Beyond Thermidor

“Franska revolutionen” is a relatively short book in Swedish about the French Revolution. The author is Dick Harrison. For obvious reasons, it´s mostly of interest to Swedish readers! The book is intended as an introduction to the topic, but without dumbing down too much. I think the author succeeds in his aim. Harrison does a good job summarizing the course of the revolution, which began in 1789 and (on Harrison´s reckoning) ended with Napoleon´s Brumaire coup in 1799. Personally, I wouldn´t end the story until the Bourbon Restoration, but YMMV.

The author emphasizes the material and political causes of the revolution: the fiscal crisis after the French intervention on the side of the Patriots in North America (ironic, since the French were on the winning side!), the seething discontent among a super-exploited peasantry, the constant sabotage of King Louis XVI´s reign by the nobility in the local “parlements”, and the growing social weight of the Third Estate, which was nevertheless excluded from all meaningful political influence. This is a refreshing contrast to those who claim “Enlightenment values” in the abstract was the main cause of the revolution. One thing I didn´t know before is that the “parlements” also regrouped covert revolutionaries, who sided with the nobility for purely tactical reasons, since they too wanted to undermine the royal regime.

As for the revolution itself, Harrison does a good job describing the various factions and their conflicts. However, I think he makes one factual error: surely the “Indulgents” were the *moderate* faction of the Jacobins? I also think he misses to mention Lafayatte´s defection. Or was that me? A little known fact emphasized by the author is that it was the “moderate” Girondins who wanted France to embark on a policy of wars of intervention, with the express purpose of weeding out domestic traitors. While Harrison (a leftist pacifist) tries his best to be objective, it *is* difficult not to paint Robespierre as a bloodthirsty fanatic obsessed with purges and “purity”. Most popularized treatments of the French revolution end with Thermidor, i.e. Robespierre´s downfall and execution in 1794.

Harrison takes us further, describing the continued conflicts between “moderates”, Jacobins and sans-culottes (with Napoleon hardly even waiting in the wings) during the Directory. I found this interesting, since it shows that the “right-ward moving drift” of the revolution did *not* become inevitable after the overthrow of Robespierre, there being several points at which the radical leftists could have retaken power. Robespierre wasn´t the “Lenin” of the French revolution, but rather its “Bernard Coard”. I´m not really a super-radical leftist, but I just couldn´t help myself pointing this out!

With that, I end this little review of “Franska revolutionen”.