When I was an undergraduate Marxist student of history almost 10 years ago, I wanted to btfo all the conservative historians who thought the French Revolution wasn't primarily caused by class conflict or economic change. The best defender of the thesis that there were more social elements, other than class reductionism, to the French Revolution was Alfred Cobban. But revisiting his writings, I can't help but feel like I was unjustifiably dismissive of him. He just believes that there are more social classes than "bourgeois" and "peasant," such as clergy, nobles of the sword, nobles of the robe, sans culottes, merchant classes, or even women as a social category, and the list goes on. I think reducing history to two opposing camps, since the days of Romulus and Remus, is a waste of time and not very intellectually serious. But surely Marxist historiography isn't all wrong, they must draw from some facts and the essence of history, as well as argue with sound logic. How can I challenge Cobban in a healthy way without falling into the trappings or prisms of an ideology? I think I should start with critiquing his overall narrative, his use of source analysis, how he draws upon facts, and what facts he draws on, as well as why he is motivated to give a compelling history of the French Revolution. Alfred Cobban's thesis can be simplified as: >The French Revolution changed little at the structural economic level; therefore the Marxist narrative of a bourgeois victory is overstated.And I guess that is true and easily defended through history, at least most people's understanding of what happened.
Every liberal revolution was a mercantile revolt led by freemasons.Every communist revolution was a nationalist revolt hijacked by nerds.
>>18225953TldrCarlyle's French Revolution book is the only one worth reading
