Bourgeois, Sans-Culottes and Other Frenchmen

Few events are as complex as a social revolution - as the disputes among historians over the nature of the French Revolution attest. Was it Atlantic or national, bourgeois or sans-culotte, a product of poverty or prosperity, one revolution or several? The essays in this volume, in honour of an eminent student of the Revolution, demonstrate the complexity once again. Stanley Idzerda and Ruth Strong Hudson consider the cases of two individuals influential in the Revolution, Lafayette and Gerard, while James Harkins investigates the intellectual origins of Babouvism. Themistocles Rodis asks whether morals declined during the Revolution, and Morris Slavin reassesses the effect on the Revolution of the struggle in section Roi de Sicile between monarchists and republicans. Agnes Smith and James Friguglietti examine the assessment of the Revolution by a contemporary observer (Toulongeon) and a twentieth-century historian (Mathiez).