The History of the French Revolution: A New World Begins

FAIN: FZ-250334-16

Jeremy David Popkin
University of Kentucky (Lexington, KY 40506-0001)

A new comprehensive history of the French Revolution for general readers. It will incorporate recent scholarship on contemporaneous debates concerning the rights of women and black slavery, explaining how they were essential to the Revolution while also placing the whole era in a broad global context.

"Free and Equal" will be the first comprehensive history of the French Revolution addressed to general readers in the English-speaking world in a generation. My aim is to bring this great historical drama alive for a broad audience, and to introduce them to the new perspectives on the Revolution that have emerged from the past several decades of new scholarship on the subject. In "Free and Equal," readers will encounter the debates about the rights of women and black slavery that were essential aspects of the Revolution, and see how they change our understanding of traditional topics such as the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and the Reign of Terror. My book will treat the French Revolution in a global perspective, emphasizing, for example, that the sweeping reform plans introduced by French ministers in 1787 coincided with the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, called to deal with the perceived weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation.

Associated Products

A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution: (Book)
Title: A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution:
Author: Jeremy David Popkin
Abstract: The principles of the French Revolution remain the only possible basis for a just society — even if, after more than two hundred years, they are more contested than ever before. In A New World Begins, Jeremy D. Popkin offers a riveting account of the revolution that puts the reader in the thick of the debates and the violence that led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a new society. We meet Mirabeau, Robespierre, and Danton, in all of their brilliance and vengefulness; we witness the failed escape and execution of Louis XVI; we see women demanding equal rights and black slaves wresting freedom from revolutionaries who hesitated to act on their own principles; and we follow the rise of Napoleon out of the ashes of the Reign of Terror. Based on decades of scholarship, A New World Begins will stand as the definitive treatment of the French Revolution.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/jeremy-popkin/a-new-world-begins/9780465096671/
Publisher: Basic Books
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780465096671
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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