As you may remember, I went back to university in my mid-fifties to get a college degree, ending up with a B.A. in Modern Western European History. There’s no reason for having specialized in that as opposed to say Classical History (which I had studied before, many years ago), because to me, pretty much all history is interesting.
Anyway, one of the courses I took was on the French Revolution, delivered by one of my favorite professors, Michael Leggieri*. He opened the course by giving a single lecture on what exactly the French were revolting against. It wasn’t just the monarchy and the Church they hated so much (with, it should be said, considerable justification), but theirs was a reaction to the entire societal structure, which was largely still medieval and had the effect of not only grinding the noses of the common people into poverty, but preventing them from ever rising out of that miserable state.
Small wonder they went all French (i.e. overboard) and took a long trip down Guillotine Road. I might have done the same, in their position.
Anyway, Leggieri’s lecture lit a spark in me (as so many did), because I had no more than a passing acquaintance with the period between the Dark Ages and said Revolution in Europe.
Sadly, Life intervened and I wasn’t able to devote much time to studying that period… until now. I was chatting to New Wife the other night, and told her that I’d been doing a lot of reading while she was gadding about Seffrica with the Beloved Grandchildren. When she asked me what I’d been reading and I told her (history, duh), she ordered me to go to Half Price Books and get more because Aren’t You Sick Of Reading About The Same History All The Time?
Well, no; but the point was a valid one.
So off I went, and the first book to catch my eye should be a decent gateway, I think, into further study: the New Cambridge Modern History VII: The Old Regime 1713-63. It’s seems like a fairly comprehensive study, I think (after but a cursory glance at the contents pages), but it should set the scene properly. This work was first published in 1957 so it may be free of modernistic cant, but we’ll see.
And now, if you’ll excuse me… this book isn’t going to read itself.
*I see that Mike Leggieri has left U. North Texas and ended up at the University of Florida as . They are lucky, because he’s one of the best — and that’s not just my opinion, either. (He’s also very conservative, which helps.)