Historiography of Old Regime and Revolutionary France: Graduate Level
Prof. Jeremy L. Caradonna
The State and Society in the Old Regime
William Doyle, ed., Short Oxford History of France: Old Regime France, chs. Intro, 1, 2,
5, 6, 7, 8, and Conclusion
Jim Collins, The State in Early Modern France
Willilam Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France
Fanny Cosandey & Robert Descimon, L’absolutisme en France
David Bien,“Offices, Corps and a System of State Credit: The Uses of Privilege under
the Ancien Régime,” pp.89-114 in Keith M. Baker, ed., The Political Culture of the Old Regime
Sharon Kettering, Patrons, Brokers and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France
Marcel Marion, Dictionnaire des Institutions de la France
Two sources that review recent literature on absolutism:
*WilliamBeik, “The Absolutism of Louis XIV as Social Collaboration,”Past & Present188 (2005): 195-224
*Richard Bonney, “Absolutism: What’s in a Name?”French Historyvol. 1, no. 1 (1987): 93-117.
The Reign of Louis XIV
Anthony Levi, Louis XIV
Orest Ranum, The Fronde: A French Revolution
Norbert Elias, The Court Society and The History of Manners
Pierre Goubert, Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen
The Regency and the Rise of Fleury
Colin Jones, The Great Nation, chs. 2, 3
Peter Campbell, Power and Politics in Old Regime France, 1720-1745
The Reign of Louis XV
Thomas E. Kaiser, “Louis le Bien-Aimé and the Rhetoric of the Royal Body,” pp.131-161
in Melzer & Norberg, eds., From the Royal to the Republican Body
Michel Antoine, Louis XV
The Reign of Louis XVI
Jean-François Chappe, Louis XVI
John Hardman, Louis XVI
Joël Félix, Louis XVI et Marie-Antoinette: un couple en politique
Lynn Hunt,“The Many Bodies of Marie-Antoinette: Political Pornography and the
Proglem of the Feminine in the French Revolution,” pp.108-130 in Hunt, ed., Eroticism and the Body Politic
Political Culture of the Old Regime
Keith Baker, Inventing the French Revolution
Jeffrey Merrick, The Desacralization of the French Monarchy in the 18th Century
Paul Friedland, Political Actors: Representative Bodies and Theatricality in the Age of
the French Revolution
Durand Echeverria, The Maupeou Revolution
Steven L. Kaplan, Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV
Sarah Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Prerevolutionary
France
Sarah Maza, “The Diamond Necklace Affair Revisited (1785-6): The Case of the Missing
Queen,” pp.63-89 in Hunt, ed., Eroticism and the Body Politic
France Overseas (Pre-1800)
Pierre H. Boulle & D. Gillian Thompson, “France Overseas,” pp.105-138 in William
Doyle, ed., Short Oxford History of France: Old Regime France
Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution
Jeremy Popkin, You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery
James Axtell, The Invasion Within
Richard White, The Middle Ground
Louise Dechêne, Habitants and Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Montreal
Peasants, Families, and Rural Life in the Old Regime
James Traer, Marriage and the Family in Eighteenth-Century France
Jean-Louis Flandrin, Families in Former Times: Kinship, Household and Sexuality in
Early Modern France
Philip Hoffman, Growth in a Traditional Society: The French Countryside, 1450-1815
Olwen Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France
The Culture of Enlightenment
Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution
Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime
Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre
Robert Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment
Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment
Margaret Jacob, Living the Enlightenment
Carla Hesse, The Other Enlightenment: How French women Became Modern
Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
James Van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe
Jeremy L. Caradonna, “Prendre part au siècle des Lumières…” Annales. Histoire,
Sciences sociales, vol.64 (mai-juin 2009), n.3, 633-662.
Jeremy L. Caradonna, The Enlightenment in Practice
The Salons of the Old Regime
Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment
Antoine Lilti, “Sociability and Mondanité: Men of Letters in the Parisian Salons of the
Eighteenth Century,” pp.1-25 [My translation of “Sociabilité et mondanité…” in French Historical Studies; ask me for a copy]
Antoine Lilti, Le monde des salons
Life in Paris
Orest Ranum, Paris in the Age of Absolutism
Colin Jones, Paris: Biography of a City
David Garrioch, The Making of Revolutionary Paris
Daniel Roche, The People of Paris
Daniel Roche, La ville promise: mobilité et accueil à Paris (fin XVIIe – debut XIX siècle)
Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant
Religious Controversies and Politics in the Old Regime
Dale K. Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution
Catherine Maire, De la cause de Dieu à la cause de la nation
Dale K. Van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France, 1757-
1765
Nationalism and National Identity
David A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France
Jay Smith, Nobility Reimagined
Peter Sahlins, Unnaturally French: Foreign Citizens in the Old Regime and After
Vincent Denis, Une histoire de l’identité
Hanna Sonkajärvi, Qu'est-ce qu'un étranger ? Frontières et identifications à
Strasbourg(1681-1789)
Short-Term Causes of the French Revolution
Jean Egret, The French Pre-Revolution, 1787-1788
William Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution
The Many Long-Term Origins of the French Revolution
Overview:
Peter Campbell, “Introduction: The Origins of the French Revolution in Focus,” pp.1-34
in Campbell, ed., The Origins of the French Revolution
William Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution, pp.7-40
Social:
Colin Lucas, “Nobles, Bourgeois, and the Origins of the French Revolution,” found in
several locations, including on-line in Gary Kates, ed., The French Revolution:
Recent Debates and New Controversies
George V. Taylor, “Noncapitalist Wealth and the Origins of the French Revolution,”
AHR (1967), found on JSTOR
Colin Jones, “Bourgeois Revolution Revivified: 1789 and Social Change,” pp.69-118 in
Colin Lucas, ed., Rewriting the French Revolution
Sarah Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie
David A. Bell, “Class, Consciousness, and the Fall of the Bourgeois Revolution,” pp.323-
351, in Critical Review, nos. 2-3 (2004)
Political:
Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution
Keith M. Baker, Inventing the French Revolution
Sarah Maza, “Politics, Culture and the Origins of the French Revolution,” pp.100-117 in
Peter Jones, ed., The French Revolution in Social and Political Perspective
Cultural:
Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution
Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, ch.1
William Scott, “From Social to Cultural History,” pp.112-138 in P. Campbell, ed., The
Origins of the French Revolution
Intellectual:
Marisa Linton, “The Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution,” in P. Campbell, ed.,
The Origins of the French Revolution
Religious:
Dale K. Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution
Dale K. van Kley, “The Religious Origins of the French Revolution, 1560-1791,” in
P. Campbell, ed., The Origins of the French Revolution
Overviews of the French Revolution
William Doyle, Oxford History of the French Revolution
Colin Jones, Longman Companion to the French Revolution
Donald Sutherland, The French Revolution and Empire
J.M. Thompson, The French Revolution
The Political Culture of the French Revolution
François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution
Mona Ozouf, L’homme régénéré
Keith M. Baker, et. al., eds., The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political
Culture
Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution
Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution
Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution
Timothy Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary
Jon Cowans, To Speak for the People: Public Opinion and the Problem of Legitimacy in
the French Revolution
Jeremy Popkin, Revolutionary News: The Press in France, 1789-1799
Furet & Ozouf, eds., A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution
Sophie Rosenfeld, A Revolution in Language
The Sans-Culottes, Crowds, Labor Movements, and Popular Radicalism
Albert Soboul, Les sans-culottes parisiens en l’an II
Richard Mowery Andrews, “Social Structure, Political Elites and Ideology in
Revolutionary Paris, 1792-1793: A Critical Evaluation of Albert Soboul’s Les sans-culottes parisiens en l’an II,” Journal of Social History, v.19 (1985): 71-112
Georges Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution
William Sewell, Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old
Regime to 1848
Michael Sonenscher, “The Sans-culottes of the Year II, Social History, v.9 (1984): 301-
328
George Rudé, The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and
England, 1730-1848
David Andress, “‘A Ferocious and Misled Multitude’: Elite Perceptions of Popular
Action from Rousseau to Robespierre,” pp.169-186 in Enlightenment and Revolution: Essays in honour of Norman Hampson, ed. M. Crook, A. Forrest and W. Doyle
Lynn Hunt, Warren Roberts, Jack Censer, Vivian p. Cameron, etc., “Imaging the French
Revolution: Depictions of the French Revolutionary Crowd,” series of essays on-line at
Richard Cobb, The French and Their Revolution, chs.5, 9
Jean Nicolas, La rébellion française (discusses collective violence in the 17th and 18th
centuries)
David Andress, Massacre at the Champ de Mars
Applewhite, Levy, Johnson, eds., Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795
Art, Political Imagery, and the French Revolution
Warren Roberts, Jacques-Louis David, Revolutionary Artist: Art, Politics, and the French
Revolution
Joan Landes, Visualizing the Nation
Antoine de Baecque, The Body Politic: Corporeal Metaphor in Revolutionary France,
1770-1800
War and the French Revolution
Timothy Blanning, The French Revolutionary Wars, 1787-1802
David A. Bell, The First Total War
Jean-Paul Bertaud, The Army of the French Revolution
Jean-Clément Martin, La Vendée et la France
Political Institutions and Clubs during the Revolution
Timothy Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary: The Deputies of the French National
Assembly and the Emergence of a Revolutionary Culture (1789-1790)
C.J. Michell, The French Legislative Assembly of 1791
Alison Patrick, The Men of the First French Republic: Political Alignments in the
National Convention of 1792
Michael Sydenham, The Girdondins
Gary Kates, The Cercle Social, The Girondins, and the French Revolution
Michael L. Kennedy, The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution, 3 vols.
Patrice Higonnet, Goodness Beyond Virtue: Jacobins during the French Revolution
Gender and the French Revolution
Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer
Suzanne Desan, The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France
Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of Revolution
Dominique Godineau, The Women of Paris and Their French Revolution
Olwen Hufton, Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution
Carla Hesse, The Other Enlightenment
Jennifer Heuer, The Family and the Nation: Gender and Citizenship in Revolutionary
France, 1789–1830
Some Sources on Women in the French Revolution
Melzer & Rabine, eds., Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution
Applewhite, Levy, Johnson, eds., Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795
M. Gutwirth, Twilight of the Goddesses
Lynn Hunt, ed., Eroticism and the Body Politic
The French Counter-Revolution
Jacques Godechot, The Counter-Revolution
Timothy Tackett, Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture in Eighteenth-Century
France: The Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791
Jean-Clément Martin, Révolution et contre-révolution
Richard Cobb, The French and Their Revolution, chs.6,7
Olwen Hufton, “In Search of Counter-Revolutionary Women,” pp.91-130 in Women and
the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution
The Terror
R.R. Palmer, The Twelve Who Ruled
David P. Jordan, The Revolutionary Career of Maximilien Robespierre
David Andress, The Terror
Jean-Clément Martin, La Vendée et la France
Michel Vovelle, The Revolution Against the Church: From Reason to Supreme Being
Patrice Gueniffey, La politique de la terreur: Essai sur la violence révolutionnaire, 1789-
1794
Michel Biard, Missionaires de la République
Ending the Terror
Bronisaw Baczko, Ending the Terror: The French Revolution after Robespierre
Howard Brown, Ending the French Revolution: Violence, Justice, and Repression from
the Terror to Napoleon
The Directory
Donald Sutherland, The French Revolution and Empire, sections on Directory
Georges Lefebvre, The Thermidorians & The Directory; Two Phases of the French
Revolution
Howard Brown, Ending the French Revolution: Violence, Justice, and Repression from
the Terror to Napoleon
Legacies of the French Revolution
Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights
Isser Woloch, The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789-1820s
Anything by Maurice Agulhon (example: Marianne into Battle)
Napoleon Bonaparte
Steven Englund, Napoleon: A Political Life
Jean Tulard, Napoléon, ou mythe du saveur
Michael Broers, The Politics of Religion in Napoleonic Italy
Louis Bergeron, France under Napoleon
The Bourbon Restoration
Guillume de Bertier de Sauvigny, The Bourbon Restoration
The Revolution of 1830 and the July Monarchy
H.A.C. Collingham, The July Monarchy: A Political History of France, 1830-1848
Pierre Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot
The Revolution(s) of 1848, the Coup d’État of 1851, and the Reign of Napoleon III
William Fortescue, France and 1848: The End Of Monarchy
Jonathan Sperber, The European Revolutions, 1848-1851
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Philip Mansel, Paris Between Empires: Monarchy and Revolution, 1814-1852
Ted Margadant, French Peasants in Revolt: The Insurrection of 1851
David Baguley, Napoleon III and His Regime: An Extravaganza
Sudhir Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen: The Second Empire and the Emergence of
Modern French Democracy
Maurice Agulhon, The Republican Experiment, 1848-1852
Phil Nord, The Republican moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century
France
David Jordan, Transforming Paris: The Life and Labors of Baron Haussmann
Other Sources on Nineteenth-Century France
Joan W. Scott, The Glassworkers of Carmaux
Joan W. Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer
Eugene Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen
Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections
Paul Cocoran, ed., Before Marx: Socialism and Communism in France, 1830-1848
Louis Chevalier, Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes
John Merriman, The Red City: Limoges and the French Nineteenth Century
Judith G. Coffin,The Politics of Women’s Work: The Paris Garment Trades, 1750-1915
Jacques Ranciere, The Nights of Labor: The Workers' Dream in Nineteenth-Century
France
Jonathan Beecher,Victor Considerant and the Rise and Fall of French Romantic
Socialism
Michelle Perrot, “On the Formation of the French Working Class,”and Alain Cottereau,
“The Distinctiveness of Working-Class Cultures in France, 1848-1900,” in Ira Katznelson and Aristide R. Zolberg, eds, Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States
Laura S. Strumingher, Women and the Making of the Working Class, Lyon 1830-1870
Sources on the French Empire of the Nineteenth Century
Jennifer Sessions, Reinventing Empire: Colonialism and Political Culture in Nineteenth-
Century France and Algeria
Martin S. Staum, Labeling People: French Scholars on Society, Race, and Empire, 1815-
1848
David Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bne, 1870-1920
C.-R. Ageron, Histoire de l'Algerie contemporaine, v. 1
Pierre Montagnon, La conquete de l’Algerie
Todd Porterfield, The Allure of Empire
Benjamin Stora, Algeria, 1830-2000: A Short History
John Ruedy, Modern Algeria
Julia Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial
Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800-1904)
Edward Said, Orientalism
The Paris Commune
Steward Edwards, Paris Commune 1871
Robert Tombs, The Paris Commune 1871
Martin P. Johnson, The Paradise of Association: Political Culture and Popular
Organizations in the Paris Commune of 1871
Alistair Horne, The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune, 1870-71
David A. Shafer, The Paris Commune
Carolyn J. Eichner, Surmounting the Barricades: Women in the Paris Commune
Gay Gullickson, The Unruly Women of Paris: Images of the Commune
* Note that S.F. Burrows at Leeds has compiled an excellent bibliography on the French Revolution, including primary sources in translation.