Farewell, Revolution: The Historians' Feud, France, 1789/1989

Description

Steven Laurence Kaplan reconstructs and analyzes the loud and bitter arguments over the meaning of the French Revolution which have consumed French intellectuals in recent years. Kaplan recounts the contemporary debates over the meaning of the Revolution, tracing the impact of the historians' bitter quarrel, from Parisian academic circles to the public arenas of the bicentennial celebration. He considers the roles played in those arguments by three of France's most influential historians: Fran�ois Furet, Pierre Chaunu, and Michel Vovelle. In 1993, Editions Fayard published Steven Laurence Kaplan's controversial history of the bicentennial commemoration of the French Revolution. Here available in English is one of the most polemical parts of that work, Kaplan's account of the contemporary debates over the meaning of the Revolution. Farewell, Revolution: The Historians' Feud, France, 1789/1989 traces the impact of the historians' bitter quarrel, from Parisian academic circles to the public arenas of the bicentennial celebration. Kaplan considers in intimate detail the roles played in those arguments by three of France's most influential historians: Fran�ois Furet, Pierre Chaunu, and Michel Vovelle. As he reenacts the feud, Kaplan invites a reassessment of the relationship between the writing of history and the practice of politics. His book suggests that the charged relationship between history and politics that enlivened the bicentennial may be the Revolution's most enduring legacy. Contents Acknowledgments General Introduction 1. The French Historikerstreit 2. Credo and Crusade: Pierre Chaunu's Revised Revisionism 3. Vive le Roi 4. Bicentennial Hotline: Dial 93-89-1917 5. From the Social to the Political via the Nineteenth Century 6. The End of Exceptionalism 7. Managing the "Historical" Bicentennial: Michel Vovelle as Insider and Outsider 8. From the Living Revolution to the Historiographical Journees Revolutionnaires Farewell Notes Index