Peter McPhee (1) (1948–)

Not a bad book exactly but has some frustrating inadequacies as a single volume history. There's a deliberate decision to focus a lot on what's happening outside of Paris but it means the writing is spread way too thin. A lot of key events are just sort of glossed over and there's no real sense of how the Convention went through so many political changes. For example, the narrative sort of displays the Jacobins at the height of their power, doesn't really show any significant opposition... then Thermidor happens, Robespierre is killed and suddenly everyone has changed their views within a page. There's not even an attempt at explaining what on earth happened. Just a sudden switch. The other major events get similar treatment.

The focus on how the provinces reacted to what happened in Paris is a logical choice but because his explanation of what happened in Paris is so thin, even in terms of just the basic facts, a lot of the time you don't have the context to understand why X town is doing what it is. A lot of random stories and details about single small settlements are included but they don't form a cohesive whole or give you an understanding of how X broad area of France reacted. When useful statistics are introduced which give you an idea of opinion past anecdotes, they're still hard to interpret - for example if x% of priests in y area were non jurors, I have no idea what the size of y area is or where it is because I'm not familiar with the administrative geography of Revolutionary France!

Neither of these make the book bad exactly but I just keep feeling like I'm missing key information or it's just assumed I'll know it. There's lots of interesting stuff but I'm missing a big picture understanding of lots of stuff too… (mehr)

This book took a lot longer to read than many of the more narrative French history books I've been plowing through, but not because it was less interesting. (Though you might think that.) Rather, as a textbook-style summary of an era, McPhee's book is a condensed distillation of the most interesting and important facts and examples from hundreds of independent sources — so I could barely read a page without opening my laptop to take notes for my forthcoming French history podcast, href="thesiecle.com" rel="nofollow" target="_top">The Siècle.

In a refreshing contrast to many other histories, McPhee puts the political events — all those revolutions and coups, empires and republics — into the background and focuses on the lived experiences of ordinary people: rich, poor and in between, urban and rural, early and late. This surprisingly rich field gives him plenty of material to draw on, from nationwide government statistics to carefully researched microhistories of particular villages. McPhee weaves it all together into a few chapter-length essays focusing on particular groups and periods. You can learn about how much food peasants ate, when agriculture modernized, what kind of contraception women practiced, the economic impact of the Revolutionary seizure of property, and more.

McPhee also adds a helpful "Further Reading" section at the end, listing many of his most helpful sources in both English and French.

My only real complaint is that I think the book would have been improved by some aggressive sub-headers, breaking up his long chapters which otherwise just flowed organically from topic to topic. This would enable both more casual reading as well as making the book more useful as a reference (though it has a helpful and ample index). (It's also a little light on the years after 1880 — a reflection of the fact that this was originally published as a social history of France from 1780 to 1880, and then expanded to 1914 for a second edition.)

If you're looking for an overview of France in the "Long 19th Century" this could be an excellent first start, especially if you want to get beyond the politics and war that often dominate discussions of the period (without ignoring them entirely).… (mehr)