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33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
1789 revisited, 21 July 1999
By A Customer
This is essential reading for anyone interested in France, history and the Enlightenment, - exactly how much light was brought to mankind by the cast behind the French Revolution of 1789? And,conversely, how dark was the ancien régime really? All the answers in this immensely readable book. If you can only read one book about the crucial moment of European history, this is the one.
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65 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Tremendous Performance, 21 Aug 2004
Citizens is a truly wonderful example of narrative historical writing - a "tremendous performance", to borrow a favourite expression of Simon Schama. The author prefers a more old-fashioned interpretation of the French revolution, which presents the revolution as a drama and focuses on the characters that determine the unravelling of the plot. This choice provides the book with the memorable stories, such as the royal family's comically feckless flight from Paris in 1791, that make it such a delightful read. It is a liberating experience to find a general historical survey that does away with the conventional, stultifying analytical distinctions between economic, social and political factors. Instead, the reader can interact directly - as well as chronologically, which makes it easy to dip in and out of - with the actors and the events without having to navigate around tedious discussions of causal significance or complex arguments with other historians.But it is the skill with which Schama recounts events like the fall of the Bastille that makes this book unique and easily the most enjoyable modern history of the revolution in English. The embellishing vocabulary (readers are advised to have a dictionary to hand), the recurring motifs (the revolutionary obsession with heads, whether on pikes or as busts) and the vivid build-up of tension are the true strengths of this so-called chronicle. It is perfect for the novice reader and the enlightened amateur alike. Citizens demands re-reading for the richness of its description to be fully appreciated, especially its masterful reconstruction of the fascinating and sometimes disturbing culture of the old regime, which is probably the most accessible that exists. The only disappointment is that it ends with Thermidor, in 1794. After 800 pages, one is still hoping for more, which is the highest recommendation possible for this genre of historical writing.
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28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
superb guide to a hard topic, 3 Jan 2003
This was the first history book that I read for pleasure, and all the way through, and as such occupies a special place in my heart. I read it during my A-levels studying the rise of the liberal nation state in Europe down to 1870. It wasn't until I read this book though that I had any context in which to place these events, an understanding of the French Revolution is essential to understanding Europe in the nineteenth century and, to a lesser degree, the whole modern world. Schama's history is an excellent place to start.
I was warned at my university course that Schama was controversial, post-modern even, this was before he made his name retelling televisually friendly grand narratives, but I could never really work out why. This is perhaps because, opposed to dryer academic accounts, he chooses to focus on the individuals involved and on minor characters, Malashearbes, Lucy de la Tour du Pin, as much as on the obvious biggies, Lafayette, Danton and of course Robespierre. He also displays an awareness that history and the past are not the same thing and that the former is in a constant state of flux whilst the former remains ultimately unknowable. All admirable traits to my mind.
That said Schama's thesis, whilst convincing seems unremarkable. He argues that the violence that finally consumed the revolution along with all its leading players, and a good few thousand others besides, was inherent from the start. For anybody who ever wondered why Britain's teeming cities and stygian factories never burst into this kind of revolt Schama makes very clear that oppression alone does not make for a revolution. The French revolution, to a greater extent even then the Russian, was the direct result of an internal crisis of the Ancien Regime which due to a massive loss of financial credibility coupled with, perhaps undeserved, scandal found itself without legitimacy.
Schama's main skill is though that he can outline these big themes, and others, introduce us and involve us with a whole plethora of characters and guide us through the convoluted course that the revolution took without losing anything along the way. The revolution is such an obviously massive topic with whole libraries of material devoted to it that a book of this sort had to be ambitious to be worth the effort. There are areas that Schama does not do full justice to, though not many, but that is inevitable. He is to be applauded for producing a coherent, readable and enjoyable book that manages to combine a synthesis of current historiography with original scholarship. All in all a very fine book.
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