New patterns for old
Douglas Johnson
Origins of the French Revolution William Doyle (Oxford University Press, pp, 272 £12.50, pp. 247 £4.95 paperback).
Every 0-leveller knows about it. There is a debate about 'the origins' of the French Revolution, which used to be called 'the causes' of the French Revolution. And so there should be. There have always been uPheavalS but only since 1789 have we been fully conscious of the phenomenon of revolution, that is to say the attempt to change the entire social and political system of a country. We may argue about the word revolution' and claim that it has become too soiled in usage or too slippery in sense to retain any practical value, but the fact remains that if ever there is a moment in history which is associated with the idea of an irredeemable break in continuity, then it is the moment which we associate With the fall of the Bastille. The events of the French Revolution dominate our lands.cape and it is only natural that from time to time historians should try to take stock of where we are in our understanding of them. William Doyle has provided us with a guide to the intricacies of historical controversy and an analysis of what we know about the France that got caught up in all this intensity. It should be said straight away that his book is excellent, achieving the rare distinction of being both useful and re vealing.
One can conveniently summarise one aspect of the debate by saying that there arc two sets of arguments in opposition to one another. There are those who believe that the French Revolution was a class revolution, in which the bourgeoisie was in conflict with the aristocracy because of well-established socio-economic interests and who suggest that the action of the popular classes revolved around that conflict. Then we have those who believe that these categories of classes are so riddled with unresolved discrepancies as to be useless and who cast doubt upon the primacy of socio-economic grievances in provoking the Revolution. That is to say that there are those who believe in a positive explanation and who see events shaping themselves in some sort of recognisable pattern, such as class conflict, although it could also be a conflict between an elite and the outsiders, between rich and poor, or between urban and rural, and those who find all such patterns to be unacceptable, and whose research tends to be destructive of most assumptions and generalisations. The logic of the first set of arguments tends to suggest that the Revolution was inevitable; the logic of the second that the Revolution was unpredictable whether in its origins or in its course.
Perhaps Dr Doyle's book is highly successful because he tends to combine something of both approaches. Thus he believes that the demise of the Ancien Regime was natural enough, and he suggests that there is a new consensus emerging which sees the Revolution as coming about because whilst nobility and bourgeoisie were part of the social elite, the administrative and finan cial crisis which led to the summoning of the Estates-General brought about a resurrection of the obsolete distinctions between noble and non-noble. Hence the lower echelons of the elite became determined to seize control of the Estates, and therefore they became revolutionary. But once the system had collapsed, then nothing was inevitable and the conflict over the possession of power then became complex and multi-faceted.
There is a criticism which can be directed towards this clear and scholarly assessment of an historical situation. It can be argued that since controversy amongst historians of the French Revolution has been in existence for a very long time and that certain issues concerning the Ancien Regime in relation to the Revolution have been clearly demarcated, then it is high time that historians got away from them and started to ask different questions and to follow different preoccupations. There is surprisingly little mention in Dr Doyle's book about • rnentalit e, that elusive constellation of ideas, emotions, practices, rituals and beliefs by means of which groups retain their sense of identity, maintain their purpose and adapt themselves to change. It is accepted that many non-economic and non-intellectual considerations have to share the burden of explaining human behaviour and historians have to consider the slogans, taboos, symbols, rites and assumptions that articulate a society, as well as people's reactions towards economic factors or fashionable ideas. But when Doyle considers the Church, for example, he only thinks of the clergy in their political and' land-owning rOle, or he thinks of religion in terms of conservative or radical opinion. Yet we know that during the 18th century there is a lot of evidence which suggests that there is a decline of traditional religiosity, since historians have discovered in a number of communities that people's attitudes towards death and religious ceremonies seems to have changed somewhere around the 1760's. Many, for example, gave up the practice of requesting masses for the repose of their souls.
Why should this have happened? It does not seem that this increased secularisation is to be explained in terms of education or urbanisation or in terms of the influence of elites. It suggests a change of attitude that goes deeper than ideology, and which may have to be explained in terms of the different r6le which the family assumed at this time. It was no longer necessary for a man to make careful provision for his funeral and burial because he could trust his relatives to carry out the necessary ceremonies.
But how do we explain 'the rise of the family'? How do we explain the rise in population and the rise of prices? Dr Doyle clearly wanted to perform an efficient clearing-up exercise, he did not want to propose a whole series of immense problems. He is not one of those historians who shuts himself away in a bullet-proof cage of delight at not being able to answer the questions he poses. But if we readily assume that some bourgeois notable is angrily frustrated as he learns of the revival of aristocratic privilege when the EstatesGeneral is summonsed, and if we easily imagine the honest artisan, resting from his labours in his fifth floor room but ready to rush pike-in-hand into the street at the sound of a drum, then perhaps we should remember these changing attitudes towards death, which were also perhaps, changing attitudes towards life.
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