In this collection of conferences, the famous British historian Eric Hobsbawm nourishes the debates and the controversies that surround the French Revolution ; But his charges against his historiographical enemies (ferret in particular) fall flat, especially since the translation of the book in French arrives very late.
Translation costs and the difficulties of publishing in the social sciences means that French publishers often give up translations. We should therefore congratulate ourselves on the translation of this short work of one of the most famous contemporary English -speaking historians. Alas, the translation, as too often, arrives late and thus offers a particularly curious work which, apart from a postface of seven pages, dates from 1990. The author’s words are certainly not in itself invalidated by this period, but the historiographical ambition of the analysis gives birth to intriguing discrepancies for the French -speaking reader. We understand that publishers wish to publish “ classic “, But the question of updating such works is anything but harmless, especially when, as here, it is the publication of conferences with a controversial tone.
Eric J. Hobsbawm, professor emeritus of the University of London, born in 1917 in Vienna, is one of these figures of English historiography interested in economic and social issues and very influenced by a certain tendency of Marxism. He has become famous, outside the circle of historians, thanks to his great syntheses on the history of XIXe And XXe centuries. He very clearly explains his project in the preface to this collection of conferences pronounced in the United States on the occasion of the Bicentenary of 1989 by proposing to make “ as much a defense as an explanation of the classic interpretation of the French Revolution ». And he adds to be very clear: “ Annoyed by those who oppose her, I found a reason to take the pen there. If this annoyance is undoubtedly at the origin of these conferences, we can regret the somewhat curious construction of a historiographical enemy whose consistency seems to escape throughout the pages of the book. The second Hobsbawm project is to question the history of reception and interpretation to XIXe And XXe centuries of the French Revolution. The idea seems attractive but we can be a little surprised when its author explains that it is a “ surprisingly neglected subject (In particular, we can remember that the fifth part of the Critical dictionary of the French Revolution Codirigated by François Furet and Mona Ozouf and published by Flammarion in 1988 focused specially on the interpreters and historians of the French Revolution).
Most of the thesis of the book therefore consists in denouncing the company led by Alfed Cobban on the one hand, François Furet and Denis Richet on the other hand, in the revisionism of revolutionary history as it was gradually written and stabilized ; The fourth part of Hobsbawm’s book is even titled “ survive revisionism ». But rather than precisely discussing their work or those of their colleagues, Hobsbawm engages in denunciations of works which most often do not come under the scientific field. We can understand his irritation in the face of discourse against the revolution carried by the novel Citizens by Simon Schama, who took great success at the time of the bicentennial, or by works like that of René Sédillot on The cost of the French Revolutionbut we are forced to say that the latter was published by Perrin in 1987 in a collection whose title “ Truths and legends Even indicated that it was not a university production meeting the criteria of the academic debate. The invalidation of the Furetienne company-beyond personal disqualifications which can sometimes surprise, as when it is accused of not being normalien or when you bring back its work to “ A settlement of accounts on the left bank of Paris – – is therefore not based on a discussion of centrality given back to politics, but on the media and distorted echo of what some wanted to make the Furetian research say.
Beyond even these polemical aspects, we can regret that the analysis of Jacobinism, bonapartism or the communist reading of the French Revolution very often remains to a few too fast shots. The kind of published conference really finds its limit here. The cartography of revolutionary historiography at XIXe century, despite quantification efforts from the British Librarygives very limited results and especially shows a fairly partial vision of these subjects.
These outrageousness also have the particularity of making a judgment which stops on the beginnings of the bicentennial and therefore offers abundant historiographical production disseminated on its occasion a very partial reading – the afterword indicates some elements, but the seven pages do not allow, admission of the author, to carry out an analysis of these works. Even if the book of the American historian Stephen L. Kaplan, Farewell 89had been controversial by his sometimes pamphleteer tone, his analysis of the scientific issues of the bicentennial was much better informed. There remain some pleasures of reading, when Hobsbawm entrusted to the detour of a sentence that he sang the Carmagnole with workers in Paris in the summer of 1936, or when we see its erudite opening to very different sites between them – even if the book has errors which should have been corrected. Let us quote one, totally anecdotal: contrary to what the author indicates, the French Republic issued in 1950 a series of postage stamps to the glory of the celebrities of the Revolution of 1789 which brought together Robespierre and Danton as well as Carnot, David, Hoche and Chénier.
In short, to know Hobsbawm’s work, we will advise his memories more or the number of homage that the Revue d’Histoire Moderne and Contemporaine recently devoted him. To reflect on the history of the French Revolution in the long term, other guides are available to the curious reader, which will then find more balanced and above all more updated perspectives. The recent reissue of a set of writings by François Furet on these questions shows that one cannot seriously caricature his work to this point. We can also advise the very pluralist acts of a recent conference that shows research affecting both sociability networks and changes in forms of violence and cultural innovations. No doubt, as Hobsbawm points out, the French Revolution is a major event for modern politics throughout the world. Research on the history of the French Revolution is still possible and obviously necessary, but it first involves serious reflection on historiography.