|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Introduction: Reverberations of the French Revolution
| Article
# : |
16002 |
|
|
Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
|
| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1989 |
1,142 Words |
| Author
: |
Editor
|
The special feature for this month's Modern Thought section deals with the French Revolution, an overshadowing cataclysm in modern European history that erupted two hundred years ago. All the contributors to this series examine the Revolution not only in its own context, but also as an event that continues to shape minds and imaginations two centuries later. The centenary of the Revolution in 1889 took place with clearer lines of demarcation between the Revolution's opponents and defenders. All supporters of the then recently established French Third Republic identified themselves with some phase of the Revolution: the republican Right with the moderate revolutionary leadership between 1789 and 1791; the republican Center with the founders of the First Republic in 1792; and the anti-Catholic republican Left with the more radical Jacobins and the government of the National Convention set up in 1793. Annoyed by the fastidiousness of his Fellow Frenchmen in picking and choosing among revolutionary traditions and precedents, the radical republican Georges Clemenceau uttered the since-then oft-cited comment: "La revolution fait bloc." This means, loosely translated, that one either accepts or rejects the entire historical legacy of the Revolution.
Yet, there were aspects of the Revolution bound to unsettle all but the most hardened revolutionaries: the public execution of the French king and queen and of more than thirty thousand Frenchmen; the revolutionary government's belligerence toward established states on its borders, in the name of protecting and spreading human rights; and the organized, systematic destruction of Catholic, monarchist peasants in the Vendee province. The negative side of the Revolution has become more widely recognized in France for political as well as scholarly reasons. Without effective monarchist or clericalist opponents on the Right, French republicans no longer feel compelled to defend the events of the Revolution as a historical whole. Whatever the original precedent for republican government in France may have been, the present Fifth Republic Constitution has general support and is unlikely, in any case, to be challenged by victims and opponents of the French Revolution.
Moreover, the defense of the Revolution has drifted inexorably to the left, with Marxists dominating academic journals and university chairs dedicated to revolutionary studies. Over several generations the research topics and themes that the Third Republic used to foster allegiance to a secularist republican past have become the preoccupations of self-described Marxist scholars. Add to this the further complication that the French Revolution continues to be praised and damned as a precursor of communist upheavals and
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
