The French Revolution

Descriptions and definitions of the events, people, places, movements and institutions that shaped French history from 1769-1804.

Two centuries later, the French Revolutionâe"that extraordinary event that founded modern democracyâe"continues to give rise to a reevaluation of essential questions. The ambition of this magnificent volume is not only to present the reader with the research of a wide range of international scholars on those questions, but also to bring one into the heart of the issues still under lively debate.Its form is as original as its goal: neither dictionary, in the traditional sense of the word, nor encyclopedia, it is deliberately limited to some ninety-nine entries organized alphabetically by key words and themes under five major headings: events, including the Estates General and the Terror; actors, such as Marie Antoinette, Marat, and Napoleon Bonaparte; institutions and creations, among them Revolutionary Calendar and Suffrage; ideas, covering, for example, Ancien Régime, the American Revolution, and Liberty; and historians and commentators, from Hegel to Tocqueville. In addition, there are synoptic indexes of names and themes that give the reader easy access to the entire volume as well as a key to its profound coherence.What unifies all the varied topics brought together in this dictionary is their authorsâe(tm) effort to be âeoecritical.âe As such, the book rejects the dogmatism of closed systems and definitive interpretations. Its aim is less to make a complete inventory of the findings of the history of the French Revolution than to take stock of what remains problematical about those findings; this work thus offers the additional special quality of incorporating the rich historiographical literature unceasingly elaborated since 1789.With A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution, François Furet and Mona Ozouf invite the reader to recross the first two centuries of French democracy in order to gain a better understanding of the origins of the world in which we live today.

Of Greenwood's series of five historical dictionaries covering modern France from the Revolution through the Third Republic, this is the longest. Perhaps this reflects changes in historiography that find historians such as David Pinckney affirming the importance of this lesser-known era in the formation of modern French society and institutions. . . . The numerous entries by Guillaume de Bertier de Sauvigny, the ranking authority on the period, assure the prestige of the work. Highly recommended for college and university libraries. "Choice" This dictionary contains more than 900 articles written by 75 scholars from countries throughout the world dealing with major people, places, and events in France from 1815 to 1852. It is intended to serve as a useful reference guide in many fields; in addition to the standard entries on writers, politicians, kings, battles, newspapers, scientists, philosophers, generals, artists, revolutionaries, laws, and schools, there are articles that reflect the triumph of social history. The dictionary also features extensive articles on the principal social and intellectual movements of the period.

This work contains much information on a colorful period in history. It will be welcomed in academic and public libraries. Reference Books Bulletin

The author covers one of the most explosive and most exciting periods of world history, spanning the time from the eruption of the French Revolution through the end of the Napoleonic wars (1789-1815). These twenty-six years of history saw the birth of nationalism and Western democracy, economic crisis and political convulsion, the growth of industrialism, the death of ancient traditions, and the birth and break-up of empire. It was the time of Napoleon, who gave his name to this period of tremendous change: the period in which the roots of modern Europe were planted. This work is intended as a broad review, devoting a majority of its attention to the military and political events and personalities of the period, while also surveying the major artistic, social and cultural events and personalities that formed this period.