Contesting the French Revolution (review)

Ever since its inception, the French Revolution has been synonymous with debate and disagreement. Thus the idea of a book about the Revolution centred on the notion of contestation is a fruitful one. Paul Hanson is not the first to have conceived of the idea, but his is by far the most successful example of the genre. With one exception, the book's ten chapters follow a chronological pattern, from the Revolution's Origins through to its Legacy. Attention is paid throughout to the debates among both revolutionaries and historians, and Hanson offers an engaging and largely even-handed account of both the events and the controversies. Not surprisingly, he is strongest on his own areas of expertise, such as the Federalist Revolt, and weaker on those topics that are of less interest to him, in particular the intellectual history of the Revolution, which is downplayed. In this connection, it is unfortunate that there is no mention of Michael Sonenscher's recent book Sans Culottes: An Eighteenth Century Emblem in the French Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). Maybe it was published too late for consideration, but Sonencher's previous book, Before the Deluge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), is itself mentioned only very briefly, rather than receiving the discussion it deserves. To my regret, the Cordeliers also receive relatively short shrift. Despite the detailed (and useful) discussion of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and its impact, there is no mention of the Cordeliers' subsequent complaints that the Declaration was not being fulfilled in practice. The book also tends to suffer from repetition in places, most acutely in Chapter 9, where a focus on the theme of violence disrupts the chronological pattern. Though an important topic, this material could perhaps have been incorporated at relevant points in the other chapters. After all, other important general themes, such as gender and colonialism, are successfully integrated in this way. Despite these minor quibbles, this is an excellent book and will be especially useful at undergraduate and Masters level. Its integration of a narrative account of events with discussion of historiographical debates means that it offers an ideal introduction to the subject. Moreover, it is written in a lively and engaging style that will be accessible and comprehensible to most students. Appropriately for a book centred on the notion of debate, Hanson includes an innovative interactive element: at the end of the Acknowledgements he provides an email address to which readers are invited to send 'comments, suggestions, and criticisms' (p. ix). I, for one, intend to take up the invitation in order to congratulate him on a job well done.