Since the 1950s a once-dominant interpretation of the French revolution has fallen to pieces. Elaborated by generations of distinguished left-wing French historians, this version was gradually undermined by the piecemeal criticisms of English-speaking scholars. Many of their doubts, and the controversies which they provoked, appeared in articles scattered over a wide range of learned journals and conference proceedings. This collection brings together the more important contributions of one of the leading British participants in these debates. Some of the essays explore the motivations and achievements of the old monarchy's aristocratic opponents. Others probe the development of venality of offices, one of the old regime's most distinctive institutions. A wide range of revolutionary reforms, their motivations and results, are also examined, and some of the achievements of a generation of revisionism in this field are reviewed.
Jean-Paul Bertaud is the leading French authority on the army of the French Revolution, and La Revolution armee is the authortative treatment of the firest great national, patriotic, revolutionary, and mass army, engaged in what has been called the first total war: that between revolutionary France and the other European powers. The book is a successful attempt to integrate military history with social and political history and thereby to depict the army as a "school for the republic" that by subtle changes after 1795 made way for the Napoleonic regime. The distinguished historian R.R. Palmer presents the first translation of this work into English in a volume that will quickly become indispensable for French historians, historical sociologists, and political scientists interested in armies and revolutions. The theme of the book is suggested by its French title: "the Revolution armed." That is, the book is primarily about the Revolution, and specifically the Revolution in its relation to armed force. This revolution, and this army, activated the idea of the citizen-soldier exemplified by the ancient classical republics, and favored by Jean-jacques Rousseau and other eighteenth-century thinkers, but never before realized on so large and portentous a scale as in France in the 1790s. Jean-Paul Bertaud is Professor of Modern History at the University of Paris I (the Sorbonne). He has published widely in France on aspects of the French Revolution. R.R. Palmer is Professor Emeritus at Yale University and author of numerous books, including the two-volume The Age of the Democratic Revolution (1959 and 1964), Twelve Who Ruled (1941), and The Improvement of Humanity: Education and the French Revolution (1985), all published by Princeton University Press. He has translated many works from the French, most recently The Two Tocquevilles, Father and Son: Herve and Alexis de TOcqueville on the Coming of the French Revolution (Princeton, 1987). Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Doyle describes how the French revolutionaries tried to abolish the nobility, analysing the intellectual roots of hostility to nobles, the steps by which revolutionaries turned against aristocracy, the impact of persecution, and the long-term consequences of these developments for the nobility.
Freedom fighters. Guerrilla warriors. Soldiers of fortune. The many civil wars and rebellions against communist governments drew heavily from this cast of characters. Yet from Nicaragua to Afghanistan, Vietnam to Angola, Cuba to the Congo, the connections between these anticommunist groups have remained hazy and their coordination obscure. Yet as Kyle Burke reveals, these conflicts were the product of a rising movement that sought paramilitary action against communism worldwide. Tacking between the United States and many other countries, Burke offers an international history not only of the paramilitaries who started and waged small wars in the second half of the twentieth century but of conservatism in the Cold War era. From the start of the Cold War, Burke shows, leading U.S. conservatives and their allies abroad dreamed of an international anticommunist revolution. They pinned their hopes to armed men, freedom fighters who could unravel communist states from within. And so they fashioned a global network of activists and state officials, guerrillas and mercenaries, ex-spies and ex-soldiers to sponsor paramilitary campaigns in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Blurring the line between state-sanctioned and vigilante violence, this armed crusade helped radicalize right-wing groups in the United States while also generating new forms of privatized warfare abroad.
