The Revolution in Provincial France

This scholarly account presents a provincial view of Revolutionary France and describes a region far removed from high politics in Paris. It shows how local conflicts and personal rivalries shaped events within the region, and emphasises the importance of religion, war, peasant radicalism and commercial stagnation in defining the course of the Revolution in the south-west. This book presents a provincial view of the French Revolution and assesses the experience of revolution across a broad swathe of south-western France, in an area which increasingly looked to Bordeaux as its capital city. Here the Revolution was not simply a pale reflection of events in Paris. Local conflicts and personal rivalries are vital to our understanding of the shape of events in the region, as are contrasting traditions of religious affiliation, peasant radicalism, and obedience to the state. The book examines the Revolution within a thematic framework, and discusses such aspects as the growth of a local political culture, the incidence of rural insurrection, religious responses to the Revolution, the chequered appeal of federalism, and the uneven experience of Terror and political repression.