work was a detailed and thorough examination of the effects of the French Revolution on the
countryside. Lefebvre’s work on this thesis was "based on a thorough analysis of thousands of tax
rolls, notarial records, and the registers of rural municipalities, whose materials he used to trace the
effects of the abolition of feudalism and ecclesiastical tithes, the consequences of property transfers,
the movement of the bourgeoisie onto the countryside, and the destruction of collective rights in the
peasants villages"
Alerbt Soboul
Placing the revolution in the broader historical context of the period and applying left-wing
socio-economic perspectives, Soboul’s examination focuses particularly on the sans culottes. He sees
them as a broad-based popular movement, intent on improving the lives of the middle- and
lower-classes not just in Paris but elsewhere in France (not all historians share Soboul’s altruistic
view of the sans culottes).
George Rude
To Burke the revolutionary crowd was purely destructive and presumed to be composed of the most
undesirable social elements: the crowds that invaded the chateau of Versailles in October 1789 are ‘a
band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with blood.’ On the other hand [the crowd] has [also]
been presented as the embodiment of all the popular and Republican virtues.
revisionist
William Doyle
Modern
Alfred Cobban
Focus is mainly on the social aspects of
the revolution and French society,
particularly the various popular
movements, the role of the church,
education and class struggle.
Christopher Hibbert
Hibbert’s ideological perspective isn’t always clear: at times he seems fixated with the blood and gore of the Paris mobs, the sans culottes
and the Terror, but this seems to be for vivid effect. Nevertheless Hibbert’s work gives a clear sense that he sees the revolution as an
out-of-control force, a chain of spontaneous actions, expediencies and decisions, rather than a logical or controlled event. He is more
sympathetic to characters like Marie Antoinette than leftist historians, yet more harsh on the self obsessed and inflexible Robespierre.
Simon Schama
Simultaneously able to deny the existence of a so-called "bourgeois" revolution, reserve apotheoses
for Robespierre, Louis XVI, and the sans-culottes alike, and utilize historical nuance to a degree
usually associated with more liberal historians. concentrates on the early years of the Revolution,
the Republic only taking up about a fifth of the book. He also places increased emphasis on
insurrectionary violence in Paris and violence in general, claiming that it was "not the unfortunate
by-product of revolution, [but] the source of its energy.