Now in its second edition, The French Revolution: Faith, Desire, and Politics has been updated to include a discussion about how the actions by soldiers and citizen-soldiers shaped the course of the Revolution, as well as the daily lives and concerns of everyday French people.
Throughout the study, Shusterman highlights the crucial role that religion and sexuality played in determining the shape of the Revolution and examines key themes such as: the impact of the crown’s war debts on the fall of the Old Regime, the organization of citizen militias in 1789, and their eventual transformation into France’s National Guard. This edition has been revised to include a fresh analysis of classic nineteenth-century accounts of the Revolution, including those by Jules Michelet, Jean Jaurès, and Edgar Quinet. It also explores the lives of the people who lived through the French Revolution and uncovers the messages about gender, sex, religion, and faith which surrounded them, concerns which did not exist outside of the events of the Revolution.
With a brief chronology of the Revolution and a guide to further reading, this book is an invaluable resource for students of the French Revolution, women and gender, and the history of Catholicism.
Introduction 1. Religious culture, popular culture: life in Old Regime France 2. The liberal Revolution of 1789 (spring 1789–spring 1790) 3. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy (summer 1790–spring 1791) 4. The king’s flight and the decline of the French monarchy (summer 1791–summer 1792) 5. The end of the monarchy and the September Massacres (summer 1792–fall 1792) 6. The new French republic and its rivalries (fall 1792–summer 1793) 7. The federalist revolt, the Vendée, and the start of the Terror (summer 1793–fall 1793) 8. The Reign of Terror (fall 1793–summer 1794) 9. After the Terror (fall 1794–1799)
Biography
Noah Shusterman teaches at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His works include Religion and the Politics of the Time: Holidays from Louis XVI to Napoleon (2010) and Armed Citizens: The Road from Ancient Rome to the Second Amendment (2020).
