Klinck, David M.

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

390 HISTOIRE SOCIALE - SOCIAL HISTORY- notab1y Rousseau - June Hargrove explicates the republican project of erectingstatues to "great men," a stary which she follows from the First Republic to the Third.In perhaps the most provocative paper (marred by foggy language - his, thetrans1ator's, or both), Jean-Philippe Chimot shows how painters from David andGirodet to Gros and Géricault used co10r in vivid1y depicting scenes of death andconveyed what Baudelaire 1ater identified as a sense of modemity, a sense of thetransitary present posed in an unstable relation ta the past. A quite different perspec-tive is argued by James Leith, who contributes a strong essay stressing discontinuity,or the fundamental differences between the revo1utionary era and 1ater republics.Reviving views expounded generations ago by the likes of Albert Mathiez, Leithenumerates the many ways in which the Revolution was religious in its forms and theemotions it commanded. He concludes that the revo1utionary faith, an inta1erant newreligion, did not usher in the founding era of modem republican politics.Such differences of judgements and perspectives may well he the most usefu1contribution this book offers ta most readers. It is a quite heterogeneous collection, asmost published proceedings are. As sketchy and disparate as many of the papers are,the work as a who1e does succeed in demonstrating a rich variety of approaches andpossibilities for studying culture and the Revolution. C1ear1y, there is p1enty of workta do, and there are important debates ta continue.Charles RearickUniversity ofMassachusetts/Amherst***Clay Ramsay - The 1deology ofthe GreatFear. The Soissonnais in 1789. Baltimore:The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. pp. xxxi, 311.Events in the French Revolution in the months following the opening of theEstates General at the beginning of May 1789 were played out against a backgroundofescalating violence. Growing rural unrest was followed taward the end ofJu1y 1789by outbreaks of collective panic sweeping across various regions of France: a collec-tive panic known as the Great Fear. Rumours of "brigands" coming ta destroy theircrops drove peasants ta assemble and arm themse1ves, and scour the surroundingcountryside for invaders - invaders who, it turned out, had never existed. By the frrstdays of August, the Great Fear was over. The Great Fear may have heen ephemeraland illusory. But it was not without consequence. The National Assemb1y, thoroughlyshaken by the spectre of a rural France given over ta anarchy, was 1ed on the famousnight of August 4 ta vote for the abolition of the remnants of feudalism in the nation.Clay Ramsay perceives himself as being within the tradition of Marxisthistariography in France running from Mathiez through Lefebvre and Soboul -something which very few Anglo-Saxon historians of the French Revolution now careta do. Refusing to accept the wide1y-he1d view of the Marxist histariographicaltradition in France as having become sc1erotic, Ramsay writes of it that it "remains anunfinished work in progress" (xxvi). He represents himse1f as advancing the study ofthe Great Fear ta the 1eve1 of ideo10gical ana1ysis, beyond the 1eve1 of economic andsocial ana1ysis reached sixty years ago by Lefebvre in his La grande peur de 1789.He looks at just one of the regions which Lefebvre had established as havingCOMPTES RENDUS - BOOK REVIEWS 391experienced the Great Fear: the region of the Soissonnais. lying just ta the north andthe east of Paris.But is Ramsay on solid ground in linking his work with Marxism? He attemptsta portray the Great Fear in the Soissonnais as an affair in which an old world. inresponding ta a perceived threat. was helping ta foster within its midst, paradoxically.and unwittingly. a nascent revolutionary collective mentality. But what emerges fromRamsay's work is the perception that only a part of his contention stands: namely. thatthe Great Fear in the Soissonnais was essentially just a traditional affair. It took placewithin the context of a long-established collective mentality and long-establishedforros of behaviour. Traditional forros of social cohesion and social control were stillsufficiently possessed of life in much of the Soissonnais in late July 1789 to he ableta overcome any tendency ta social conflict Ramsay's representation of communitymobilization in the Great Fear suggests closer ties on his part with theAnnales Schoolthan with Lefebvre or Soboul or Gramsci. And his study also lends itself to the view.now popular among French revolutionary histarians. that, during the era of the FrenchRevolution, the regions of France moved in accordance with their own rhythms ratherthan with sorne dynamic embracing the entire nation.Ramsay points to the continuing existence in much of the Soissonnais of a"consensual ideology" (xxvüi) or collective mentality - "the 'common sense' of theold regime at its close" (xxvüi) - which linked all classes tagether, including thenobility. and which was rooted in economic behaviour of a primarily traditionalnature. The rural economy which prevailed in the Soissonnais, although evolvingtaward capitalism, continued ta he conducted within a framework oflong-establishedcommunity practice based upon the venerable triennial system of crop rotation. Thepresence of a "moral economy from above" (38-39) meant that governmentadministratars acted. and with a certain degree of effectiveness. ta alleviate thedistress of the poor. Also, Ramsay considers that the continuation of traditionalcountry-town antagonism inhibited the coming tagether of the urban and rural poorin opposition ta the wealthier classes, and thus worked against the development of arevolutionary mentality and revolutionary hehaviour.Class tension throughout most of the Soissonnais. Ramsay contends. had notreached the level of open conflict by the end ofJuly 1789. Consequently, members ofthe various classes were still able ta work together in the face of the perceived danger.It is also Ramsay's contention that. in areas in the Soissonnais in which class tensionshad escalated ta the point where a traditional collective mentality and sharedcommunity identity had broken down, the rumours which provoked the Great Fearhad little or no effect.Significantly. Ramsay denies that the occurrence of the Great Fear in theSoissonnais had anything ta do with peasant hostility taward the nobility. As far as theSoissonnais is concerned, he rejects Lefebvre's theory that the Great Fear arose as aresult of rumour among the peasantry that the court and the nobility were sending outhired "brigands" ta quell the peasants. Following the lead established by histarianssuch as Régine Robin in the study of revolutionary semantics. Ramsay argues that theidea ofan "aristocratic plot," while operative in Paris and other urban centres by July1789, did not gain currency in the Soissonnais untillater in the year.As far as the Great Fear in the Soissonnais is concerned. the nobility, Ramsaycontends, was involved in popular action in defense of peasant cornmunities, often inthe capacity of leaders of the new hastily improvised "national" militias whose392 mSTOIRE SOCIALE - SOCIAL IDSTORYmembers were drawn from all ranks of society. And who were those supposed"brigands" assumed to be? Not the hirelings ofenraged noblemen, The author argues,in the course of a very interesting analysis of linguistic usage in 1789, but "outsiders":men who had little or no connection with any local community in the region, and whowere, therefore, perceived to be dangerous.Toward the end ofhis book, Ramsay does point to the new militias as possessingwithin themselves a genuinely revolutionary undercurrent. These new militias, heasserts, may have been established by the elites with an eye to maintaining theirtraditional control over the potentially troublesome lower orders; but eventually, thesemilitias would become truly 'national' and democratic, no longer functioning withinthe framework of the old society of orders and privilege. Be that as it may, Ramsay'sdiscussion of the formation of the militias during the Great Fear, like the rest of hisbook, leaves the reader with the impression that as far as the Great Fear itself wasconcerned, in the Soissonais at least, it took place within an essentially traditionalcontext.Ramsay's study goes against the generally-held perception of the Great Fear ashaving been fuelled by hostility on the part of the peasantry toward the nobility. Healso breaks with the idea, commonly held by historians, that it was an integral part ofthe widespread rural unrest which had occurred during the preceding months. Ramsayargues that the Great Fear took root only in those areas of the Soissonnais which hadnot experienced the earlier unrest. The reason for this, he suggests, is that the earlierunrest occurred in areas in which there had been a collapse ofa traditional consensualideology - the continued existence of such an ideology being necessary if therumours which gave birth to the Great Fear were to have an effect.Ramsay is drawn to the idea that the Great Fear took hold, and could only takehold, in those parts of France in which, in the summer of 1789, sorne form oftraditional collective mentality and traditional cornmunity was still operative. But herealises that this is an idea which must remain purely speculative until he has had achance to extend his research beyond the boundaries of the Soissonnais.David M. KlinckUniversity ofWindsor***Michael Roper and John Tosh, eds. - Manful Assertions. Masculinities in Britainsince 1800. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. pp. x, 221.Although men are at the centre of much historical writing, their masculinity hasnot, of itself, attracted particular attention. Perceived, as one source puts il, as "justchaps", the gender of (heterosexual) men seems either irrelevant or unproblematic.Women and gays, by contrast, are history's gendered subjects, and the emphasis ofrecent work has unwittingly centred the "problem" of gender on them. But the latestdevelopment bodes for a change by"engendering men", and this book was conceivedto that end. The aspiration of editors and contributors are to demonstrate thatmasculinity has analytical significance in history. They aim to make the case for itsgreater prominence in the mainstream of the subject. The editors, moreover, pushsorne fairly ambitious daims to transform historical understanding by a perspective

Clay Ramsay - The Ideology of the Great Fear. The Soissonnais in
1789

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Clay Ramsay - The Ideology of the Great Fear. The Soissonnais in 1789

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Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)