Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution
  • Cited by 14
      • 2nd edition
      Show more authors
      • You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Select format
    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      05 June 2012
      27 May 1999
      ISBN:
      9780511622243
      9780521661515
      9780521667678
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511622243
      Dimensions:
      (216 x 138 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.44kg, 230 Pages
      Dimensions:
      (216 x 138 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.325kg, 232 Pages
      • Series:
      The Wiles Lectures
      Subjects:
      Social and Population History, Area Studies, History of Ideas, European History after 1450, History, European Studies
    You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Selected: Digital
    Add to cart View cart Buy from Cambridge.org
    Series:
    The Wiles Lectures
    Subjects:
    Social and Population History, Area Studies, History of Ideas, European History after 1450, History, European Studies
    Information

    Book description

    Alfred Cobban's The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution is one of the acknowledged classics of post-war historiography. This 'revisionist' analysis of the French Revolution caused a furore on first publication in 1964, challenging as it did established orthodoxies during the crucial period of the Cold War. Cobban saw the French Revolution as central to the 'grand narrative of modern history', but provided a salutary corrective to many celebrated social explanations, determinist and otherwise, of its origins and development. A generation later this concise but powerful intervention was reissued in this 1999 edition with an introduction by Gwynne Lewis, providing students with both a context for Cobban's own arguments, and assessing the course of Revolutionary studies in the wake of The Social Interpretation. This book remains a handbook of revisionism for Anglo-Saxon scholars, and is essential reading for all students of French history at undergraduate level and above.

    Reviews

    ‘This is a provocative, lively, and well-written book, and its call for a truly modern sociology of the Revolution can only meet with general approval.’

    Source: Review of Politics

    ‘This book will be both stimulating and challenging to all those who have so far accepted the orthodox ‘bourgeois versus aristocrat’ theory.’

    Source: The Times Educational Supplement

    Refine List

    Actions for selected content:

    Select all | Deselect all
    • View selected items
    • Export citations
    • Download PDF (zip)
    • Save to Kindle
    • Save to Dropbox
    • Save to Google Drive

    Save Search

    You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

    Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
    Cancel
    ×

    Contents

    Contents

    Metrics

    Altmetric attention score

    Full text views

    Total number of HTML views: 0
    Total number of PDF views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    Book summary page views

    Total views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    * Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

    Usage data cannot currently be displayed.

    Accessibility standard: Unknown

    Why this information is here

    This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.

    Accessibility Information

    Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.