History, Western Europe

In this classic work of intellectual history, Ernst Cassirer provides both a cogent synthesis and a penetrating analysis of one of history's greatest intellectual epochs: the Enlightenment. Arguing that there was a common foundation beneath the diverse strands of thought of this period, he shows how Enlightenment philosophers drew upon the ideas of the preceding centuries even while radically transforming them to fit the modern world.

Reknowned historian Roger Chartier, one of the most brilliant and productive of the younger generation of French writers and scholars now at work refashioning the "Annales" tradition, attempts in this book to analyze the causes of the French revolution not simply by investigating its "cultural origins" but by pinpointing the conditions that "made is possible because conceivable."

Describes how eighteenth century open Salon exhibitions by the French Academy encouraged the public view and evaluate art, and explains the influence of this public opinion on the painters of the day.

In the twentieth century, however, the Enlightenment has often been judged harshly for its apparently simplistic optimism. Now a master historian goes back to the sources to give a fully rounded account of its true accomplishments.

In a wide-ranging interpretation of French thought in the years 1670-1789, Daniel Gordon takes us through the literature of manners and moral philosophy, theology and political theory, universal history and economics to show how French thinkers sustained a sense of liberty and dignity within an authoritarian regime.

This book fills a gap in the literature on the French Revolution, and offers a synthesis which brings together the fruits of two generations' research in the field of French rural and agrarian history.

In his collective portrait of the common people, Roche offers a rich and fascinating description of their lives--their housing, food, dress, financial dealings, literature, domestic life, and leisure time. Roche's highly readable style and use of contemporary quotations enliven the reader's view of eighteenth-century Paris and Parisians.

Work and Revolution in France is particularly appropriate for students of French history interested in the crucial revolutions that took place in 1789, 1830, and 1848. Sewell has reconstructed the artisans' world from the corporate communities of the old regime, through the revolutions in 1789 and 1830, to the socialist experiments of 1848.

The monarchy of Louis XVI suffered revolution and then destruction after failing to settle its financial difficulties. What precisely were those difficulties? In this book, Professor Bosher shows that the monarchy was financed by a chaotic system of private enterprise which proved increasingly unmanageable and wasteful.

Pierre Goubert is perhaps the foremost contemporary historian of the French peasantry, and in this book he synthesises the work of a lifetime to produce a vivid, readable, and uniquely accessible account of rural life in seventeenth-century France.

While the French Revolution has been much discussed and studied, its impact on religious life in France is rather neglected. Yet, during this brief period, religion underwent great changes that affected everyone: clergy and laypeople, men and women, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. The 'Reigns of Terror' of the Revolution drove the Church underground, permanently altering the relationship between Church and State.

This is the first of two volumes in McManner's magesterial reconstruction of the complex hierarchical world of the Gallican Church destroyed by the French Revolution. It describes the diocesan and parochial structure of the Church, portraying the clergy and their lifestyle from the palaces of the aristocratic bishops to the humblest nunnery, and, in a multitude of portraits, analyzing their motivations and sense of vocation. In a detailed fresco he presents the religion of the people, whether centering in the parish church or in confaternities, and the observances of folk religion outside it.

Religion and the Politics of Time is an extensive study of the changes in religious holidays in Old Regime and Revolutionary France. It highlights the importance of cultural and religious history in the transformations of French society that took place from the mid-seventeenth through the early nineteenth century and tells an important story of the development of a French national calendar of holidays.

In this controversial book, Dale Van Kley argues that the French Revolution, instead of being an attempt to dechristianise the country, actually had long-term religious, even Christian, origins.

How did the French Revolution become thinkable? Keith Michael Baker, a leading authority on the ideological origins of the French Revolution, explores this question in his wide-ranging collection of essays.

The first of four volumes of papers from a major international symposia commemorating the Bicentenary of the French Revolution which address the central dimensions of the Revolution as a political event. This volume investigates the nature of French political culture under the Old Regime and the processes by which revolutionary principles and practices were invented within the context of absolute monarchy.

Natural right—the idea that there is a collection of laws and rights based not on custom or belief but that are “natural” in origin—is typically associated with liberal politics and freedom.

In 1789 French revolutionaries initiated a cultural experiment that radically transformed the most basic elements of French literary civilization--authorship, printing, and publishing.

Why was Louis XIV successful in pacifying the same aristocrats who had caused so much trouble for Richelieu and Mazarin? What role did absolutism play in reinforming or changing the traditional social system in seventeenth-century France? In this analysis of the provincial reality of absolutism, Professor Beik argues that the answers to these questions lie in the relationship between the regional aristocracy and the crown.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A new edition of James Collins's acclaimed synthesis that challenged longstanding views of the origins of modern states and absolute monarchy through an analysis of early modern Europe's most important continental state.

The first modern study to examine the political system in France in the closing years of the Ancient Regime. The main emphasis is on how the country was governed.

Political and administrative institutions cannot be understood unless one knows who is operating them and for whose benefit they function. In the first volume of this history, Mousnier analyzes such institutions in light of the prevailing social, economic, and ideological structures and shows how they shaped life in 17th- and 18th-century France.

In this concise, up-to-date analysis of Louis XIV and France in its great age of cultural achievement, David Sturdy penetrates beneath the well-known events, personalities and images of the reign to gain an understanding of the historical forces and realities with which Louis XIV and France had to contend.

Professor Wolf focuses on the problems of high politics and war, which intrigued Louis and were his instruments of power. Without ignoring the fact that Louis was also a son, husband, lover, and father as well as king he gives us a striking new image of Louis as soldier administrator and a vivid, accurate picture of the king s impact on the military machine after 1691, his part in the drama of war and in the emergence of a new Europe."