Daniel Roche is Professor of Modern History at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Directeur d’Études at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.

France in the Enlightenment, first published in French five years ago and now expertly conveyed into English by that canonical translator of our time, Arthur Goldhammer, is the best cultural history of that extraordinary episode now available. Drawing on a whole generation of new work, it shares the fundamental premise of most historians now active in the field: that to study the Enlightenment is not simply, or even primarily, to study the origins of the French Revolution… Instead of scouring the Enlightenment for symptoms of revolution, [Roche] quarries the Revolution for echoes of the Enlightenment.

• Part 1 Times, spaces, powers: knowing France; mastery of space; time and history; peasant France and merchant France; the kingdom of exchange - the culture of privilege and the culture of commerce; the city, crucible of change; the regulated kingdom -Paris and the provinces. Part 2 Powers and conflicts: the king and his subjects; the king and the people; the end of rebellion; God, the king and the churches; elites and nobilities; public space; crises in state and society. Part 3 Enlightenment and society: life triumphant; the liberties of individuals; consumption and appearance; desacralization, secularization, illuminism; materializing the intelligence, abstracting things; Paris, capital of the Enlightenment.

Daniel Roche is Professor of Modern History at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Directeur d’Études at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.

France in the Enlightenment, first published in French five years ago and now expertly conveyed into English by that canonical translator of our time, Arthur Goldhammer, is the best cultural history of that extraordinary episode now available. Drawing on a whole generation of new work, it shares the fundamental premise of most historians now active in the field: that to study the Enlightenment is not simply, or even primarily, to study the origins of the French Revolution… Instead of scouring the Enlightenment for symptoms of revolution, [Roche] quarries the Revolution for echoes of the Enlightenment.

• Part 1 Times, spaces, powers: knowing France; mastery of space; time and history; peasant France and merchant France; the kingdom of exchange - the culture of privilege and the culture of commerce; the city, crucible of change; the regulated kingdom -Paris and the provinces. Part 2 Powers and conflicts: the king and his subjects; the king and the people; the end of rebellion; God, the king and the churches; elites and nobilities; public space; crises in state and society. Part 3 Enlightenment and society: life triumphant; the liberties of individuals; consumption and appearance; desacralization, secularization, illuminism; materializing the intelligence, abstracting things; Paris, capital of the Enlightenment.