They proposed a vast, state-run pedagogical project to replace sensationalism with a new psychology that showcased an indivisible and actively willing self, or moi. As conceived and executed by Victor Cousin, a derivative philosopher but an academic entrepreneur of genius, this long-lived project singled out the male bourgeoisie for training in selfhood. Granting everyone a self in principle, Cousin and his disciples deemed workers and women incapable of the introspective finesse necessary to appropriate that self in practice. Beginning with a fresh consideration of the place of sensationalism in the Old Regime and the French Revolution, Jan Goldstein traces a post-Revolutionary politics of selfhood that reserved the Cousinian moi for the educated elite, outraging Catholics and consigning socially marginal groups to the ministrations of phrenology. eighteenth-century sensationalism and twentieth-century Freudianism, Goldstein suggests that the resolutely unitary self of the nineteenth century was only an interlude tailored to the needs of the post-Revolutionary bourgeois order.

    Between these eras a close affinity exists, and so it is that we, in looking back to the past from the world crisis of today, realize that periods which in times of peace have soothed or thrilled us have now lost their meaning, that the principles which inspired them have no place in our philosophy. The Renaissance is dead; the Reformation is dead; even the great wars of bygone days seem dwarfed by the immensity of the recent conflict. But whilst the roar of battle dies down another sound is heard-the angry murmur that arose in 1789 and that, though momentarily hushed, has never lost its force. Once more we are in the cycle of revolution. The French Revolution is no dead event; in turning over the contemporary records of those tremendous days we feel that we are touching live things; from the yellowed pages voices call to us, voices that still vibrate with the passions that stirred them more than a century ago-here the desperate appeal for liberty and justice, there the trumpet - call of " King and Country "; now the story told with tears of death faced gloriously, now a maddened scream of rage against a fellow-man. When in all the history of the world until the present day has human nature shown itself so terrible and so sublime? And is not the fascination that amazing epoch has ever since exercised over the minds of men owing to the fact that the problems it held are still unsolved, that the same movements which originated with it are still at work amongst us? " What we learn to-day from the study of the Great Revolution," the anarchist Prince Kropotkin wrote in 1908, " is that it was the source and origin of all the present communist, anarchist, and socialist conceptions."

    Based on new research in French and British archives and libraries, the book uncovers little-known writings by British women, and argues that these writers developed a distinct antinationalism, in some cases even a feminist cosmopolitanism, in their responses to the European revolutionary crisis.

    The descent of the French Revolution from rapturous liberation into an orgy of apparently pointless bloodletting has been the focus of countless reflections on the often malignant nature of humanity and the folly of revolution.David Andress, a leading historian of the French Revolution, presents a radically different account of the Terror. In a remarkably vivid and page-turning work of history, he transports the reader from the pitched battles on the streets of Paris to the royal family's escape through secret passageways in the Tuileries palace, and across the landscape of the tragic last years of the Revolution. The violence, he shows, was a result of dogmatic and fundamentalist thinking: dreadful decisions were made by groups of people who believed they were still fighting for freedom but whose survival was threatened by famine, external war, and counter-revolutionaries within the fledging new state. Urgent questions emerge from Andress's trenchant reassessment: When is it right to arbitrarily detain those suspected of subversion? When does an earnest patriotism become the rationale for slaughter?Combining startling narrative power and bold insight, The Terror is written with verve and exceptional pace. It is a dramatic new interpretation of the French Revolution that draws troubling parallels with today's political and religious dundamentalism."A vivid and powerful narrative of the years 1789-95... The narrative is dense yet fast-moving, from the storming of the Bastille to the execution of King Louis XVI to the paranoid politics of the National Convention." --DAVID GILMOUR, THE New York Times Book Review"In such alarming times, it is important to understand what exactly terror is, how it works politically, and what, if anything, can be done to combat it. The historian David Andress has made a serious contribution to this central subject of our times with an accessible account of the way terror overtook the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century." --RUTH SCURR, The Times (London)DAVID ANDRESS, a leading historian of the French Revolution, is Reader in Modern European History at the University of Portsmouth and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

    Owen Connelly expertly analyzes them both to provide a broader context for warfare.Examining the causes of the wars, and how the practices of warfare during this period were to influence mode of combat throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Connelly also establishes trends discernable in the First and Second World Wars and examines key issues including:* the impact of the population explosion on armies and war* the legacy of the ancient regime impact on revolutionary armies* the impact of the Revolution on leadership, strategy, organization and weaponry* Was Napoleon's leadership style unique, or could another have played his role?* contributions from the governments of the early Revolution, the Terror, the Directory and the Napoleonic regime* What did twenty-three successive years of war accomplish?* Was this era a turning point in the history of warfare?