The Oxford History of the French Revolution 2nd Edition

Imagine a country where the rich are getting richer, the poor poorer, and the rich surround government and lobby successfully against paying more taxes or any taxes at all (the elite escaped most taxes unless they worked). Imagine a rising cost of living but flat wages for workers, a middle class engaged in a bidding war to educate and launch the careers of their children, and a government groaning under massive debt, most of it generated by military expansion and war. Imagine funds to help feed and shelter the poor or provide them healthcare being cut off from a fear (expressed only by those who need none of these services) that charitable aid will only foster dependence among the poor who are poor because they are lazy and idle.No, it's not America in the 21st century but France in the 18th, and it's a riveting story, whose echoes in the present are uncanny.Usually my best reads are serendipitous, but this was deliberate and planned. After visiting Paris and reading a fictional diary of Marie Antoinette ("Marie Antoinette, journal d'une reine" (French) by historian Evelyne Lever), I realized there are big holes in my knowledge of the French Revolution, holes I wanted to fill. Mr. Google returned several hits for Doyle's "The Oxford History of the French Revolution" to the question "what is the single best book on the French Revolution?"). Click, click, download, and voilà! Many of the reviews here encouraged me to buy the book.The introductory chapter alone (which spans almost 10% of this 496 page book) makes it worthwhile reading, with an outstanding overview of French history, region-by-region, with excellent explanations of legal terms and titles I admit I was always pretty fuzzy about.The French Revolution often serves as a metaphor by people who do not understand its complicated nastiness (or how it was a process that occurred in waves and counter-waves over almost a century rather than a single storming of an almost-empty Bastille). France was (and remains) a much more complex place than outsiders (including myself) want to admit, but Doyle does an excellent job of pulling us into this world using facts, figures, primary sources. He is long on empirical observation and mercifully short on unsubstantiated speculation. He is a bit hard on Marie Antoinette who is also far more complex than the (misquoted) "let them eat cake" insensitive materialist most of us learned somewhere along the way, but this is forgivable because he makes his case in a compelling way. His writing style is concise, to-the-point, at times wry; think the Economist meets the New Yorker. If you liked reading David McCullough (John Adams, 1776), you should enjoy reading William Doyle.If you want a great single-volume overview of the French Revolution, one that reads in parts like a novel (albeit a very heavily footnoted one), read this book. I found it difficult to put down.

One of the most interesting, and telling, parts of this book comes at the end: an appendix on how historians have treated the French Revolution over the past two centuries. The revolution has meant so many things to different people, and has been deployed (in either a positive or a negative light) in support of so many political movements, that it might serve as the prime example of why a search for "objective" history may be fruitless.In that context, this is a good introduction to the events leading up to 1789 and those that followed it until Napoleon became emperor. There seems to be a conscious aim to note the different interpretations that have been placed on events by historians of different persuasions and an effort to steer a neutral course (to the extent that this is even possible). For the reader who is not greatly familiar with the subject, this book introduces the cast of characters and the key dates and events. One comes away with a basic knowledge of the period and, very likely, a desire to read further into particular events or individuals or to look into other histories that have taken a more radical or conservative line.The style is engaging and clear, making the book a pleasure to read.

This is mainly an academic book about the French Revolution and its effects on broader Europe and the world. It could be used (and is actually used) as both a textbook and a leisure reading to educate oneself - which is how I am using it.I won't review the book's contents, but I want to briefly review some of the characteristics of its prose and narrative.PROSE: The prose is fairly fluid, but at times the sentences feel a little twisted, not due to difficult words or long sentences, but due to the structure of the sentences. Nonetheless, the prose is fluid enough to read without constantly re-reading passages or with dictionary on hand.NARRATIVE: The book is academic in style, and its breadth is extraordinary. The author begins the book by describing the French society at large - its geography, economy, political system, administrative organization, culture, and classes of its citizens. The book proceeds at a fairly brisk pace, without emphasizing or de-emphasizing any particular points. And since the book is intended to be used as a textbook, and as a primer on the French Revolution and therefore also as a starting point for further exploration, one can easily lose oneself in all the details, without being able to distinguish between important and less important points. And for this reason, the book feels a little stuffy: there is little exploration or explanation of the causes of events; rather the reader is made to feel that one event simply follows another, without any particular causes.The absence of deeper exploration of causes has its cons and pros. The positive is that the author remains largely non-committal and therefore gives him a clout of objectivity. On the other hand, the negative is that if one wants to understand the different theories about the causes of events, one has to search outside of this book.Lastly, there is relatively little emphasis on the ideological angle of the Revolution. There is mention here and there about Voltaire, Burke and Paine and a few other contemporary philosophers in Europe and the US, but nothing of depth.In conclusion, the book is a good primer on the French Revolution and the widespread effects it imposed upon the whole of Europe and other parts of the world, militarily, politically and ideologically. It's a good starting point for further exploration of the different angles and events. But as a leisure reading for one's self-education, I wish it was less detailed, with more emphasis and de-empahsis on certain points/events and causes more deeply delved into.