The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (2001) by William Doyle

Oxford University Press has hit a homerun with their snappy “Very Short Introduction” series of books, covering literally hundreds of topics from Accounting to Writing & Script. This volume on the French Revolution by William Doyle, also the author of the authoritative single volume “The Oxford History of the French Revolution,” offers a crisp and cogent analysis of five key questions.

First, why did the French Revolution happen? By the end of the American Revolution, in which French military support proved decisive, the Bourbon crown was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Debt payments consumed some 60% of annual tax revenues. Fiscal reform was stymied by an ancient and ossified network of institutional privileges afforded to the nobility and clergy, whose ranks made up only 2% of the French nation. A disproportionate weight of the tax burden fell on the impoverished masses in an absolutist monarchial system that had just finished fighting on the side of American republicanism rebelling against excessive taxation without representation. The country was crippled by a political crisis that prevented the introduction of proposed reforms, namely a new universal land tax without exemptions, the abolition of internal customs, and the end of grain controls and forced road labor.

Second, how did it happen? Doyle emphasizes the background of economic crisis that beset France in the late 1780s: a colossal hailstorm that destroyed an entire harvest; the coldest winter on record; the negative impact of the commercial treaty of 1786 with England, just then beginning to flex its manufacturing muscle generated by the Industrial Revolution. He writes less about the influence of Enlightenment philosophy, the example of the American Revolution, and the crushing debt that brought the French regime to its knees, although he doesn’t disregard them.

Doyle then emphasizes three topics that polarized Frenchmen on the Revolution: religion (some wanted to preserve the Church while others argued for its wholesale liquidation); monarchy (some dreamed of an English-style constitutional monarchy while others fought to eradicate all forms of aristocracy and hereditary privilege); and war (some sought to contain the Revolution within France’s borders while others longed to spread the ideas of liberty and fraternity across Europe and the world).

Third, what did the French Revolution end? Many things, Doyle writes, but most significantly despotism, aristocracy, hereditary privilege, dynastic diplomacy, colonial slavery, the Dutch Republic, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Spanish Empire. An impressive list, to be sure. But, Doyle says, it also ended the belief that some things would never change or only change gradually. The breadth and depth and speed of the changes wrought by the French Revolution was astonishing to those who lived through it. “Quite literally, nothing was any longer sacred.”

Fourth, what did it start? Doyle argues that the Revolution gave birth to many of the core features of modern politics, including the idea of Liberalism, the notion of a political spectrum spanning from Left (liberal) to Right (conservative), the use of terror for domestic and international political gains, and the widespread public embrace of conspiracy theories.

Finally, where does the French Revolution stand today? Doyle notes that the events of the 1790s remain highly contentious two centuries after the fact. Outside of France, the Revolution has long been perceived as an upheaval propelled by violence and anarchy. Notable examples include Burke’s “Reflections of the French Revolution” (1791), Carlyle’s “The French Revolution: A History” (1837), Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” (1859), and Orcy’s “The Scarlet Pimpernel” (1905). However, inside of France for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the classic interpretation of the Revolution was dominated by Marxist scholars who argued that the events of the 1790s were a force of progress and popular will, a positive spinning of the narrative that some revisionists call the “Jacobino-Marxist Vulgate.” This view only began to change inside France in the late twentieth century when French historian Francois Furet began arguing that the true significance of the Revolution was in the promotion of state power, a perspective increasingly embraced by academics the world over.

In summary, I believe that Doyle’s monograph is a helpful aid for students or serious readers looking to digest longer, more detailed accounts of the French Revolution, such as Doyle’s own “Oxford History.” If this is the only book one reads on the topic, however, I’m not at all confident that the insights and perspective provided here will leave any meaningful, lasting impression.