Citizens: A Chronicle of The French Revolution

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It starts fine. Describing the financially exhausted France before the revolutionary earthquake that would shatter it, he reminds us of the impact of feudalism. Yet, he counterbalances it by showing such a system might have been on its way out anyway, not least because of the shy nascent of capitalism. It's a fine start, echoing Tocqueville in its conclusion: Wachmann, Doreen (2013). "Profile: Biblical Tales Gave Schama his First Taste for History". Jewish Telegraph. Jewishtelegraph.com . Retrieved 26 August 2014. lighting were nobly born. Far from rejecting the social and intellectual lessons of the Enlightenment, nobles echoed them: not least the gentleman Mr. Schama says was known in America as Marcus D. Lafayette. In their sympathy for new The first number of the Revolutions de Paris, published on the seventeenth of July, was devoted to a lengthy - and rather muddled - account of the insurrection. . . . ''The cells were thrown open to set free innocent victims and venerable old Freedland, Jonathan (6 October 2017). "Simon Schama: finding the light in the darkness of the Jewish story – review". The Guardian . Retrieved 24 October 2017.

French Revolution historian: Simon Schama - Alpha History French Revolution historian: Simon Schama - Alpha History

McCrum, Robert (30 September 2000). "Observer review: A History of Britain by Simon Schama". The Guardian . Retrieved 16 September 2018. PR – Queen Mary honours Simon Schama, Sarah Waters and Marcus du Sautoy – Queen Mary University of London". www.qmul.ac.uk. There is a reason Citizens is popular. It redefined debate on the French Revolution, the role of violence within it, and the need to consider it holistically. It challenged prevailing notions of its causes, its effects – both short- and long-term – and how it was studied. What’s more, it did so during a time of celebration, with an obvious snub to traditional historians. In utilising the narrative format, Schama rose above the traditional history and the historians who presented it, while at the same time provoking response, thus keeping his argument in both the public and the academic eye. But it is the quality of his language, the fullness of description, and the well-argued plea to emotion that, whatever the professional failings of the book, make Citizens worth reading.

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Somehow the revolutionary government found a way to pull itself together. The call for a levée en masse filled its ranks, and industry was militarized to provide weapons and supplies. France’s situation was helped by the reluctance of the British, Austrians, and Prussians to press the military campaigns too far, in part because they did not want to bear the costs of another war, and in part because it seemed possible that the revolution might collapse under its own weight at any moment. A lot of impossible things were asked for in the name of reason or patriotism, liberty or equality. In 1790 the clergy were declared civil servants and asked to swear a loyalty oath to the state that paid them. Most declined. Church property, nationalized Then, in 1792, patriotism culminated in foreign wars; and the pressures of conflict, internal and external, pushed terrorism to new lengths. Because they were reminiscent of aristocratic ways, elegance, manners, wit were denounced as treason. The King i13352325 |b1080003588853 |dculmb |g- |m |h2 |x0 |t0 |i0 |j18 |k010628 |n01-15-2018 15:28 |o- |aDC148 |r.S43 1989 It is a mess, sometimes a fun mess, but it relies on length as a proxy for authoritativeness, he is also vague on dates, and I suspect deliberately so, so without reference to some other source the inter relationship between events in different places is lost. When he does make definite statements frequently they are not even congruent with the material he himself has presented in his own book which is a bit off a worry it is as though he had subcontracted out the writing to a dozen under graduates and then skim read it and added a few sentences of his own here and there, generally I felt his heart wasn't really in it, judging by the bibliography it seemed more a regurgitation of what he had learnt in a post graduate seminar than arising out of any personal passion or research, as a chatty ancien regime loving introduction to the French Revolution that aims to entertain it works well enough though.

Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution

Schama, Simon (6 November 2004). "Hang Ups by Simon Schama". The Guardian . Retrieved 16 September 2018. A similar critique of the American Revolution could be made as well--and of the English, the Russian etc. As regards the USA one could point to Canada or Australia, comparing their peaceful transitions to independence to our bloody one--but then what of "Common Sense" or "The Declaration of Independence"? Schama goes on of course to discuss the Napoleonic Wars following the revolution, decrying them as well. Indeed, after the early wars of liberation so well outlined by R.R. Palmer in his Age of Democratic Revolution, Napoleon did institute sheer wars of imperialist aggression. Those certainly were what most moderns, excepting the recent Bush administration, would consider war crimes. Yet our own revolution was followed by genocides covering the continent. Further, the British abolished slavery decades before we did. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? To explain the sudden end of the ancien regime he tells us that pornographic tracts featuring the lesbian shepherdess adventures of Marie Antonette alienated the ruling class from the monarchy this might be a sensible argument, if the writer was Swiss or Turkish or American, but the man born in Essex ought to know better and there was rampant Atheism, and an obsessive identification with the Roman republic and the American revolution, anyhow Rousseau was to blame and being conveniently dead is no excuse. Gussow, Mel (5 June 1995). "Into Arcadia with Simon Schama". The New York Times . Retrieved 19 April 2013.While I'm impressed by Schama's ornate prose style, I still admit some doubt over the story he tells, even if I am no expert on the country or the period. Were all of the peasantry as violent as he describes? Was the Ancien Régime really as dynamic and innovative as he makes them out to be in the early chapters? He talks about mistakes in decision-making and the collapse of state capacity, and so understates any discussion of economics and prices. The French Revolution, according to Mr. Schama, was no bourgeois thrust against stodgy despotism or anachronistic aristocracy. The old regime was not old, nor did it act anachronistic, fusty or decrepit. Neither stagnant nor reactionary, the French nobility,

Citizens : a chronicle of the French Revolution : Schama Citizens : a chronicle of the French Revolution : Schama

episode and transcript: |uhttp://www.booknotes.org/Watch/8380-1/Simon+Schama.aspx |zProgram air date: July 14, 1989. The willingness of politicians … to tolerate these acts, only to find themselves and their regime on the receiving end, perpetuated the notion that ‘popular justice’ was part and parcel of the legitimate self-expression of the ‘sovereign people.’ At each successive phase of the Revolution, those in authority attempted to recover a monopoly on punitive violence for the state, only to find themselves outmaneuvered by opposing politicians who endorsed and even organized popular violence for their own ends.” (p.623) elite were not a creation of the Revolution and the Empire but of the last decades of the Bourbon monarchy, and... it marched into the nineteenth century not as a consequence of the French Revolution, but in spite of it.' warfare, with its fallout of militarism, nationalism and xenophobia; the disaster of the Vendee, where civil war wiped out one-third of the population; the ruin of port cities and textile towns that had been the growth areas of 18th-centuryFor starters, it's clear that Schama has done his research. The first quarter of this book is about nothing but the socio-political-economic underpinnings of the actual French Revolution and the next half of the book is about the lead up to the execution to King Louis XVI (SPOILERS HE DIES) with the rest of the book being the fallout of, well, upending a full 1300 years of European tradition. Publicly condemn and execute one of the key monarchies of the previous millennium and it's hard to say that it wasn't a categorical turning point for European history as we race towards the rise of democracies and the dwindling of executive monarchical power in Europe. As though Robespierre was ever going to be safe. Despite sporadic violence, the early Revolution was a bit like the hot-air balloons that trailed tricolor ribbons over the Champs-Elysees to celebrate a new Constitution. But to get that Constitution, crowds had been brought into the streets. It would From this place & this time forth commences a new era in world history & you can all say that you were present at its birth Windschuttle, Keith (2000). The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists are Murdering Our Past. San Francisco: Encounter Books. p.252. ISBN 1-893554-12-0. [...] drawing absolute conclusions from [...] fragments of evidence urn:lcp:citizenschronic00scha:epub:47d2412a-b3c4-4847-951b-7c05484fa9e9 Extramarc Columbia University Libraries Foldoutcount 0 Identifier citizenschronic00scha Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t3pv8fb7q Isbn 0394559487

Citizens by Simon Schama | Waterstones

Thus was the joy of living replaced by the joy of seeing others die. Mr. Schama is at his most powerful when denouncing the central truth of the Revolution: its dependence on organized (and disorganized) killing to attain political ends. However virtuous Sir Simon Michael Schama CBE FBA FRHistS FRSL ( / ˈ ʃ ɑː m ə/ SHAH-mə; born 13 February 1945) is a British historian specialising in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history, and French history. [1] He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University. [2] Nominated for Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Writing Emmy Award for The Two Winstons, an episode of A History of Britain [54] given us a grand argument for the prosecution. Lively descriptions of major events, colorful cameos of leading characters (and obscure ones too) bring them to life here as no other general work has done. Baroque eloquence and rococoIn 1991, he published Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations), [15] a relatively slender work of unusual structure and point-of-view in that it looked at two widely reported deaths a hundred years apart, that of British Army General James Wolfe in 1759 – and the famous 1770 painting depicting the event by Benjamin West – and that of George Parkman, murdered uncle of the better known 19th-century American historian Francis Parkman. [16] [17]