Newspaper Article

Books: Before the guillotine ; Global power, free debate, great shopping - why did 18th-century France need a revolution, asks William Doyle

Doyle, William

2002

Overview

It was, [Colin Jones] insists, a bourgeois revolution. He finds clear evidence for a rising bourgeoisie over the 18th century in its rampant commercialism and what he calls the Great Chain of Buying. He finds that \"the middling sort - a variegated group, which could reasonably be called the bourgeoisie\" were best placed to benefit from the revolution, and did so. Writing it has involved incorporating and making accessible some formidably complex scholarly ideas. But the central methodology is very simple, not to say old-fashioned. It is to tell the story of how kings, their ministers and their mistresses tried, and ultimately failed, to meet the challenges faced by an 18th-century state. The political story of the revolution is quite familiar and continues, as here, to be retold regularly. That of the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI, by contrast, had too often been scorned, and therefore neglected, as a meaningless succession of petty intrigues in boudoirs and bedrooms, unworthy of serious attention when there were economic cycles, demographic fluctuations, rising and falling classes, and deep-seated shifts in cultural values to analyse. Jones neglects none of these aspects so favoured by 20th-century historians, inserting them artfully at pausing-places in the narrative. Yet telling the story dominates his approach; and it will be an amazingly well-informed specialist who will learn nothing new from his account. Sometimes the style jars: not much of the elegance of 18th-century expression has rubbed off, even in translated quotations. But 21st-century readers will be left in no doubt that the factional struggles of Versailles mattered, and will be shown clearly how they helped to precipitate the most important series of upheavals in modern history.

• Publisher: Independent Digital News & Media
• Subject: Cobban, Alfred / Doyle, William / Jones, Colin