Constructing the Past Volume 5 Issue 1 Article 8 2004 Books Make the World Go 'Round: The Illegal Book Trade that Started the French Revolution Natalie Burda Illinois Wesleyan University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/constructing Recommended Citation Burda, Natalie (2004) "Books Make the World Go 'Round: The Illegal Book Trade that Started the French Revolution," Constructing the Past: Vol. 5 : Iss. 1 , Article 8. Available at: https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/constructing/vol5/iss1/8 This Article is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Commons @ IWU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this material in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This material has been accepted for inclusion by editorial board of the Undergraduate Economic Review and the Economics Department at Illinois Wesleyan University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ©Copyright is owned by the author of this document. Books Make the World Go 'Round: The Illegal Book Trade that Started the French Revolution Abstract This article discusses a book written by Robert Darnton on the subject of illegal books in the time of the French Revolution. It also discusses the illegal book trade itself, and perhaps that some of the criticism of Darnton may be because his book shakes the preconceived notions about how the French Revolution started. This article is available in Constructing the Past: https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/constructing/vol5/iss1/8 I culture, the legacy of the Men and Religion Forward Movement lives on. In an Books Make the World Go 'Round: The Illegal Book Trade article published by the New York Times on March 30, 2003, Rod Dreher, a senior writer at the National Review, was quoted for his advocacy of religion, masculini­ that Started the French Revolution ty, and the military. Dreher claimed, in the words of the article's author, that "cler­ By Natalie Burda gymen who oppose the war are spiritually disarming us and that military chap­ lains supporting the war should be heeded." Chaplains, Dreher said, are "warriors "In an era when television and radio did not for justice" who should and do ignore "the effete sentimentality you find among challenge the supremacy Of the printed world. so many clergymen today." "This," wrote the author, "is what used to be called 'muscular Christianity. ",45 books aroused emotions and Stirred thoughts The religious militarism arid steely nationalism advanced by conservative with a power we can only Imagine today." Christianity will continue to thrive for as long as fundamentalism stays a major - Robert Darnton influence in American culture and society. In the fundamentalist mindset, America's adversaries are not "mistaken, miscalculating, misguided or even just The revolution that shook France from 1789 to 1802 has long been a source of malevolent. They are evil.'>'!6 The American soldier, on the other hand, is "blessed intriguing historical debates. The question, 'what actually caused the Revolution?' 47 with a sacred power" and basks in the light of God's wil1. This preoccupation has frequently been discussed, but it was Robert Darnton who cracked open the with divinity makes it easy for those under the evangelical sway to justify any door to the unseen world of the cultural and literary conditions of Pre­ actions taken by the United States and its military. As Billy Sunday once said Revolutionary France.His knowledge about the illegal book trade has proved a before getting involved in a fist fight: "Well, I have a commission from God to waten;hed ofinformation. All ofDarnton's works are insightful, but his most knock the tar out of you, you lobster."48 So too, Christian fundamentalists trust in a recent work, The Forbidden Best-Sellers ofPre-Revolutionary France, captures :1 commission from God that authorizes aggressive American policy. the essence of his contribution to scholarship. For the past twenty-five years, Robert Darnton has spent his spare time in Bibliography Switzerland at the Societe Typographique de Neuchatel (STN), the largest Swiss L~ nd Albanese, Catherine America: Religions and Religion. 2 ed. Santa Barbara: Wadsworth publisher and book wholesaler. There he has dusted off the large ledgers that hold Publishing Company, 1999. ' II vast amounts of information. While Damton studied the lists of books in the Bendroth, Margaret Lamberts. Fundamentalism and Gender. 1875 to the Present.New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. records, he discovered a wonderful and dark secret. The French had organized and Boyd, Stephen B., W. Merle Longwood, and Mark W. Muesse, eds. Redeeming Men: Religion and operated a system in which illegal or forbidden books were printed and distributed. Masculinities. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996. When Louis XIV began to reconstruct the French government in 1661, he Faludi, Susan. Stiffed: The Betrayal ofthe American Man. New York: William Morrowand Company, desired to be an absolute monarch. To achieve this end, he took severe measures Inc., 1999. in order to control the press and the flow of ideas. Louis XIV reorganized the Falwell, Jerry, Ed Dobson, and Ed Hindson, eds. The Fundamentalist Phenomenon: The Resurgence book trade into a process that incorporated great censorship and utilized a regi­ oJConservative Christianity. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1981. ment of police to enforce his new measures. These restrictive policies drove libe1­ Heneghan, Tom. "Bush Mix of God and War Grates on Many Europeans." Yahoo' News, 4 April lists "underground" or out of the country. "Thus, by the beginning of the eigh­ 2003, <yahoo.com> (4 April 2003). teenth century, a genre was established; (certain books) had been branded as sedi­ Hicks, Robert. The Masculine Journey: Understanding the Six Stages ojManhood. Colorado Springs: tious by the state; and the way was cleared for the clandestine best-sellers of the NauPress Publishing Group, 1993. Pre-Revolutionary era." 2 But what exactly were the best sellers? Generally histo­ Linenthal, Edward Tabor. Changing Images ofthe Warrior Hero in America: A HistOl)' ojPopular Symbolism. New York: Edward Mellon Press, 1982. rians have credited Voltaire and Rousseau with being the most popular Martin, Robert F. "Billy Sunday and Christian Manliness." Historian 58 (Summer 1996) : 811-24. Enlightenment authors. While Darnton does recognize the popularity of these writers, he claims that the best-seller list included many more authors and a larger Mrozek, Donald J. "The habit of victory: the American military and the cult of manliness." In 3 Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800-1940, ed. J.A. spectrum of topics than typically imagined. Mangan and James Walvin, 220-42. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987. Patterson, Chris. "Why do you serve?" The Army Chaplain Assistant Homepage, <http://134.11.73.3/armycaac/ca/chapast.htm>(3 April 2003). Ribuffo, Leo P. The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far RightJrom the Great Depression to the I Joshua Cole, "Porn to the Throne," Village Voice, Vol. 40 Issue 19, 8 Cold War. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983. 2 Robert Damton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (W.w. Norton and CO.,lnc., Wills, Garry. "With God on His Side." New York Times Magazine, 30 March 2003, <nytimes.com> (4 (996),200 April 2003). 3 Damton, 27-27 ~-, L.....,.,""",, ..............,..,.__w··· 1 I The censor police had been given such specific infonnation as to what to con­ endangered when its most favored elite classes ceases to believe in its legitima­ cy." 12 The French monarchy lost the support of the upper classes to books that ."'" fiscate that the entire system proved ineffective. "The distinctions disintegrated into a confusion of overlapping, inconsistent tenns; and in the end the classifica­ were "sold under the cloak." 13 The author of The Anatomy ofRevolution, Crane tion system collapsed into a undifferentiated mass of 3,544 entries with only one Brinton, further supports this assertion by Darnton. Brinton is noted for his theory characteristic in common: they smelled somehow of illegality." 4 Literature con­ on how revolutions are broken down into specific stages. He believes that it is in taining slander against the king, government, church and clergy were most obvi­ stage one that the intellectual upper classes are more critical than supportive of ously confiscated. However, this is exactly what the literate French wanted to the existing regime. I read about. Booksellers did not let the censorship stop the flow of these desired Knowing that illegal literature did change public sentiments, the question of Ii books. They developed a code system through which forbidden books could be what might have contributed to the cause of the French Revolution may be revis­ ,II;' purchased. ited. Darnton believes that "do books cause revolutions?" is a question mal posee, Each bookseller received a catalogue ofthe books that the distributor had to a question framed incorrectly. 14 The real debate should focus more on what ideas offer. At the end of the catalogue was a special section titled "Liveres were being read and how widespread the Enlightenment was. 15 Damton discusses Philosophiques." 5 This heading listed all illegal books, from material that denied the problems of trying to guess the eighteenth century reader response to the for­ church authority to raw pornography. 6 In addition to classifying the books as philo­ bidden literature and ideas. He does not definitely answer his question, but he sophical, the distributors "married" these works. To "marry" a book was to inter­ does prove, through lists found at the STN, that large amounts of illegal material mingle the sheets of the illegal book into the pages of a legal one.