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The French Revolution: A Concise History

Norman Hampson

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Aug 22, 2020 Werner rated it really liked it

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Although I'm a history major (undergraduate), what knowledge of the French Revolution I brought to the reading of this book was no more than what most educated readers would have; my nonfiction reading about it was just as an aspect of general history, excerpts from Carlyle in a high school literature textbook, and references or allusions in books and articles about other subjects. Of course, I had an opinion about its causes, nature and significance. But since I'm hoping to read The Scarlet Pim Although I'm a history major (undergraduate), what knowledge of the French Revolution I brought to the reading of this book was no more than what most educated readers would have; my nonfiction reading about it was just as an aspect of general history, excerpts from Carlyle in a high school literature textbook, and references or allusions in books and articles about other subjects. Of course, I had an opinion about its causes, nature and significance. But since I'm hoping to read The Scarlet Pimpernel early next year, and my view of the Revolution will affect my view of that book, I thought it would be helpful to read an actual monograph devoted to the entire course of the Revolution and giving an orderly presentation of the known facts in a concise form, both for background knowledge and so that I could test (and, if necessary, modify) my opinion in the light of those facts. There's a lot of scholarly literature to choose from, and multiple options just in the Bluefield College library; but I think this one was a good choice.

British historian Norman Hampson (1922-2011) was a professor at the Univ. of York, who specialized in the study of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Counting this one, he wrote at least nine books on the latter or aspects of it, including biographies of several of the revolutionary leaders. His aim here was to present a narrative history for interested lay readers, so he omitted source footnotes and references to diverging opinions of other scholars (though he frankly noted in his short Preface that there are a LOT of those). While his own perspective comes through as that of a modern-day establishment liberal, he comes across as a moderate one, and clearly strives to give as balanced and objective a portrayal as possible. The appended bibliography, which has three pages of actual sources (the first page of it is just explanation and a list of journal abbreviations), organized logically into sections and with books and journals listed separately in each one, is intended as a resource for further reading rather than a comprehensive list of works used; so it consists just of 20th-century secondary sources up to 1975, none of which I'm personally familiar with. However, he frequently alludes in the narrative to contemporary sources, and obviously has a substantial knowledge of them. Also, the book is richly illustrated (in black and white) with photographic reproductions of contemporary paintings, cartoons, printed materials, etc., some full page, all of which are primary sources themselves, and these are arranged so that they actually complement and enhance the text. There are 176 of these, listed in the back (though the frontispiece says 170); considering that the actual book text amounts to 168 pages, that's a pretty hefty proportion.

The text itself is organized into seven chapters, one on the “social [and political and economic] origins” and one on the “intellectual origins” (the chapter titles aren't capitalized) of the Revolution, and five giving a chronological account of unfolding events, from the lead-up to the fateful convening of the Estates General in 1789 until the November 1799 military coup that installed Napoleon and a couple of accomplices as 'consuls.” Finally, a brief (four-page) Conclusion wraps things up with Hampson's assessment of the Revolution's legacy and significance. His view is basically positive, emphasizing its establishment, as a permanent force in world political life, of the idea “of a people's right and ability to liquidate its past and provide itself with the constitution, laws and institutions that it believed to correspond to its needs.” (A valid criticism that could be made of his treatment is that he ignores the American Revolution, both as a significant example of a people providing itself with a constitution, etc. to meet its needs and as a major influence and inspiration for the early phase of the French Revolution.) I learned a great deal of factual material here that I didn't previously know, and found the well-written narrative fascinating (though for me it was largely the morbid fascination of watching a slow-motion train wreck). One area that was particularly illuminating was the decisive role that massive deficit spending, to the point where even paying the interest on the debt had become impossible, played in creating the fatal fiscal crisis of the monarchy; how the revolutionary government exacerbated the problem by adding to this debt their own massive borrowings, and how ruinous the policy of massive printing of paper currencies (which wound up being demonetized more than once as the inflation became crippling) was, leading finally to repudiation of the national debt, leaving the creditors holding the bag. (Since the supposed fiscal geniuses running the modern U.S. are committed to the same policy of ever-increasing debt and inflation, that particular history lesson isn't very encouraging.)

Ultimately, though, what I learned here basically confirmed my own previous assessment of the Revolution --which is, respectfully, much less positive than Hampson's. Of course, I start from a perspective that differs from his, in being both paleo-conservative and Christian. (Another fair criticism of his work here is that he tends to neglect the role of religious thought, except as it's reflected in the political positions of the Roman Catholic clergy and a brief discussion of the dechristianization campaign begun in November 1793.) He does confirm the key role, as an intellectual influence on the revolutionaries, of what he calls “economic liberalism,” the ideology of “greed is good” which extolled absolute freedom for economic actors to pursue self-interest, unfettered by any controls imposed in the name of religious authority or traditional ethics. Also very helpful to me (because I've read none of the philosophes' own writings) was his delineation of the two conflicting streams of French Enlightenment political thought (stemming, respectively, from Montesquieu and Rousseau), the one viewing natural human rights, the rule of law, and limitation and decentralization of power as dictates of Reason, and the other identifying “virtue”with the Reason-guided will of the majority, and glorifying the absolute power of the nation-state to crush all dissent from that virtuous will. (To read a summary of Rousseau's thought is actually to read the philosophical basis of modern totalitarianism, and it's an experience of chilling recognition for the reader.)

To summarize my main take-aways from this read, the Revolution was largely driven and dominated by secularized wealthy commoners, whose Pole Star was economic liberalism and whose goal was to create a utopian (in their eyes) new world in which they would enjoy unrestrained power to protect and increase their wealth. (My reading of R. H. Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism had already made me aware that this campaign began long before the Revolution, spanning other countries besides France, and continues today; it's in fact the central theme of modern Western history.) The secularized poor commoners (many of whom literally existed on the edge of starvation) absorbed much of the ethos and ideas of their wealthy peers but, for their own economic survival, interpreted Utopia in a lot more economically egalitarian terms. (While the former group feared, and at times tried to temporarily partially appease, the latter, they were also quite glad to manipulate and use them whenever possible.) A third and more diverse group, which drew adherents from all three Estates and included both some of the affluent and the more religious and traditionally-minded of the poor, rather than wanting to “liquidate” the past, valued the continuity of an organic national community and simply wanted to reform the existing order so it would work for everyone in the way it was theoretically supposed to. Generally supportive of traditional ethics and theism, this group was more apt to draw political inspiration from classical Christian thinkers like Aquinas, from Montesquieu, and/or from Locke and Jefferson than Rousseau; but relative lack of numbers and political circumstances kept them from decisively affecting events. (A much smaller reactionary group, which wanted the old order without reform, was even more impotent.)

For better or worse, the French Revolution created the ideological contours of the modern Western world (and through colonialism and neocolonialism, of a lot of the rest of the world as well). Every significant Western political faction today developed directly out of one of the first three groups above. While that process is outside its scope, this book provides a concise overview of its genesis.

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