Revolutions
Peter McPhee reviews ‘The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748-1789’ by Robert Darnton
On 27 August 1783, Jacques Charles launched the world’s first hydrogen balloon flight from the Champ de Mars (now the site of the Eiffel Tower). He excluded his rival Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier from the ticketed reserve. Then, on 21 November, Charles and another ‘navigateur aérien’ made the first manned flight, landing thirty kilometres north of Paris. Montgolfier was invited to cut a ribbon as a gesture of reconciliation in the name of science.
... (read more)Peter McPhee reviews 'The Napoleonic Wars: A global history' by Alexander Mikaberidze
The French have a term for weighty tomes of scholarship: gros pavés or paving stones. Alexander Mikaberidze has landed his own gros pavé, an extraordinary account of the Napoleonic Wars of 1799–1815 in almost one thousand pages, based on an awe-inspiring knowledge of military and political history and a facility in at least half a dozen languages. The scale of his knowledge is breathtaking.
... (read more)Miles Pattenden reviews 'To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII' by Ambrogio A. Caiani
To kidnap one pope might be regarded as unfortunate; to kidnap two looks like a pattern of abusive behaviour. Ambrogio A. Caiani tells the story of Napoleon’s second papal hostage-taking: an audacious 1809 plot to whisk Pius VII (1742–1823) from Rome in the dead of night and to break his stubborn resolve through physical isolation and intrusive surveillance.
... (read more)Peter McPhee reviews 'Napoleon and de Gaulle: Heroes and history' by Patrice Gueniffey, translated by Steven Rendall
Forty years ago, François Furet outraged the French historical establishment by proclaiming that ‘the French Revolution is over’, launching a blistering critique of the Marxist categories and politics of university historians, many of them still members of the Communist Party he had abandoned in 1959. By the time of the bicentenary in 1989, historians were in bitter dispute over the meaning and legacy of the Revolution. In that year, Patrice Gueniffey completed his doctorate under Furet at the prestigious research school the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He remains at that institution today, Furet’s most famous disciple and a celebrated historian in his own right.
... (read more)Peter McPhee reviews 'A New World Begins: The history of the French Revolution' by Jeremy D. Popkin
Jeremy D. Popkin, a historian at the University of Kentucky, fittingly begins his account of the French Revolution with a printer in Lexington enthusing in late 1793 about the ideals of the Revolution of 1789 in his Kentucky Almanac. The printer’s geographic distance from the events in Paris meant that his idealistic vision of the Revolution coincided with its most violent and repressive period in 1793–94, later dubbed ‘the Reign of Terror’. This juxtaposition of 1789 and 1793 is useful for Popkin to make his key point that, ‘despite its shortcomings, however, the French Revolution remains a vital part of the heritage of democracy’.
... (read more)Peter McPhee reviews 'Napoleon: Passion, death and resurrection 1815–1840' by Philip Dwyer
A son of the French Revolution, Napoleon embedded in French society the Revolution’s core goals of national unity, civil equality, a hierarchy based on merit and achievement, and a rural society based on private property rather than feudal obligations. To these he added the Civil Code ...
... (read more)Sheila Fitzpatrick review 'Red Flag Unfurled: History, historians, and the Russian Revolution' by Ronald Grigor Suny
The centenary of the Russian Revolution has just passed, leaving a rather eerie silence, as Vladimir Putin’s Russia decided not to hold any official commemoration. In the current climate of what has been called a ‘new Cold War’ with Russia, people in the West often forget that the Soviet Union and its communist regime ...
... (read more)'Why should you care about the Russian Revolution?' by Mark Edele
‘What about Lenin do you admire most?’ Catherine Merridale, author of Lenin on the Train (2016), answered as most historians would: ‘I can’t think of anything much to admire.’ That this question could be asked at all in 2017 shows that the Russian Revolution continues to fascinate. Such continuities with the mental world of ...
... (read more)Robert Aldrich reviews 'Liberty or Death: The French Revolution' by Peter McPhee
The French Revolution never ceases to fascinate. Marie-Antoinette and Robespierre, the storming of the Bastille and the 'Marseillaise', the Terror and its guillotine ...
... (read more)James Dunk reviews 'The Man Who Thought He was Napoleon: Toward a political history of madness' by Laure Murat
In 1798, during the revolutionary wars on the European mainland, the Irish rebelled. Though they were supported militarily by the French Republic, it was the ideas heralded by the Revolution that gave real strength to their cause. A decade later, in Dublin, William Hallaran argued in his An Enquiry Into the Causes Producing the Extraordinary Addition to the Number of Insane that much of the increase should be attributed to the rebellion. Fifteen per cent of cases where causes could be identified were linked directly with the rebellion, but its effects were writ large in the rest of the catalogue: loss of property, drunkenness, religious zeal, disappointment, and grief.
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