Liberty or death : the French Revolution / Peter McPhee.

ISBN:

9780300219500

9780300189933

Title:

Liberty or death : the French Revolution / Peter McPhee.

Author:

McPhee, Peter, 1948- author.

Personal Author:

McPhee, Peter, 1948- author.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 468 pages) : illustrations (some color), maps

Contents:

Patchworks of power and privilege: France in the 1780s -- A world of intellectual ferment -- Mismanaging crisis, 1785-88 -- The people's revolution, 1789 -- Regenerating the nation, 1789-90 -- The revolution triumphant, 1790 -- Fracturing Christ's family: religious schism and the king's flight, 1790-91 -- Fear and fury, 1791-92, and a second revolution -- Republicans at the crossroads, 1792-93 -- Liberty or death: choosing sides in violent times, 1793 -- "Terror until the peace", July-October 1793 -- Saving a republic of virtue, October 1793-April 1794 -- Terror, victory and collapse, April-July 1794 -- Settling scores: the Thermidorian reaction, 1794-95 -- Men with a stake in society, 1795-97 -- The great nation and its enemies, 1797-99 -- The significance of the French Revolution.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

HISTORY -- Europe -- France.

Französische Revolution

Geographic Term:

France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799.

France

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

http://ezproxy.angliss.edu.au/login?url=http://ezproxy.angliss.edu.au/login?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&AN=1227503

Publication Date:

2016

Publication Information:

New Haven :

Yale University Press,

[2016]

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
944.04 23	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

A strinking account of the impact of the French Revolution in Paris, across the French countryside, and around the globe

The French Revolution has fascinated, perplexed, and inspired for more than two centuries. It was a seismic event that radically transformed France and launched shock waves across the world. In this provocative new history, Peter McPhee draws on a lifetime's study of eighteenth-century France and Europe to create an entirely fresh account of the world's first great modern revolution--its origins, drama, complexity, and significance.

Was the Revolution a major turning point in French--even world--history, or was it instead a protracted period of violent upheaval and warfare that wrecked millions of lives? McPhee evaluates the Revolution within a genuinely global context: Europe, the Atlantic region, and even farther. He acknowledges the key revolutionary events that unfolded in Paris, yet also uncovers the varying experiences of French citizens outside the gates of the city: the provincial men and women whose daily lives were altered--or not--by developments in the capital. Enhanced with evocative stories of those who struggled to cope in unpredictable times, McPhee's deeply researched book investigates the changing personal, social, and cultural world of the eighteenth century. His startling conclusions redefine and illuminate both the experience and the legacy of France's transformative age of revolution.

"McPhee...skillfully and with consummate clarity recounts one of the most complex events in modern history.... [This] extraordinary work is destined to be the standard account of the French Revolution for years to come."-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Author Notes

Peter McPhee serves as a professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne, and is an internationally esteemed historian of modern France. He lives in Abbotsford, Australia.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

McPhee (Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life), emeritus professor at the University of Melbourne, skillfully and with consummate clarity recounts one of the most complex events in modern history. It is difficult to see another single-volume history of the French Revolution surpassing this one. The work of a top-notch scholar, it avoids all the snares that have for so long encumbered accounts of the subject. McPhee moves majestically along his narrative path with balance, comprehensiveness, and grace. He also brings specific developments brilliantly alive with relevant anecdotes, illustrations, and quotations. Covering (as any such volume must) the revolution's political, institutional, and military events, the book also puts changing ideas, social attitudes, and cultural norms in the foreground. Best of all, McPhee makes clear the extent to which chance determined the course of history from before 1789 until Napoleon Bonaparte effectively ended the French Revolution around 1800. This book fits into none of the schools of history that have for so long vied for supremacy over this vast subject. Its great achievement is to show how people trying to create a new world in France revolutionized all Western history. McPhee's extraordinary work is destined to be the standard account of the French Revolution for years to come. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Choice Review

This brief synopsis of Al-Shabaab is a thoroughly enjoyable read behind the group that has caused so much turmoil in East Africa. Logically organized chronologically, the book covers the early rise of Al-Shabaab (something very few in the West werre be aware of) to the present day. The author has extensive field experience in Somalia and the immersion expertise is evident in the writing. On the other hand, the book maintains more of a journalistic as opposed to a scholarly feel, in that it documents the evolution of the group without trying to "dig deep" into its psyche and motivational calculus. So the history is well covered but the ideology component could be improved. The other danger is just how evolving and suddenly changing the world of conflict and transnational terrorism tends to be. This already required a quick foreword to be written, and as time goes by much of the information in the second half of the book will become somewhat out-of-date and in need of enhancement. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers through faculty. --Matthew D. Crosston, Bellevue University

Library Journal Review

McPhee (emeritus, history, Univ. of Melbourne; Robespierre: A Life) has written on many aspects of the French Revolution but never more beneficially than in this articulate and perceptive volume. McPhee's revolution is truly national in scope; Paris interacting with the hinterlands rather than a case of Paris playing the dog and the rest of France the tail. The author also makes solid use of primary source materials from outside France. How did the uprising play out, not just in western Europe, but in Haiti, India, Egypt? Lastly, McPhee carefully and clearly delineates crisis points from start to finish during the decade of 1789-99, showing how decisions and actions in each year altered the course of subsequent events. His skillful employment of journals and memoirs gives the account a personal side that complements the structural analysis which is its backbone. VERDICT Numerous histories of the French Revolution exist; while many are good, none is so current on the literature and lucidly presented as this. Scholars and history lovers will rejoice.-David Keymer, Modesto, CA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.