David Andress Book order

A short and controversial new interpretation of arguably the most important revolution of all time: the event that made the rights of man and the demand for liberty, equality and fraternity central to modern politics.

A blistering assessment of the West's abandonment of history as it succumbs to an attack of social and cultural dementia, by leading historian David Andress.

An extraordinarily gripping narrative of how Britain, seemingly on the ropes after losing control of America, built the military and naval might to defeat Napoleon -- and in doing so transformed her destiny.

The book explores the varying interpretations of "patriotism" among post-Revolutionary Parisians, highlighting the complexities and divisions within society following the massacre. It delves into the challenges of achieving political unanimity in a time of upheaval, illustrating how differing perspectives on national identity and loyalty contributed to ongoing conflict and discord in revolutionary France.

The French Revolution marks the foundation of the modern political world. It was in the crucible of the Revolution that the political forces of conservatism, liberalism and socialism began to find their modern forms, and it was the Revolution that first asserted the claims of universal individual rights on which our current understandings of citizenship are based. But the Terror was, as much as anything else, a civil war, and such wars are always both brutal and complex. The guillotine in Paris claimed some 1500 official victims, but executions of captured counter-revolutionary rebels ran into the tens of thousands, and deaths in the areas of greatest conflict probably ran into six figures, with indiscriminate massacres being perpetrated by both sides. The story of the Terror is a story of grand political pronouncements, uprisings and insurrections, but also a story of survival against hunger, persecution and bewildering ideological demands, a story of how a state, even with the noblest of intentions, can turn on its people and almost crush them.

Shares the personal stories of middle-class citizens and peasants who experienced the French Revolution firsthand, discussing their everyday lives and the factors that motivated their participation in the conflict's political and social upheavals.

This study plots a narrative course through the French Revolution examining the elements behind the breakdown of the 18th-century monarchic state. Engaging with the late-1990s historical research, it presents a picture of the tensions throughout the revolutionary decade.