Enquiring History aims to help readers think and gain independence as learners and have a deeper understanding of periods and the people of the past. Features include: - Clear compelling narrative - books are designed to be read cover to cover - Structured enquiries - that explore the core content and issues of each period - 'Insight' panels between enquiries provide context, overview, and extension - Full colour illustrations throughout.

Analysing the French Revolution 2nd Edition encourages students to examine how various forms of culture were used as instruments by revolutionaries. Through an engaging combination of narrative, documentary sources, analyses, historiography and activities students are asked to read these cultural forms as records of the ways in which people tried to think their way through the complex experience known as revolution.

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The book that established Thomas Carlyle's reputation when first published in 1837, this spectacular historical masterpiece has since been accepted as the standard work on the subject. It combines a shrewd insight into character, a vivid realization of the picturesque, and a singular ability to bring the past to blazing life, making it a reading experience as thrilling as any novel. As John D. Rosenberg observes in his Introduction, "The French Revolution" is " one of the grand poems of [Carlyle's] century, yet its poetry consists in being everywhere scrupulously rooted in historical fact." This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition, complete and unabridged, is unavailable anywhere else.

This book provides a succinct yet up-to-date and challenging approach to the French Revolution of 1789-1799 and its consequences. Peter McPhee provides an accessible and reliable overview and one which deliberately introduces students to central debates among historians.The book has two main aims. One aim is to consider the origins and nature of the Revolution of 1789-99. Why was there a Revolution in France in 1789? Why did the Revolution follow its particular course after 1789? When was it 'over'? A second aim is to examine the significance of the Revolutionaryperiod in accelerating the decay of Ancien Regime society. How 'revolutionary' was the Revolution? Was France fundamentally changed as a result of it?Of particular interest to students will be the emphasis placed by the author on the repercussions of the Revolution on the practives of daily life: the lived experience of the Revolution. The author's recent work on the environmental impact of the Revolution is also incorporated to provide a lively,modern, and rounded picture of France during this critical phase in the development of modern Europe.

A strikingly new account of the impact of the French Revolution in Paris, across the French countryside, and around the globe The French Revolution has fascinated, perplexed, and inspired for more than two centuries. It was a seismic event that radically transformed France and launched shock waves across the world. In this provocative new history, Peter McPhee draws on a lifetime's study of eighteenth-century France and Europe to create an entirely fresh account of the world's first great modern revolution--its origins, drama, complexity, and significance.   Was the Revolution a major turning point in French--even world--history, or was it instead a protracted period of violent upheaval and warfare that wrecked millions of lives? McPhee evaluates the Revolution within a genuinely global context: Europe, the Atlantic region, and even farther. He acknowledges the key revolutionary events that unfolded in Paris, yet also uncovers the varying experiences of French citizens outside the gates of the city: the provincial men and women whose daily lives were altered--or not--by developments in the capital. Enhanced with evocative stories of those who struggled to cope in unpredictable times, McPhee's deeply researched book investigates the changing personal, social, and cultural world of the eighteenth century. His startling conclusions redefine and illuminate both the experience and the legacy of France's transformative age of revolution.

The French Revolution of 1789 lasted for almost ten years, and when it ended, the political and social order of France had been dramatically altered. The absolute rule of the monarch had ceased, and feudalism had been destroyed. With the end of the ancien regime, the new bourgeois gained political power at the expense of the aristocracy and Church. The revolution upset not only established institutions in France, but had serious repercussions throughout Europe. The Oxford History of the French Revolution provides a comprehensive and powerful account of the extraordinary events in France and Europe between 1789 and 1799. Opening with the accession of Louis XVI in 1774, eminent historian William Doyle describes the collapse of the Government, the calling of the Estates-General and the Principles of 1789. He then traces the fascinating history of France through revolution, terror, and counter-revolution, to the triumph of Napoleon in 1802, analyzing throughout the impact of the events on Europe. "The French Revolution took the whole of Europe by surprise," he writes. "To be sure, all educated Europeans were aware in the 1780's that they lived in an age of upheaval and defiance of authority.... But if any great monarchy seemed destined soon to collapse, it was not that of the French Bourbons." By examining the Revolution in its European context, Doyle shows how a movement which began with optimism and general enthusiasm ("the news was romantic and thrilling...people thronged bookshops and reading rooms clamouring for the latest information") soon became a tragedy, not only for the ruling orders, but for millions of ordinary people all over Europe. As the contagion for upheaval spread across Europe, churches were plundered, pious fraternities dissolved, and the paper money issued by the new authorities plummeted in value. It was the common people, he reveals, who paid the price for the destruction of the old political order and the struggle to establish a new one. This monumental work offers a thoughtful, well-researched, and complete guide to all the major ideas and events of the French Revolution. Published on the 200th anniversary of the outbreak of the Revolution, The Oxford History of the French Revolution will not only become the standard reference on the subject but will provide new answers and insights into one of the most important events in European history.

The description for this book, The Coming of the French Revolution, will be forthcoming.

Albert Soboul has held the Chair of the History of the French Revolution at the Sorbone since 1967, and is probably the leading Marxist scholar working in that field today. The book translated here should be regarded more as a synopsis of Professor Soboul's interpretation of the Revolution than as a detailed account of the course of events; it is an essay in analysis rather than a narrative. In it the author argues that the French Revolution can only be understood in terms of class struggle, and that any attempt to diminish the significance of class conflict as its motive force obscures the meaning of the events of the Revolution and rends them ultimately incomprehensible. The course of the Revolution and its final outcome, which was clear by the time Napoleon seized power in 1799, were the products of a complex class struggle enacted simultaneously on many levels, leading finally to the triumph of the bourgeoisie, the defeat of the aristocracy, and the fragmentation and collapse of the popular forces, who as the allies of the bourgeoisie had played a vital part in securing its victory. Professor Soboul shows that although the Revolution was caused initially by specific factors peculiar to the structure of French society at the end of the Old Regime, it came to constitute the definitive type of the bourgeois revolution and opened the way for the ascendary of industrial capitalism in the next century, not merely in France, but in the rest of Europe and the world at large.

Revolutionary France is a vivid narrative history. It is also a radical reinterpretation of the period, and testimony to the power both of ideas and of personality in movements of the past.