“The French Revolution: A Document Collection”, edited by Laura Mason, Tracey Rizzo

357 pages, Houghton Mifflin, ISBN-13: 978-0669417807

Laura Mason and Tracey Rizzo’s The French Revolution: A Document Collection is an academic book intended to provide students with documents that reflect both contemporary historiography concerns vs. older modes of historical interpretation. In a practical way this means they include both the kinds of political documents required to understand what the government was doing in Paris while also including information on women, slaves, peasants and artisans. Finally, a guiding principle in their selection is to choose documents that allow the student to hear the words of the actors themselves in order to better see how they experienced and lived the confusion of the Revolutionary period. This collection is divided into four sections: Part 1 covers the pre-Revolution through to the Tennis Court Oath and the royal session at the end of June, and also contains a section on popular revolt (rural unrest and the March on Versailles, primarily); Part 2 takes the reader through to the king’s trial, with chapters on the legislation of the Assemblée constituante, the continuing unrest in the countryside, the rise of political tensions (within municipalities, over the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and those created by the royal flight to Varennes), and the start of the war; Part 3 focuses on the Republican Crisis and popular movements during the period of the Terror (sans-culottes, women, slaves and counter-revolutionaries), the creation of revolutionary government, legislative attempts to create a new society and culture, and the Thermidorian Reaction; Part 4 takes us through to 1803, ending with Napoleon’s rise to power.

The French Revolution has many strengths, starting with thorough introductory chapters for each section of the readers surveyed here, in addition to a helpful chronology of events at the beginning of the book. Above all, the emphasis on the experiences of ordinary people is its greatest advantage; as a result of this emphasis the book text also has the strongest coverage of popular revolution and especially the revolts in the countryside, in addition to attempts by the National Assembly to root the new civic order in the provinces. To have three full chapters (sixty pages) on the Directory is also a definite advantage, given the neglected historiography from which this fascinating half decade is only beginning to emerge.

The main weakness of the work is its treatment of Napoleon: although the authors try to add a measure of controversy to the issue of Napoleon’s relation to the Revolution in their introductory chapter, their decision to end with the start of the Empire, as well as entitling the section “Napoleon Closes the Revolution”, leaves little doubt where the authors stand. The same point can be made by examining the author’s selection from the Civil Code, which is almost entirely limited to the sections on marriage, divorce and paternal authority, by far the most reactionary parts of the Code. One of the strengths of the Mason and Rizzo reader is its inclusion of the Haitian situation, race and the question of slavery, but the broader European context of the Revolutionary period gets very little space in the text, especially the question of governance over occupied Italy and Germany. This is unfortunate, since the war and occupation starkly reveal many of the tensions within revolutionary ideology, and between ideals and reality, financial and otherwise. How do you extend liberty to those who would use it to undermine the accomplishments of the Revolution? But in spite of this, The French Revolution, though dry and at times tedious, should be a welcome addition to any student’s library.