Reflections on the Classic Interpretation of the French Revolution

Abstract

The last time I debated the origins of the French Revolution with the Professor of the History of the Revolution at the Sorbonne was in Ottawa in 1982. On that occasion my opponent was Albert Soboul.' Three months later he died; I am glad to see that Michel Vovelle is not superstitious! Though charming and convivial in private, in publicand certainly in our debate-Soboul was firm and inflexible. In what proved to be his last statement on the origins of the Revolution he proudly stood by notre bonne vieille orthodoxie, if orthodoxy was what revisionists wanted to call it. He himself, however, preferred another description for the interpretation he favored: he called it classic. No doubt his aim in adopting this term was to invest his interpretation with the authority he certainly believed it deserved; but quite independently of that it seems to me that classic is a good and fair description for it. Soboul's version, inherited from a long tradition of formidable historians and fine scholars, had a coherence and a unity lending it great interpretative power. It had stood the test of time, which raised it above more ephemeral approaches to the Revolution and its history. Such qualities mark out a classic. But classics have another quality too, which perhaps Soboul did not think of when