The Bourgeois Revolution in France, 1789-1815 (Monographs in French Studies)

In the last generation the classic Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution has been challenged by the so-called revisionist school. The Marxist view that the Revolution was a bourgeois and capitalist revolution has been questioned by Anglo-Saxon revisionists like Alfred Cobban and William Doyle as well as a French school of criticism headed by François Furet. Today revisionism is the dominant interpretation of the Revolution both in the academic world and among the educated public. Against this conception, this book reasserts the view that the Revolution - the capital event of the modern age - was indeed a capitalist and bourgeois revolution. Based on an analysis of the latest historical scholarship as well as on knowledge of Marxist theories of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the work confutes the main arguments and contentions of the revisionist school while laying out a narrative of the causes and unfolding of the Revolution from the eighteenth century to the Napoleonic Age. "In the last generation the classic Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution has been challenged by the so-called revisionist school. The Marxist view that the Revolution was a bourgeois and capitalist revolution has been questioned by Anglo-Saxon revisionists like Alfred Cobban and William Doyle as well as a French school of criticism headed by Francois Furet. Today revisionism is the dominant interpretation of the Revolution both in the academic world and among the educated public. Against this conception, this book reasserts the view that the Revolution -- the capital event of the modern age -- was indeed a capitalist and bourgeois revolution. Based on an analysis of the latest historical scholarship as well as on knowledge of Marxist theories of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the work confutes the main arguments and contentions of the revisionist school while laying out a narrative of the causes and unfolding of the Revolution from the eighteenth century to the Napoleonic Age."--Publisher's website. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PREFACE INTRODUCTION Chapter 1 QUESTIONING REVISIONISM Chapter 2 CAPITALISM AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FRENCH ECONOMY Chapter 3 CAPITALISM, WAGE LABOR, AND THE BOURGEOISIE Chapter 4 THE REVOLUTIONARY CRISIS Chapter 5 THE ECONOMY IN REVOLUTION (1789-1799) Chapter 6 THE DIRECTORY (1795-1799) Chapter 7 THE ERA OF NAPOLEON (1799–1815) CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX