Worlds Turned Upside Down: Bourgeois Experience in the 19th-Century Revolutions

With the advantage of hindsight, historians have concluded that France's bourgeoisie enjoyed a solid hegemony throughout the nineteenth century, despite the period's periodic political crises. At the time, however, members of the bourgeoisie did not feel this sense of security. The writings of the Lyonnais doctor, historian and librarian Jean-Baptiste Monfalcon make it possible to understand the shock that the crises of 1830,1848, and 1870–1871 caused for those who saw themselves as upholders of social order. Each of these revolutionary crises jeopardized life projects to which Monfalcon had devoted years of effort. Although Monfalcon finally died peacefully in 1874, still occupying the library post he had struggled to keep since the early 1840s, each of France's national crises had forced him to spend years of energy fighting both to safeguard his own position and that of his social class. Thanks to this unusually articulate witness, we can gain new insights into the mentality of France's middle classes during the period from the Restoration to the early years of the Third Republic.