{"id":27620,"date":"2026-05-13T13:34:50","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/?post_type=cu_description&p=27620"},"modified":"2026-05-13T13:34:50","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:34:50","slug":"society-and-revolution-in-france-1789-1799","status":"publish","type":"cu_description","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/description\/society-and-revolution-in-france-1789-1799\/","title":{"rendered":"Society and Revolution in France, 1789-1799"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

HISTORY 3113<\/strong>
Society and Revolution in France, 1789-1799\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>
Professor Rod Phillips
Fall 2026
Scope of the course<\/strong>
The French Revolution was not only central to the history of France and Europe, but it had impacts on the wider world. Its legacy includes images such as the guillotine, institutions such as the metric system and military conscription, terms such as \u2018Terror\u2019, and the notions of \u2018Left\u2019 and \u2018Right\u2019 on the political spectrum. Some of the individuals associated with the Revolution, such as Marie Antoinette and Napoleon, are household names. In France today, the Revolution is ever-present in the form of the national flag, the national day (Bastille Day, 14 July), the phrase \u2018Libert\u00e9 Egalit\u00e9 Fraternit\u00e9\u2019 (\u2018Liberty Equality Fraternity\u2019) on all public buildings, and the national anthem, La Marseillaise<\/em>.
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The dominant image of the French Revolution in the popular imagination is violence \u2013 think of the guillotine, the Terror, the European wars, the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and Charles Dickens\u2019s A Tale of Two Cities<\/em>. But that is only one of its dimensions. It was also a period when institutions of all kinds \u2013 political, legal, social, cultural, religious, and military \u2013 were fundamentally and peacefully reformed.\u00a0
Some reforms are well known, such as the abolition of the monarchy, but other achievements of the French Revolution are not. It abolished slavery in France\u2019s colonies. It gave civil rights to Jews and Muslims. It separated Church and State for the first time in Europe. It reformed family law, giving women and men equality in inheritance, secularizing marriage, and permitting divorce for the first time in France. It aimed to provide citizens with food security. It criminalized violence against women. It decriminalized homosexuality. It created the first mass citizen-army. It began social welfare and pension schemes. It began to make education available to all. Reforms such as these affected all aspects of society, culture, and the economy in France and in many other parts of Europe.
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\"Divorce
The French Revolution is the most-studied decade in world history and there is a wealth of information in many languages on almost every aspect of it. We can\u2019t possibly cover everything in this course, and instead we will focus on a number of topics that include building a nation, women\u2019s rights, religions, the family, education, food security, and poverty.
In each case we will ask four questions: what was its status before the Revolution? How did the Revolutionaries view it? What did they do about it?\u00a0 What were the results?\u00a0 When we look at women\u2019s rights, for example, we will examine the status of women in France before the Revolution, the debates on and by women from 1789, the emergence of a women\u2019s rights movement, laws and policies affecting women, and the overall impact of the Revolution on women.
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The aim of the course is to give us a sense of how comprehensive and radical the Revolution attempted to be. It was not simply a matter of replacing one political system with another, but of transforming social relationships \u2013 what the Revolutionaries called \u2018regeneration\u2019. A regenerated France would be a nation of free citizens (Liberty) who enjoyed equal rights (Equality) and worked together to create a new society (Fraternity).\u00a0 As we will see, many of these aspirations failed \u2013 sometimes because they were unrealistically ambitious, sometimes because they were thwarted or annulled by the regimes of Napoleon and the restored monarchy that followed the Revolution. But they were intrinsic to the exciting revolutionary project that began in 1789.
Course format<\/strong>
This is a lecture course that meets in person once a week for three hours. There will be ample opportunity for discussions.
Aims of the course<\/strong>
While examining the course of the French Revolution, we will consider some of the questions historians and citizens confront today. How should we assess historical figures \u2013 in terms of their context or in terms of more recent values? Debates about removing statues and renaming places and institutions took place during the Revolution, when there was an attempt to remove all references to kings, nobles, saints, and other undesirables. Statues were torn down, and towns and streets were renamed. But then the Revolution experienced the same process, and we look at how it has been remembered, celebrated, and condemned. As we confront these questions we will engage with various media: printed texts, paintings, drawings, and sculptures.
Assessment<\/strong>
There will be one reading response, one essay, and a final (take-home) exam.\u00a0 All the readings for these assignments will be available on-line.
Textbook<\/strong>
Peter McPhee, Liberty or Death: The French Revolution<\/em> (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017). I haven\u2019t ordered copies for the University Bookstore, but they are available ($26-28)\u00a0 from online and other retailers.
Questions<\/strong>
For more information, please contact me: roderick.phillips@carleton.ca<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":520,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_description_type":[],"class_list":["post-27620","cu_description","type-cu_description","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_description\/27620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_description"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_description"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_description\/27620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27621,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_description\/27620\/revisions\/27621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_description_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_description_type?post=27620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}