French Revolution

Introduction

The book that I chosen for my first reading card is“ The French Revolution-A Very

Short Introduction” by William Doyle. I chosen this book because I looked at the content

and I saw that this book is very good square up to the French revolution, and because it

present it to the point this subject. You can easily extract the main idea without losing in

details. Another reason that I make this choice is because the book is written by an English

historian, specialized in eighteenth-century France.

I. Description of the book

William Doyle, the author of the classic text on the French Revolution, guides the

reader through a historical event of such import and consequence that we are still living with

its developments today. Beginning with a discussion of the familiar images of the French

Revolution, Doyle continues on to a brief survey of the old regime and how it collapsed.

Proceeding, Doyle elucidates how the revolution happened: why the revolutionaries quarreled

with the king, the church and the rest of Europe, why this produced Terror, and finally how it

accomplished rule by a general. This compelling Very Short Introduction looks at how the

ancient regime that the revolution destroyed had become so entrenched and also examines

cases in which revolutionary achievement failed to match ambition. Finally, Doyle explores

the legacy of the revolution in the form of rationality in public affairs and responsible

government, finishing his examination with a discussion as to why this event has been so

controversial.

The French Revolution-A Very Short Introduction is a book with 135 pages

structured on 6 chapters. In the book also it is some pictures about the revolution. At the end

it is a timeline with important dates of French revolution and also the Revolutionary

Calendar. It is published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York year

2001.

Reading card 2009

Page 2

II. First chapter of the book: Echoes

First chapter have 19 pages and it is called: Echoes. Beginning with a discussion of

familiar images of the French Revolution, garnered from Dickens, Baroness Orczy, and

Tolstoy, Doyle leads the reader to the realization that we are still living with developments of

the French Revolution. The author is speaking about the impact of the revolution over France

and the other countries for example he is talking about that the new nations have been proud

to proclaim their emancipation, or to anticipate it like the patriots of Brussels in 1789, or

Milan in 1796, by adopting tricolor flags. This banner of liberty adopted in time of the French

revolution still flies from Rome to Mexico City, from Bucharest to Dublin.

Outraged at the claims of reformers that the French were merely carrying on the work

of the “Glorious” British revolution of 1688 and the American rebels whose cause he had

supported in the 1770s, Burke asserted that the French Revolution was something entirely

new and different. In his book, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke Edmund is

trying to defend the ancient régime, saying that the revolution was a lot of destruction and a

lot of terror.