Customer Reviews

The French Revolution and Empire: The Quest for a Civic Order

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Hadn't plan to review this title, but couldn't allow previous review to go without another opinion. While Sutherland does take the historiography of some French Revolution historians to task, he does so under the premise that "you can not ignore the facts." He does present facts, well-researched facts. He looks not only at Paris, but throughout France.

His presentation assumes the reader already knows the basic facts of the Revolution, which as a new student, was somewhat problematic to me. I remember reading several pages of explanation leading up to one of the Parisian journees, then Sutherland provided a sentence to summarize what actually happened. So I Googled the event and filled in the details for myself. In spite of this, I give Sutherland high grades for research, objectivity, and looking at the French nation as a whole. His analysis of events and attribution of their causes is very compelling.

I consider this my 'textbook' for the audio lecture series produced by The Modern Scholar.

Sutherland's work, The French Revolution and Empire needs no further inspection beyond its front cover. The book presents standard information about the revolution, nothing in too much detail, skimming over broad spanses of time in a few pages. He is obsessed with trashing the reputation of Francois Furet, another historical researcher. There are numerous passages where he disagrees with Furet's opinions, and instead of just saying "such and such is my opinion," it is a biting indictment of Furet's views.
There are better histories of the French Revolution than this. Histories that focus on the facts of revolution, not speculation and bias to put forth the author's views that he should be an authority on the French Revolution.