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Rating: 
Summary: A useful short introduction
Review: This rather brief book is a useful short introduction to the French Revolution. As a work of original scholarship it is not on the order of William Doyle's Oxford History of the French Revolution, though it is better footnoted than that volume. As a defense of "traditional," "Marxist" "non-minimalist" interpretations of the French Revolution as an important event that fundamentally changed France and the world for the better, McPhee's book does not go much beyond the chapters he devoted to the subject in his previous Social History of France. Nevertheless this is a helpful book. His chapter on the breakdown of the old regime, if it does not vindicate the idea of a class conscious bourgoisie confronting the aristocracy, does note the increasing rise of capitalism and consumer culture. The bourgeoisie did triple in size over the eighteenth century, and increasing literacy, readership and Enlightenment ideas did have a middle class component. There were increasing attacks on the aristocratic "luxury", while middle class sociability increased in institutions like freemasonry. McPhee also provides information about recent areas of interest like gender and even more so on the environment (more than 70% of the people who took advantage of the Revolution's law on divorce were female). He also provides interesting details, such as how the Right Wing Press in the early 1790s started attacking the revolutionaries as Jews and how their bloodthirsty language encouraged the panic that led to the September Massacres. Ironically, at the height of the Paris Terror of Spring-Summer 1794, the Convention reinstated more than 70 Gironde sympathizers whom Robespierre had saved from trial and execution. In conclusion, McPhee argues that the Revolution was an important event in French history. It had clear effects on demography, as contraception spread and the birth rate fell, on language, as more and more people spoke French (only half did in 1789) and in the decline of churchgoing. Although still important, the nobility clearly suffered a loss of influence, while the bourgeoisie gained and even the peasantry improved. McPhee might have quoted Paul Spagnoli's 1997 article in the Journal of Family History which noted a decline in mortality rates unmatched in Europe. But this is still a useful introduction to people otherwise unfamiliar with the French Revolution.
Rating:
Summary: A useful short introduction
Review: This rather brief book is a useful short introduction to the French Revolution. As a work of original scholarship it is not on the order of William Doyle's Oxford History of the French Revolution, though it is better footnoted than that volume. As a defense of "traditional," "Marxist" "non-minimalist" interpretations of the French Revolution as an important event that fundamentally changed France and the world for the better, McPhee's book does not go much beyond the chapters he devoted to the subject in his previous Social History of France. Nevertheless this is a helpful book. His chapter on the breakdown of the old regime, if it does not vindicate the idea of a class conscious bourgoisie confronting the aristocracy, does note the increasing rise of capitalism and consumer culture. The bourgeoisie did triple in size over the eighteenth century, and increasing literacy, readership and Enlightenment ideas did have a middle class component. There were increasing attacks on the aristocratic "luxury", while middle class sociability increased in institutions like freemasonry. McPhee also provides information about recent areas of interest like gender and even more so on the environment (more than 70% of the people who took advantage of the Revolution's law on divorce were female). He also provides interesting details, such as how the Right Wing Press in the early 1790s started attacking the revolutionaries as Jews and how their bloodthirsty language encouraged the panic that led to the September Massacres. Ironically, at the height of the Paris Terror of Spring-Summer 1794, the Convention reinstated more than 70 Gironde sympathizers whom Robespierre had saved from trial and execution. In conclusion, McPhee argues that the Revolution was an important event in French history. It had clear effects on demography, as contraception spread and the birth rate fell, on language, as more and more people spoke French (only half did in 1789) and in the decline of churchgoing. Although still important, the nobility clearly suffered a loss of influence, while the bourgeoisie gained and even the peasantry improved. McPhee might have quoted Paul Spagnoli's 1997 article in the Journal of Family History which noted a decline in mortality rates unmatched in Europe. But this is still a useful introduction to people otherwise unfamiliar with the French Revolution.
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