Citizens: A Chronicle of The French Revolution

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exceptional nor unmanageable. And those who sought to manage it on the King's behalf were more than empty heads presiding over empty purses. Nevertheless, aggressive, reforming managers in high office did not manage to reform; All in all, my troubles with the book mostly stemmed from my own unfamiliarity with the subject (I got especially bored with Schama taking potshots at other FR scholars). His analysis and conclusions, that violence was the fulcrum of the Revolution, rather than an aspect of it, might not be readily accepted, especially since his account is so anecdotal, though I will reserve judgment until I read something else on the subject. In 2006, the BBC broadcast a new TV series, Simon Schama's Power of Art, which, with an accompanying book, was presented and written by Schama. It marks a return to art history for him, treating eight artists through eight key works: Caravaggio's David with the Head of Goliath, Bernini's Ecstasy of St Theresa, Rembrandt's Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, Jacques-Louis David's The Death of Marat, J. M. W. Turner's The Slave Ship, Vincent van Gogh's Wheat Field with Crows, Picasso's Guernica and Mark Rothko's Seagram murals. [30] It was also shown on PBS in the United States. [31] External video

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It starts fine. Describing the financially exhausted France before the revolutionary earthquake that would shatter it, he reminds us of the impact of feudalism. Yet, he counterbalances it by showing such a system might have been on its way out anyway, not least because of the shy nascent of capitalism. It's a fine start, echoing Tocqueville in its conclusion: What is argument ie financial crisis - a failure of brinkmanship and people management? A long term crisis waiting to burst open, a failure of imagination/guts/ confidence? Some combination of these? Monumental…a delight to read…Lively descriptions of major events, colorful cameos of leading characters (and obscure ones too), bring them to life here as no other general work has done….Above all, Mr. Schama tells a story, and he tells it well."— The New York Times Book Review

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a b c d e f g Snowman, Daniel (2004). "Simon Schama". History Today. 54 (7): 34–36. doi: 10.1007/978-0-230-59997-0_24 (inactive 1 August 2023). {{ cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of August 2023 ( link)

Citizens by Simon Schama - Penguin Books Australia Citizens by Simon Schama - Penguin Books Australia

Schama, Simon (3 November 2008). "Nowhere man: a farewell to Dubya, all-time loser in presidential history". The Guardian. London. pp.1–2 . Retrieved 5 November 2008. Walvin, James (3 September 2005). "Review: Rough Crossings by Simon Schama". The Guardian . Retrieved 16 September 2018. The French Revolution was bloody and funny and dark and incredible and really important to present day events. Yet trying to read this account of it is most like being slowly torn to bits by a mob while on heavy tranquilizers. Daniel, M., and S. Steinberg. "Simon Schama." Publishers Weekly 238, No. 22 (17 May 1991): 46. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed 30 April 2009). Schama appeared as an on-screen expert in Michael Wood's 1989 PBS series Art of the Western World as a presenting art historian, commenting on paintings by Diego Velázquez, Rembrandt, and Johannes Vermeer. [14]Myths are also destroyed. France prior to 1789 was a dynamic and changing society. Very few prisoners were “liberated” from the Bastille (less then 10); it was stormed to obtain gunpowder for weapons. The Revolution did redefine the meaning of the word “citizen” and given the time period, gave vast publicity for the term “political freedom”. Here lay the source of that relation between blood and freedom, or blood and bread, that was established not by the Terror of 1793, but by the patriotic stirrings of 1789. As Mr. Schama says, the Terror was merely 1789 with a higher body count. There were the principles of the revolutionaries, he reminds us that their power depended on intimidation: the spectacle of death. Violence was no aberration, no unexpected skid off the highway of revolution: it was the Revolution - its Schama mooted some possible (invented) connections between the two cases, exploring the historian's inability "ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing the documentation", and speculatively bridging "the teasing gap separating a lived event and its subsequent narration." Not all readers absorbed the nuance of the title: it received a very mixed critical and academic reception. Traditional historians in particular denounced Schama's integration of fact and conjecture to produce a seamless narrative, [18] but later assessments took a more relaxed view of the experiment. [19] The French Revolution, according to Mr. Schama, was no bourgeois thrust against stodgy despotism or anachronistic aristocracy. The old regime was not old, nor did it act anachronistic, fusty or decrepit. Neither stagnant nor reactionary, the French nobility,

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution - Goodreads

Book Genre: 18th Century, Cultural, European History, France, French Revolution, History, Literature, Nonfiction, Politics, War, World History social and political reforms would spiral into a civil war that was also, as Mr. Schama calls it, a holy war.RHS Statement on Council Resolution | RHS". royalhistsoc.org. Archived from the original on 5 August 2020 . Retrieved 10 July 2020.