Description

This second edition of the most authoritative and comprehensive history of the French Revolution draws on a wealth of new research in order to reassess the greatest of all revolutions. It includes a generous chronology of events and an extended bibliographical essay providing an examination of the historiography of the Revolution. Beginning with the accession of Louis XVI in 1774, leading historian William Doyle traces the history of France through revolution, terror, and counter-terror, to the triumph of Napoleon in 1802, along the way analyzing the impact of these events in France upon the rest of Europe. He explores how a movement which began with optimism and general enthusiasm soon became a tragedy, not only for the ruling orders, but for millions of ordinary people all over Europe who paid the price for the destruction of the old political order and the struggle to establish a new one.
Highly readable and meticulously researched, The Oxford History of the French Revolution will provide new insight into one of the most important events in European history.

Features

• Provides a comprehensive and scholarly history of the French Revolution, written in an engaging and lively style
• Analyses the impact of events both in France and in the rest of Europe
• An extended bibliographical essay introduces the reader to the historiography of the Revolution
• A generous chronology of the French Revolution has been included in this second edition

Reviews

"Traditional, scholarly, narrative history...a clear and balanced picture of the origins of the Revolution."--The New York Times Book Review

"A fair, and remarkably complete, account of both the Revolution itself and the years that preceded it...a book that sets itself to cover an immense amount of ground and ends with a clear and well-balanced final chapter in which he outlines the many gains, and the often heavy cost, of the revolutionary years ...thorough and scholarly appraisal of French cultural values."--New York Newsday

Review from previous edition... "An outstanding model of clarity and informed scholarship."--Simon Schama, New Republic

"Doyle's book, in its readability, its clarity and its balance, is certainly the best of the general studies of the Revolution that have recently appeared; it will appeal both to the general reader and to the historian. And it deals with the subject, rather than with those who have already written about it."--Richard Griffiths, Times Higher Educational Supplement (UK)

"A work of breath-taking range which deserves to reach a wide popular market. It is the fullest history to appear of the Revolutionary era, of the events preceding it and of its impact on a wider world. Masterfully written."--The Observer (UK)

About the Author(s)