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Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution

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Publisher: Vintage
List Price: $29.95
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Instead of the dying Old Regime, Schama presents an ebullient country, vital and inventive, infatuated with novelty and technology--a strikingly fresh view of Louis XVI's France. A New York Times bestseller in hardcover. 200 illustrations.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 944.04
EAN: 9780679726104
ISBN: 0679726101
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 976
Publication Date: 1990-03-17
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: 1990-03-17
Studio: Vintage


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• The Days of the French Revolution
• The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age
• The Oxford History of the French Revolution
• The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France
• Simon Schama's Power of Art


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: Literally couldn't put it down
Comment: I do not remember the last time a work of fiction kept me awake because I couldn't stop reading it; this work of serious history did. Finally, here is a writer of history who writes not only well but brilliantly. His choice of anecdote to illuminate the character of a man or a moment is inspired.

This may very well be an incomplete or imbalanced account of the French Revolution, but critics who complain about it on that score seem to think that it is intended to stand on its own, that we are to judge it as if it purported to be the only word to be said on its subject. On the contrary, any serious history must be read in the context of previous books on the same subject, as a response to and corrective of earlier views. That is certainly the case here: Schama is explicitly correcting what he views as the error of earlier historians. Specifically, he is arguing that there is no meaningful distinction to be made between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, and that as a result the whole account of a bourgeois revolution is an illusion. To illustrate this he provides abundant evidence of the ease with which successful middle-class men entered and flourished in the highest echelons of the upper-class. His case may well be incorrect, but those who would argue against it will have to respond specifically to his arguments and his evidence. No future Soboul will be able to speak of a bourgeois revolution as if that were an uncontested fact.

Some of the criticism this book has recieved is ridiculous. Nowhere does Schama denigrate the Declaration of the Rights of Man. He merely refrains from fawning over it. Do we really need another glowing bit of propaganda for liberal democracy? Didn't we get enough of that in high school? Again, this book is an attempt to correct a historical imbalance. To spend pages extolling the virtues of liberty and sweep mass murder under the rug is not acceptable. Schama gives liberty its due, and is very generous towards the many men and women who did not approve of the killing sprees but still believed the revolution was worth fighting for. In the end however he will not excuse or explain away the killing. There he is different from the hypocritical tendency of which an article by Adam Gopnik is a model, an article in which the murders are blithely called "excesses" in what one is led to regard as a good cause. That half the people I've mentioned this book to recently seem to think the French Revolution was a romantic adventure of fighting for freedom shows how very needed Schama's account was and is.

There are flaws. The story, despite the author's brilliant tactic of using certain characters (Talleyrand, Lafayette, the Queen, Lucy de la Tour du Pin, Malesherbes) as unifying threads, does meander, and one wonders sometimes whether the episodes which recieve treatment of baroque fullness merit the space, and whether some other things might not have deserved some more attention. We are not shown, for example, how Robespierre came to power, or how he changed from an opponent of the death penalty to the high-priest of pseudo-judicial murder. In general one might have wanted more of the sans-culottes--we get a lot of their offical spokesmen but not enough of the crowd itself. What did they believe? Why did they support what they did? Because of these and other flaws I was tempted to give it only four stars--but I recall that one book cannot be everything.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary and Timely
Comment: `Citizens' is a masterful study of the French Revolution I read years ago in hardcover after it was published in 1989. Though lengthy, it examines the most momentous event of the 18C (It wasn't our Revolution for independence from England 1775-83, though I esteem that as a separate subject).

The French Revolution stands as an epochal event that changed everything in Europe, and (subsequently) the world. Few events better afford a chronicle of human behavior that began with the best of intentions in a dysfunctional régime saddled with debt (much of it for financing and fighting the American Revolution), but went astray when well-intentioned advocates didn't speedily succeed in reversing centuries of abuse (an embarrassment that turned out to be a capital-offence to fellow revolutionaries).

If you think totalitarianism emerged from a right-wing historical movement don't read this work. The modern variety emerged from liberal reformers disappointed with a lack of change under their régime. It claimed the lives of thousands and was staunched only by external threats, Napoleon, and war (leading to the death of millions).

Highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The French Revolution From The Top
Comment: All great revolutions, like the French Revolution under review here, are capable, especially when they are long over, of being analyzed from many prospectives. Moreover, official and academic historian have no other reason to exist except to keep revising the effects that such revolutions have had on future historical developments. Left wing political activists, on the other hand, try to draw the lessons of those earlier plebeian struggles in order to better understand the tasks ahead. As part of that understanding it is necessary to look at previous revolutions not only from the position of how it effected the plebes but to look at from the position of those who do not see the action of the plebeian masses as decisive, at least for the French Revolution. If one wants to get a feel for the old way of looking at history from the top down then you can do no better than to look at the fairly recent example of Professor Simon Schama's Citizens.

As a student I was well versed in historical narratives that highlighted the role of great men (and it was mainly men that were highlighted in those days) and great governmental policies that formed the contours of human development (and here, again, development means Western European development). Professor Schama takes us back to those days in his narrative, although he also has some interesting things to say about cultural developments (creation of a reading public in the 18th century, increased focus on education under the influence of Rousseau and the philosophes, development of a public opinion with increased circulation of newspapers and post bills, changes in social mores such as the cult of sensibility, etc.) reflecting the hard fact that these days one cannot sell an historical argument (much less books) unless one sets the stage with such tidbits.

Louis XVI (and to a lesser extent his grandfather Louis XV) has had a very bad press over the last couple of generations, and rightly so, as historians, whether Marxist- influenced or not, have come to understand that one of the factors that speeds up the revolutionary process is the incompetence, inability or both, of the rulers and their coteries to rule in the old way. The great Russian revolutionary writer Leon Trotsky in an early chapter in his monumental three-volume History of the Russian Revolution noted the similarities in this regard between Charles I in 17th century England, Louis XVI in 18th century France and Czar Nicolas of Russian in the 20th century (and their wives) in this governmental incapacity (and cluelessness in their personal demeanor).

Professor Schama recognizes that any rehabilitation effort would take serious work so that he tends to dismiss Louis XVI as basically misunderstood and concentrates on his various, rapidly changing governments in order to argue, in the final analysis, that if this or that policy had been followed through a revolution could have been averted. This is hardly the first time such a proposition has been presented by a later, and in this case much later, historian who has the benefit of hindsight. However, unlike earlier historians Schama has the ability to observe that up until now although great revolutions have created an intense social swirl for a period they lose steam and the long term results of the upheaval appear as something that could have easily been negotiated by men of good will. He nevertheless forgets that at times, particularly revolutionary times, even good will is as scarce as hen's teeth. That mistake decisively impairs his argument.

If one, like this reviewer, spends his or her time looking at the base of society (here the urban sans culottes, the landless peasants and displaced village artisans)to see how those forces were brought to political life, organized, made politically effective (if only for a time, as noted above, before they as individuals also run out of revolutionary steam) and how they put pressure on their leaderships and how those leaderships responded to those pressures then one downplays the other social forces that are in play in a revolutionary period. Great revolutions, however, create all kinds of turmoil in layers of society that previously were dormant or were in control. Virtually a sure sign that a pre-revolutionary situation exists is when a portion of the old ruling elite (or their agents) begins to make revolutionary noises.

Professor Schama has taken that important insight and made it one of his central arguments, that is , in the end the upwardly mobile, self-improving nobility (the meritocracy in today' terms) in France rather than being frustrated with the old regime just wanted to tweak things here or there in order to make it more efficient. This is where his emphasis on looking at the effect of policies at the top of society leads him to a false conclusion. If revolutions merely occurred just because of the question of problems with circulation of elites then the plebeian masses of the cities (the sans culottes) and those of the countryside-the peasants could not have been brought onto the political stage in their wake. Nevertheless the professor argues his view with skill and verve. There are also many more interesting arguments made by Professor Schama in this long book (although length here is no problem as the book is a fairly easy read due to his energetic style of writing), plenty of great photographs to give a nice visual presentation of the period and more than enough cultural tidbits to make this worthwhile to read. But, if you are a leftist political activist, the biggest reason to read this book is to know your political opponents, their arguments and those who would try to denigrate our plebeian history. Read on.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Too much chronicle, not enough craft.
Comment: Too much chronicle, not enough craft. I hoped to learn why the French Revolution failed so spectacularly and the American did not. I have some clues, but wish the author had provided more analysis.

Defining failure and success is fairly simple. The French Revolution degenerated into incredible violence against its own people (they have met the enemy, and the enemy was them) and was politically unstable until it reverted back to Napoleonic dictatorship. The American revolution succeeded in its purpose of ending the previous government and, after one failed attempt, establishing a long-lasting republican government (whether the compromises to maintain peace and prosperity over the last 200 years has too eroded the revolutionary ideal is a question for another review and another book).

After reading this book I would categorize the differences briefly (and certainly not conclusively) as:

1). The enemy (initially the French royalty symbolized by Louis XVI) was internal, not external (Parliament and King George over in London).

2). France, as part of a claustrophobic, incestuous and politically splintered continent, was surrounded (hemmed in, even) by many countries some of which cheered if not hastened the failure. Indeed, Schama makes much of the statistics that show that the deadliest Terror was in the path of the invading Austrian army, whose counter-revolutionary aims included rescuing the Austrian king's sister, Marie Antoinette. America had vast oceans and continents separating it from these potentially fratricidal enemies.

3). The French Revolution turned (for I don't believe it started) explicitly anti-cultural, not just political. It attempted to completely change the art, music, dress, and especially religion of the country. The "dechristianization" of France was a wrenching force that precipitated much violence and ensured a violent backlash by a large portion of the French people.

4). Schama also makes much of the conservative nature of the revolution, rebelling against the too-rapid pace of technical, economic, cultural, and political modernization introduced by Louis XVI. This runs exactly contrary to the accepted view of the revolution, so that even though Schama documents his arguments well with facts, stats, and anecdotes, his claim seems so contrarian that it may be overstated. On further reflection, the truth will probably lie somewhere between the two extremes.
Customer Rating:
Summary: "The Terror was merely 1789 with a higher body count."
Comment: Nearly two hundred pages into this massive account of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, Simon Schama intensifies his brief against the neo-Romantic view that the events of 1789 were the "permitting condition of modernity" requiring the necessary destruction of the "old regime"--a term "semantically freighted with associations of both traditionalism and senescence." Earlier in the book, he asserts that historians seek in vain for the bourgeoisie that supposedly overthrew this stodgy regime: the revolutionaries, he says, "would come not from outside but from the inside of the nobility and the clergy." In other words, the period of 1788 to 1794 was not, as often portrayed, an egalitarian revolution but instead was a struggle of insiders--a palace coup, as it were.

Underscoring Schama's examination of these pivotal years is his presentation of its atrocities--a violence, he contends, that arrived not when events spun out of control but with the very first events. "The Terror was merely 1789 with a higher body count. From the first year it was apparent that violence was not just an unfortunate side effect...; it was the Revolution's source of collective energy."

"Citizens" is one of the best works ever written on the French Revolution; it is also one of the longest. Schama's focus on its violence is, at times, what makes it so fascinating, and the book alternates between anecdote and analysis, biographical accounts and historiographic considerations, compulsive readability and ponderous detail. He presents a compelling case for a Revolution that reversed rather than advanced France's path to modernity.

And yet ... while Schama accuses previous chroniclers (unnamed throughout the text) of depicting the Revolution's causes as white in their idealistic purity, his own revisionist approach tends to the black, and I finished the book thinking the truth lay somewhere in the muddle of a grey middle.

To cite just one example: "Citizens" attempts to portray Louis XVI as a liberal king "wanting to be loved" by his subjects, rejecting the absolutism of his predecessors, and appointing a series of "reforming" ministers. Schama argues that, in the late eighteenth century, France was in the midst of a peaceful, awkward transition to modernity, to egalitarianism, to a constitutional government--much like England's supposedly "bloodless" Glorious Revolution of 1688 (which was, it should be noted, accompanied by its own battles and riot--not to mention the lessons offered by the ghost of Charles I).

In his characterization of the French monarchy, then, Schama plays Edmund Burke to his opponents' Thomas Paine. "The trouble," Schama admits, "is that no two ministers had identical ideas about which strategies of change to pursue," and the result was a disastrous series of reversals that created more of the financial chaos it was meant to cure--a chaos worsened by drought and famine. Thus, even the least skeptical reader will end up believing that Louis XVI was, at worst, an incompetent, if well-meaning, oaf. While he may not have deserved to die, it's hard to conclude that he deserved to be any kind of king, whether absolutist or constitutional. Perhaps without meaning to, Schama's book confirms Paine's retort that hereditary monarchy "may commit the government of a nation to the wisdom of an idiot"--an idiot, lest we forget, who can't be drummed out by an election. It's one thing to argue that the extremes of the Revolution and the motives of its leaders are worthy of reassessment and even condemnation; it's quite another to hint that ridding a nation of the blight of hereditary leadership--even that of an quasi-enlightened despot--can be readily accomplished through largely peaceful means.

Such reservations are not meant to undercut the value of this masterful--indeed, overwhelming--presentation of the Revolution's causes and excesses. The book certainly provides a strong counterpoint to rose-tinted post-mortems of the Enlightenment slogans declaimed by so-called disciples of Rousseau. I just sometimes wished that Schama had suffused his arguments with more of the nuance that a 900-page book deserves.

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