Table Of ContentJnterpreting9
French
Revolution
FRANÇOIS
FURET
2
Cambridge University Press
Editions de la Maison des Sciences del'Homme, Pa
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Interpreting the French Revolution
FRANÇOIS FURET
TRANSLATED BY ElL.BORG FORSTER
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge
London Nw Tork Nw Rochelle Mlbourne ydny
EDITIONS DE
LA MAISON DES SCIENCES DE L'HOMME
Paris
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Originally published in French as Penser la Ritolution Française by
Editions Gallimard Paris, 1978, and Editions Galimard 1978.
First published in English by the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and
the Cambridge University Press, 1981 as lntenpreting the French Rerolution
English translation faison desSciencesde
THomme and Cambridge University Press 1981
Printed in Malta by Interprint Limited
Britih Labray Calaloguing in Publication Data
Furet, Frangois
Interpreting the French Revolution.
1. France- History- Revolution, 1789-1799
Historiography
1. Title II. Penser la Révolution française,
English
944.04 DCI55 80-42290
ISBN O 521 23574 X hard covers
ISBN O 521 28049 4 paperback
Let us set our souls free to revolutionise the Revolution and,
above all, let us resolve never to acuse an impartíal mind of
insulting the Revolution. For the term 'insult to Religion' has been
so abused that we shall strike it from our language, since nothing
is to be more avoided than the style and cast of mind of a public
prosecutor when they are brought into historical and philosophical
criticism.
Edgar Quinet,
Critique de la Rérolution (Paris, 1867)
Contents
Preface page
1x
Part I: The French Revolution is over
Part I1: Three approaches to the history of the
French Revolution 81
I The Revolutionary catechism 31
2 De Tocqueville and the problem of the
French Revolution 132
3 Augustin Cochin: the theory ofJacobinism 164
v
Preface
The two parts of this book were written at two distinct moments, and the
order in which they appcar reverses the order of their composition.
The first part aims at providing a synthetic solution to a problem that
has been a constant concern of mine ever since I started studying the
French Revolution: how does one interpret such an event? The second
part presents the successive stages of my attempt to answer that question
and the scquencc of my intellectual encounters so as to chart the itinerary
I have followed.
It begins with a brief against the communist historians of the French
Revolution, focusing on the inconsistencies of what is today the dominant
interpretation of that event. That essay originated in the give-and-take of
intellectual life and debate at a particular time; but I did not feel that I
should rewrite it, seven years later, in an artificially neutral tone. As it
stands, it testifies in its own way to the special importance of the French
Revolution as an issue in the French academic community. I can only
hope that what it owes to circumstance will not detract from its expla-
natory character, which is all that matters to me.
That somewhat massive clearing operation is followed by two studies,
devoted to the two authors who have been instrumental to the develop-
ment of my intellectual position: Alexis de Tocqueville and Augustin
Cochin. The reader will understand why as these pages unfold:
Tocqueville and Cochin were the only historians to propose a rigorous
conccptualisation of the French Revolution and to have dealt with the
question raised in this book. Their analyses, which seem to me not so
much contradictory as complementary, are the basis of my proposed
system of interpretation, which will be found in the first part of the book.
It is their path that I have taken, and it gives me pleasure to inscribe their
names in this preface.
ix
Preface
Note to the English edition
I should like to cxpress here all my appreciation to Mrs Elborg Forster for
having translated a text that involved not a few dificulties. I am also
deceply grateful to Mr Jonathan Mandelbaum, with whom I was able, in
P'aris, to revicw the English typeseript and update a number of biblio
graphical references. Thanks to him, the present translation is in many
respects fuller than the French original, published in 1978.
Part I
The French Revolulion is over
Historians engaged in the study of the Merovingian Kings or the
Hundred Years War are not asked at every turn to present their research
permits. So long as they can give proof of having learned the techniques of
the trade, society and the profession assume that they possess the virtues of
patienceand objectivity. The discussion oftheir findings is a matter for
scholars and scholarship only.
The historian of the French Revolution, on the other hand, must
produce more than proof of competence. He must show his colours. He
must state from the outset where he comes from, what he thinks and
what he is looking for; what he writes about the French Revolution is
assigned ameaning and label even before he starts working: the writing is
taken as his opinion, a form ofjudgment that is not required when dealing
withthe Merovingians but indispensable when it comes to treating 1789
or 1793. As soon as the historian states that opinion, the matter is settled;
he is labelled a royalist, a liberal or a Jacobin. Once he has given the
password his history has a specific meaning, a determined place and a
claim to legitimacy.
What is surprising here is not that the historyofthe Revolution, ike all
histories, involves intellectual presuppositions. There is no such thing as
innocent' historical interpretation, and written history is itself located in
history, indeed is history, the product of an inherently unstable re
lationship between the present and the past, a merging of the particular
mind with the vast field of its potential topics of study in the past. But if
all history implies a choice, a preference within the range of what might
be studied, it does not follow that such a choice always involves a
preconceived opinion about the subject choen. For that to happen, or to
be assumed, the subject must arouse in the historian and his publie a
capacity for identifying with politieal or religious passions that have
survived the passing of time.
2 The Revolution is ovcr
The passing of time may weaken that sense of identification, or on the
contrary preserve and even strengthen it, depending on whether the
subject ireated by the historian does or docs not continue to express
the isues of his own times, his values and his choices. The theme of Clovis
and the Frankish invasions was of burning interest in the eighteenth
century because the historians of that era saw it as the key to the social
structure of their own time. They thought that the Frankish invasions
were the origin of the division between nobility and commoners, thec
conquerors being the progenitors of the nobility and the conquered those
of the commoners. Today the Frankish invasions have lost all relevance,
since we live in a society where nobility has ceased to act as a social
principle. No longer serving as the mirror of an cxisting world, the
Frankish invasions have lost the eminent place in historiography that that
world once assigned to them, and have moved from the realm of social
polemic to that of learned debate.
The fact is that beginning in 1789 the obsession with origins, the
underlying thread of all national history, came to be centred preciscly on
the Revolutianary break. Just as the great invasions were the myth of a
society dominated by the nobility, the saga of is origins, so 1789 became
the birth date, the year zero of a new world founded on cquality. The
substitution ofone birth date for another, in other words, the definition in
time ofa new national identity, is perhaps one of the abbé Sicyès's grcatest
strokes of genius, especially if one remembers that he anticipated the
founding event by several months' and yel gave it its full meaning in
advance:
The Third Estate has nothing to fear from going back into the past. It will refer
back to the year preceding the conquct; and since it is today strong enough not to
be conquered, its resistance will no doubt be more ellective. Why should it not
send back to the forests of Franconia all those families who cling to the mad claim
that they are descended from the race of conquerors and have inherited their
rights Thus purilied, the nation will easily console itself, I believe, for no longer
imagining itsell composed only of the descendants of Ganls and Romans,
These few lines tell us not only that the nobles' proprietary claims over
the nation are fictitious, but also that, even if those claims were well
founded, the Third Estate would have only to restorc the social contract
in force before the conquest or, rather, to found it by obliterating
centuries of violent usurpation. In cither instance it is a mater of
.'est-r qur lu Tu1 Elat? was writien at the end of 1788 and publishedinJanuary 1789.
2. Qu'nt-« qur le Tiem Eta1?, ed. Fdme Champion (Paris: Sociét d'histoire de la Révolution
française, l888), ch. Il, p. 32.
