FIVE RECENT WORKS ON FRENCH POLITICAL HISTORY FROM 1789 TO 1851 Radicals: politics and republicanism in the French Revolution. By Leigh Whaley. Phoenix Mill: Sutton, 2000. Pp. x+212. ISBN 0-7509-2238-9. £20.00. Massacre at the Champ de Mars: popular dissent and political culture in the French Revolution. By David Andress. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2000. Pp. x+239. ISBN 0-86193-247-1. £35.00. Napoleon and Europe. Edited by Philip G. Dwyer. London: Longman, 2001. Pp. xxi+328. ISBN 0-582-31837-8. £14.99. Politics and theater: the crisis of legitimacy in Restoration France, 1815–1830. By Sheryl Kroen. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Pp. xiv+394. ISBN 0-520-22214-8. £35.00. Paris between empires, 1814–1852. By Philip Mansel. London: John Murray, 2001. Pp. xi+559. ISBN 0-7195-5627-9. £25.00.

Extract

Study of French political history for the period of 1789 to 1851 is exceedingly complex. Not only must one possess knowledge of a succession of regimes (with their varying constitutions, institutions, laws, and conventions), one must also grasp the essentials of political traditions such as royalism, republicanism, and liberalism, all of which altered over time, and familiarize oneself with a plethora of groups or sub groups, such as Montagnards and Girondins, authoritarian and Revolutionary Bonapartists, moderate and ultra royalists, that often adjusted their beliefs and positions according to circumstance. Matters become further complicated when one takes foreign relations into account, assessing the impact of France abroad or the role of foreign relations in shaping French domestic politics.