A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution

by Jeremy Popkin

Overview

From an award-winning historian, a “vivid” (Wall Street Journal) account of the revolution that created the modern world

The French Revolution’s principles of liberty and equality still shape our ideas of a just society—even if, after more than two hundred years, their meaning is more contested than ever before. In A New World Begins, Jeremy D. Popkin offers a riveting account of the revolution that puts the reader in the thick of the debates and the violence that led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a new society. We meet Mirabeau, Robespierre, and Danton, in all their brilliance and vengefulness; we witness the failed escape and execution of Louis XVI; we see women demanding equal rights and Black slaves wresting freedom from revolutionaries who hesitated to act on their own principles; and we follow the rise of Napoleon out of the ashes of the Reign of Terror.

Based on decades of scholarship, A New World Begins will stand as the definitive treatment of the French Revolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541620179
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	10/26/2021
Pages:	640
Sales rank:	76,661
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Jeremy D. Popkin holds the William T. Bryan chair of history at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of many books, including You Are All Free and A Short History of the French Revolution. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

Table of Contents

Preface: Why a New History of the French Revolution? 1

1 Two French Lives in the Old Regime 9

2 The Monarchy, the Philosophes, and the Public 35

3 The Monarchy Adrift, 1774-1787 63

4 "Everything Must Change": The Assembly of Notables and the Crisis of 1787-1788 77

5 A Nation Aroused, June 1788-May 1789 95

6 Revolution in a Tennis Court: From the Estates General to the National Assembly, May-July 1789 115

7 A People's Revolution, July-August 1789 131

8 From the "Great Fear" to the Declaration of Rights, August 1789 147

9 Constitution-Making and Conflict, September-December 1789 171

10 A New World Divided, January 1790-June 1791 197

11 A Runaway King and a Constitutional Crisis, June-September 1791 237

12 A Second Revolution, October 1791-August 1792 257

13 A Republic Born in Crisis, August 1792-May 1793 295

14 The Revolution on the Brink, June-December 1793 337

15 The Arc of Terror, January-July 1794 379

16 The Republic's New Start, July 1794-October 1795 419

17 The Republic in Question, October 1795-September 1797 459

18 From Fructidor to Brumaire, September 1797-November 1799 489

19 The Slow Death of the Republic, 1799-1804 523

Epilogue 557

Acknowledgments 563

Notes 567

Index 599

Editorial Reviews

"A fresh, welcome new interpretation of the French Revolution."—Kirkus

"This is a book that has been needed for a long time: a lucid, engaging, authoritative, accurate, and up-to-date history of the French Revolution. Jeremy Popkin is one of the great living experts on the subject, and he has drawn on a half-century of study to produce this first-rate work. Particularly impressive is the way he integrates the history of the Haitian Revolution into that of the French Revolution. A New World Begins will appeal to experts, students, and general readers alike."—David A. Bell, professor of history, Princeton University and author of Men on Horseback: Charisma and Power in the Age of Revolutions

"Jeremy Popkin is one of the most eminent scholars working on the French Revolution, and his A New World Begins provides us with the best, fullest and most up-to-date history of the Revolutionary decade from 1789 through to the advent of Napoleon. Writing with an insight that distils a lifetime's study, Popkin is particularly alert to the range of experience of those who lived through the Revolutionary years. There is heart and compassion here as well as wit and intelligence: Popkin does not flinch from recounting the Revolution's more sombre legacies, but can still elicit in his readers a bitter-sweet sense of excitement about a moment in western history when, indeed, a new epoch in the history of humanity seemed to be blossoming."—Colin Jones, author of The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon 1715-99

"Sweeping in coverage, A New World Begins offers a fresh and richly detailed account of French revolutionary politics. Jeremy Popkin is an outstanding scholar of the French and Haitian Revolutions, and his deep layers of expertise shine through the pages of this book. This thought-provoking account will push readers to reflect deeply on the contradictions and complexities of modern democracy."—Suzanne Desan,professor of history, University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of TheFamily on Trial in Revolutionary France

"Based on nearly half a century of research and teaching, Jeremy Popkin's new study of the French Revolution brilliantly brings alive the complex goals and emotions of the men and women and people of color struggling to create a new world. It is especially effective in exploring what that struggle meant, both for the generation of Revolutionaries and for our own day. A New World Begins is an outstanding synthesis that is sure to stand as basic reading on the subject for many years to come."—Timothy Tackett, professor emeritus of history, UC Irvine and author of Becoming a Revolutionary

From the Publisher

★ 11/01/2019

In this brilliant work, Popkin (history, Univ. of Kentucky; A Short History of the French Revolution) sets out to emphasize why the French Revolution still matters, and argues that it continues to have relevance for modern politics. Popkin considers the French Revolution to be a "laboratory" in which all the possibilities and complexities of modern politics were tested for the first time: the tension between liberty and equality, the proper role of religion in society, the use of violence to achieve desired ends, collective responsibility for social welfare, and issues of racism and sexism. Tracing the course of the Revolution from its underlying causes to the destruction of the republic by Napoleon, this book covers quite a lot of material in a highly readable way. The short, tightly organized chapters are enhanced by maps, contemporary political cartoons, and period images. Actors and ideas come alive through eloquent storytelling. The author introduces new characters, such as glazier Jacques-Louis Menetra and the "prairial martyr" Jean-Marie Goujon, into familiar events, helping readers better understand the Revolution's impact on people's lives. VERDICT A must-read for scholars, historians, academics, and students of politics.—Marie M. Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ

Library Journal

2019-09-24
A veteran chronicler of French history follows the wild-eyed forces that impelled the Revolution as well as the troubling aspects that kept them from meeting their goals.

Wisely, in order to help readers grasp the enormity of historical currents converging at this moment in the late 18th century, Popkin (Chair, History/Univ. of Kentucky; From Herodotus to H-Net: The Story of Historiography, 2015, etc.) uses two real characters to help illustrate his points. On one hand, Louis XVI was the "living symbol of the hereditary privileges and social inequalities the revolutionaries were determined to overturn." He grew up to believe he was the country's patriarch and that, as he said, "every profession contribute[ed], in its own way, to the support of the monarchy." On the other hand, a young glazier named Jacques-Louis Ménétra would have been lumped into what became the powerful force of the "Third Estate"—i.e., everyone who was not royal or clergy. In contrast to the upper classes, who focused intently on maintaining the rigid status quo, commoners such as Ménétra seemed at the mercy of erratic fluctuations in received ideas from the press as well as yearly harvests, the whims of landlords, prices of food, and collective violence. Yet, as Popkin astutely points out, "even if few of them could read and write, peasants had a strong sense of their rights." The growing crisis of the country's bankruptcy, thanks in large part to Louis' insistence on financing the American Revolution to spite rival England, meant forcing the king into reluctant, seesawing measures. The fomenting ideas of the Enlightenment, as epitomized in Diderot's Encyclopédie (which Louis owned), were the same as those that spurred the Americans, but the outcome was violently different. The author underscores how the French example might have "foreshadowed totalitarian excesses more than social progress" and how liberty for some did not spell liberty for all, especially slaves and women.

A fresh, welcome new interpretation of the French Revolution.

Kirkus Reviews