Abstract: WAS the French Revolution in any meaningful sense feudalism? For more than two generations now we have been taught to think so. Bearing the imprimatur of the highest established authority, the conception of the French Revolution as essentially a bourgeois revolt against feudalism has become enshrined, some might say embalmed in the lectures we heard as students and in those we still give as professors. Each semester an enlightened bourgeoisie, chafing under the constraints of the old feudal regime, rises in one movement to overturn idle aristocrats and a despotic monarchy. The dramatic overthrow of feudalism in the great journees of 1789 remains one of our most enduring and endearing images of the past. Until about twenty years ago, this conception, though much refined to be sure, reigned supreme in the literature on France's greatest revolution. In the last two decades, however, it has been challenged, as further research into the nature of eighteenth-century French society has revealed a social structure far more complex than had been imagined. The results of this research have led some historians to argue that we must abandon the standard modern notion of the French Revolution as a social movement with political consequences and look upon it rather as a political movement with social conse
Publication Year: 1979
Publication Date: 1979-02-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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