Institut d’Etudes politiques de Paris Premier cycle - Programme international
Fall 2007
Stephen CLAY Maître de conférence, IEP de Paris The Age of the French Revolution and Napoleon This course explores in narrative and analytical detail the controversial and action-packed decades as creative as they were bloody from 1789 to 1815 that changed France, Europe, and much of the World, forever. The major events , persons, and places of these years form the essential chronology of the course, stretching from the collapse of the Ancien Regime to the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo, and the peace settlement that helped to shape European diplomacy throughout much of the nineteenth century. These years saw the creation of new administrative, judicial, financial, and military institutions ; the emergence of new political elites ; the development of a new political culture and language, and offered experiments in representative and authoritarian government whose expressions are still apparent in French society today. And no less, these years effected profound transformations in demography, economics, and society that left few contemporaries untouched, and roused many among them to praise or condemnation. This course will examine varied responses of contemporaires to these vast changes ushered in by the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods by the use of printed primary sources as well as analyze later historiographical debates generated by these turbulent decades. Issues like the role of violence in the revolutionary process, the politics of public order, the notions of equality and liberty, the nature of political conflict, the different forms of poltical participation and electoral behavior, the militarization of society—all dominant issues of the era—will furnish material for debate and reflexion throughout the semester. The role of the individual in history whether Robespierre or Danton, Talleyrand or Napoleon—to mention only a few of the more prominent personalities of these years --- must necessarily engage the attention of students as part of a general meditation on the politics of the era. Printed sources dealing with Revolutionary and Napoleonic legislation, constitutions, and speeches will provide much of the background and substance of the class whose purpose, at least in part, is to acquaint students with techniques for reading original documents. Finally, as an optional field trip, a walking tour with historical commentary of the different sites of Revolutionary and Napoleonic Paris will be organized towards the end of the semester.
Course Outline: Class 1: Course Introduction and the Structure of Ancien Regime Government and Society Class 2: Revolutionary Origins: the coming of the French Revolution.and the Estates General Class 3: The New France: administrative, judicial, and religious reform under the Constituent Assembly Class 4: Louis XVI and the French Revolution: from the flight to Varennes to the Fall of the Monarchy Class 6: The Trial of the King and the fall of the Girondins Class 7: The Theory and Organization of the Terror Class 8: Thermidor and the Reaction Class 9: The Directory and the Road to Brumaire an VIII Class 10: The “Napoleonic Revolution”: Men and Institutions Class 11: Napoleon and the Conquest of Europe Class 12: The Grand Empire Class13: From Moscow to Waterloo Class 14: The French Revolution and Napoleon: legacies and myths.