The first chapters of this thesis explore the picture of eighteenth-century Parisian popular culture emerging from recent research, and suggest how it may be incorporated into a history of Parisian popular disturbances in 1789. Developing themes from this, the thesis explores the interaction in 1791 between popular perceptions of the revolutionary situation and the perceptions of popular activity by the authorities and other opinion-forming groups, notably the press and the popular societies. The picture which emerges from comparison of police records with press and administrative reports is one of near-paranoid suspicion. Suspicion focused on the conception that popular discontent over socio-economic and political issues was necessarily the product of ignorance coupled with rabble-rousing by agents of aristocratic factions. In a situation of rising political tensions, stimulated by dissent amongst the clergy and royal reluctance to approve the new settlement, records show popular concerns over these events falling into spirals of growing alarm, as the press reflected back to the people the fears that their activities were provoking. Confusion over the identity of alleged seditious elements, coupled with social prejudices continuing from the ancien regime, made this process chronically destabilising, and eventually led to the Champ de Mars Massacre. The thesis concludes that individuals at all social levels appear to have had a meaningful engagement with the issues of freedom and equality raised by the promises of the Revolution, but that attempts to express these independently by members of the lower classes led to conflict and repression. It further suggests a path from this position to a new hypothesis on the formation of the sans-culottes under the Republic.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:259848 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Creators | Andress, David Robert |
| Publisher | University of York |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/14000/ |
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