Farewell, Revolution: Disputed Legacies, France, 1789/1989

by Steven Laurence Kaplan

Overview

Steven Laurence Kaplan reconstructs and analyzes the loud and bitter arguments over the meaning of the French Revolution which have consumed French intellectuals in recent years. Kaplan recounts the contemporary debates over the meaning of the Revolution, tracing the impact of the historians' bitter quarrel, from Parisian academic circles to the public arenas of the bicentennial celebration. He considers the roles played in those arguments by three of France's most influential historians: François Furet, Pierre Chaunu, and Michel Vovelle.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801431456
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	04/26/1995
Series:	12/1/2006
Pages:	608
Product dimensions:	6.13(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Steven Laurence Kaplan is Goldwin Smith Professor of History at Cornell University. He is the author of Provisioning Paris: Merchants and Millers in the Grain and Four Trade during the Eighteenth Century and of the complementary work Farewell, Revolution: Disputed Legacies, France, 1789/1989, both from Cornell.

Editorial Reviews

"An excellent two-volume study of France's bicentennial commemoration of its most famous revolution. . . . A remarkable, comprehensive account."—International Labor and Working-Class History

From the Publisher

"An excellent two-volume study of France's bicentennial commemoration of its most famous revolution.... A remarkable, comprehensive account."

International Labor and Working-Class History

"Kaplan's analysis of the tactics of the far right... is authoritative and convincing. Impressive also is the understanding shown for President François Mitterand, who sought to preserve the integrity of the Revolution while jettisoning the totalitarian extremes.... Kaplan does a first-rate job of distilling the interpretation of François Furet, the "unwitting midwife" of a reactionary zeal that impregnated the best-known of the historians present.... The book fills an important gap."

Choice