the future course of the Revolution. This book is a snapshot of Parisian society in 1791 and an account from ground level of the build-up to this, one of the great joumees of the French Revolution. Following an introduction and opening chapter in which an older historiog raphy of "the crowd" and a more recent, revisionist literature on popular culture are reviewed, the author organizes his material chronologically from January through July 1791. In between, the story builds steadily to the confrontation at the Champ de Mars. Persons, groups and locations familiar to historians of Paris and the Revolution make an appearance: Lafayette, Bailly (Paris's mayor), the journalists Marat and Gorat, mouchards (the police-spies much hated by the populace), National Guard, the Place Vendome, Place de Greve, Palais-Royal, Hotel de Ville and La Force prison. But reflecting the bottom,up orientation, familiar personalities of the era like Danton, Robespierre, Louis XVI and Marie, Antoinette are essentially absent, while the National Assembly isbut a shadowy presence. The research rests mainly upon three sources: Sigismond Lacroix's compila tion of the Actes de fa Commune de Paris (1902-1911) for the point of view of municipal authorities; newspapers for the voices of observers from various polit ical vantages; and, especially, the archives of the prefecture of police. In these latter, the author has delved thoroughly to document the interests and voices REVIEWS 201 of Ie peuple, or at least those among them arrested for seemingly political acts during this stretch of roughly seven months. The bibliography includes a helpful annotated list of Parisian newspapers. An aim of the book is to address scholars' "declining interest in popular activity." (37) As the title denotes, the book is also about "popular dissent" and "political culture," which the author assesses by reviewing a "parade of minor incidents" (178) drawn from the police reports and newspapers. Dissent brews Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jsh/article/36/1/200/970424 by guest on 27 September 2021 throughout the period of coverage, revolving especially around bad relations between those in the street and the National Guard, the latter comprised of male bourgeois citizens, whose leader, Lafayette, is a lightening rod for popular antagonism. Reciting the uglywordsleveled against Lafayette and the Guard by persons being arrested, the clash at the Champ de Mars appears inevitable, even as the author fashions an argument that hinges upon the contingent. The author's interests and method are similar to those of Arlette Farge's Frag~ ile Lives, since he "aims to disclose a general pattern of cultural and social be liefs." (14) However, his approach is more chronological and focused upon the build-up to a great event. Terms such as "perception," "prejudice," "competing versions," and "preconception" are used throughout to convey the apparently confused interpretations made by nearly all parties. The author records telling instances when journalists contradict themselves in the same article. One of the most compelling qualities of the book is its retention from the archives of the earthy language of the people. Social historians will appreciate the ordi nary types from the crowd who make an appearance, and the author's efforts to make sense of their sometimes confounding words. Because the author wants to "problematise (the) relationship between political leadership and defining 'the people'" (37), he is more interested in individuals than institutions or groups. He doubts the efficacy of interpreting events through the lens of social class. Two notable contributions of the book are, first, the presentation of generally persuasive evidence that the opinions of individuals in the crowd can be known; second, the finding of "a model of sedition" (212) underlying police repression, in which to be "recognized" and "domiciled" could exonerate a person (even if guilty), but to be "sans etat" or non-domiciled was likely to get one tossed into jail. The author also found small similarities between the "forcesof order" (210) of 1791 and the sans-culottes movement of 1793, more evidence that crowds of the era were not all cut from the same cloth. He considers generalized fears of "brigandage" and "aristocratie" to be intrinsic to the tensions of this period, reflecting the popular misconceptions that form one theme of the text and that lead inexorably to the journee of 17 July 1791. The author apparently found few harsh words about Louis XVI and his fam ily in the police archives. This is surprising considering the strong language directed at the king and queen before the Revolution, Lafayette's position as their protector and the family's attempted escape a month before the Massacre. The book's conclusion returns to the spring of 1791, at which time the words of striking carpenters have become infused with the new revolutionary rhetoric. While the language of the carpenters captures the author's attention, the signs 202 journal of social history fall 2002 of economic dislocation and burgeoning laissez-faire in those words are muted in this analysis. Prints would have brightened the presentation and a map of the city would have been an aid to newcomers to revolutionary Paris. But throughout, the writing is never dry. In this evocative account which actively engages the his, toriography and is based upon thorough archival research, the individuals who made up the Parisian crowds of 1791 are enlivened. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jsh/article/36/1/200/970424 by guest on 27 September 2021 University of Southern Indiana Casey Harison The Gender ofHistory: Men, Women, and the Historical Practice. ByBonnie G. Smith (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1998. viii plus 306pp. $17.95/paperback). The Rise of the Professional Woman in France: Gender and Public Adminis ... tration Since 1830. ByLinda L. Clark (Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xiv plus 324pp. $64.95/cloth) Bonnie Smith begins her investigation into "the gender of history" with the metaphor of the mirror [pp. 2-3]. "Held up to the past, the mirror supposedly reflects bygone events more accurately than any other tool, showing nothing fanciful or imaginary." The image of the mirror's pure objectivity contradicts what we understand of the wayhistory is written by a "knowing subject, " whose own cultural perspective determines what gets written about the past, and yet this idealized image of "value,free" history continues to be the model. Since the 1970s, "historians of both women and people of color have assumed that their scholarship would eventually fit into the field of history as a whole." [po 1] Male historians welcomed the arrival of women's history and research on gender until, in the mid, 1980s,some began to argue that historical research about women had gone far enough, lest history's claims to the transcendence of bias be undercut, and to argue that the history of women and blacks threatened to "politicize" the field. The historian, as Lucien Fevre claims, sees nothing in history but history. [p. 2] As Smith suggests, when the historian has been a woman, "her self-regarding has appeared ... indicative ofher vanity" [po 3]so that the feminist historians'claim to contribute a distinctive perspective seems to stand for "self, regard" rather than the idealized "invisibility" of the omniscient narrator. It is because "the mirror of history resists some efforts to reach gender neutrality," writes Smith, that she has attempted to reevaluate the role of women in the historical profession and the place of feminist historiography in the writing of history. Particularly for those who are tempted to think that little more can be gained by examining the gendered practice of history, Bonnie Smith has written a provocative and significant book, her goal not only to rescue the forgotten women historians of the 18th and 19th centuries, but to ask historians to take another look in the mirror..