Download or read book The French Revolution written by Ian Davidson and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 has become the commemorative symbol of the French Revolution. But this violent and random act was unrepresentative of the real work of the early revolution, which was taking place ten miles west of Paris, in Versailles. There, the nobles, clergy and commoners of France had just declared themselves a republic, toppling a rotten system of aristocratic privilege and altering the course of history forever. The Revolution was led not by angry mobs, but by the best and brightest of France's growing bourgeoisie: young, educated, ambitious. Their aim was not to destroy, but to build a better state. In just three months they drew up a Declaration of the Rights of Man, which was to become the archetype of all subsequent Declarations worldwide, and they instituted a system of locally elected administration for France which still survives today. They were determined to create an entirely new system of government, based on rights, equality and the rule of law. In the first three years of the Revolution they went a long way toward doing so. Then came Robespierre, the Terror and unspeakable acts of barbarism. In a clear, dispassionate and fast-moving narrative, Ian Davidson shows how and why the Revolutionaries, in just five years, spiralled from the best of the Enlightenment to tyranny and the Terror. The book reminds us that the Revolution was both an inspiration of the finest principles of a new democracy and an awful warning of what can happen when idealism goes wrong.

Download or read book Orestes written by Voltaire and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-08-02 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Orestes was produced in 1750, an experiment which intensely interested the literary world and the public. In his Dedicatory Letters to the Duchess of Maine, Voltaire has the following passage on the Greek drama: "We should not, I acknowledge, endeavor to imitate what is weak and defective in the ancients: it is most probable that their faults were well known to their contemporaries. I am satisfied, Madam, that the wits of Athens condemned, as well as you, some of those repetitions, and some declamations with which Sophocles has loaded his Electra: they must have observed that he had not dived deep enough into the human heart. I will moreover fairly confess, that there are beauties peculiar not only to the Greek language, but to the climate, to manners and times, which it would be ridiculous to transplant hither. Therefore I have not copied exactly the Electra of Sophocles-much more I knew would be necessary; but I have taken, as well as I could, all the spirit and substance of it."

Download or read book The King s Debts written by Richard Bonney and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1981 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Continuity and Innovation in Religion in the Roman West written by European Association of Archaeologists. Annual Meeting and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Venality written by William Doyle and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 1996 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In ancien regime France almost all posts of public responsibility had to be bought or inherited. Rather than tax their richer subjects directly, French kings preferred to sell them privileged public offices, which further payments allowed them to sell or bequeath at will. By the eighteenthcentury there were 70,000 venal offices, comprising the entire judiciary, most of the legal profession, officers in the army, and a wide range of other professions - from financiers handling the king's revenues down to auctioneers and even wigmakers. Though now yielding diminishing returns to theking, offices were more in demand than ever for the privileges and prestige, profit and power, that they conferred; and although it was widely accepted that selling public authority was undesirable, nobody imagined that those who had invested in offices could ever be bought out. The Revolutionbrought an unexpected opportunity to do so, but the legacy of venality has marked French institutions down to our day. William Doyle, one of the foremost historians of early modern Europe, has written the first comprehensive history of the last century of venality. He traces the evolution and dissolution of a system which was fundamental to the workings of state and society in France for over threecenturies.

Download or read book Reason Illusion and Passion written by Émilie du Châtelet and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-16 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The amazing scientist, mathematician, philosopher Émilie du Châtelet (1706-49) has widely been hailed as a rare female intellectual in the Enlightenment. At the same time, her own ideas and contributions remain largely unknown and her writings are rarely read. This is unfortunate, since she has interesting contributions to and explanations of physics, metaphysics, religion, translation, the equality of the sexes, and ethics.This book is a selection of du Châtelet's philosophical writings, in new English translations: -Foreword to "Foundations of Physics"-On the Principles of Our Knowledge (From "Foundations of Physics")-On the Existence of God (From "Foundations of Physics")-On Liberty-Translator's Preface to Mandeville's "Fable of the Bees"-On the Resurrection of the Dead (from "Examinations of the Bible")-On Happiness

Download or read book Epic and Empire written by David Quint and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander the Great, according to Plutarch, carried on his campaigns a copy of the Iliad, kept alongside a dagger; on a more pronounced ideological level, ancient Romans looked to the Aeneid as an argument for imperialism. In this major reinterpretation of epic poetry beginning with Virgil, David Quint explores the political context and meanings of key works in Western literature. He divides the history of the genre into two political traditions: the Virgilian epics of conquest and empire that take the victors' side (the Aeneid itself, Camoes's Lusíadas, Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata) and the countervailing epic of the defeated and of republican liberty (Lucan's Pharsalia, Ercilla's Araucana, and d'Aubigné's Les tragiques). These traditions produce opposing ideas of historical narrative: a linear, teleological narrative that belongs to the imperial conquerors, and an episodic and open-ended narrative identified with "romance," the story told of and by the defeated. Quint situates Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained within these rival traditions. He extends his political analysis to the scholarly revival of medieval epic in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and to Sergei Eisenstein's epic film, Alexander Nevsky. Attending both to the topical contexts of individual poems and to the larger historical development of the epic genre, Epic and Empire provides new models for exploring the relationship between ideology and literary form.

Download or read book French Finances 1770 1795 written by J. F. Bosher and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1970-11-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The monarchy of Louis XVI suffered revolution and then destruction after failing to settle its financial difficulties. What precisely were those difficulties? In this book, Professor Bosher shows that the monarchy was financed by a chaotic system of private enterprise which proved increasingly unmanageable and wasteful. Hundreds of profit-seeking accountants - 'capitalists', in the language of the time - stood in the way of reform and even of clear accounting until governments of the French Revolution eventually nationalized the financial system and changed it 'from capitalism into a bureaucracy'. From his close study of the administrative changes Professor Bosher concludes that the National Assembly planned to guard the public finances by bureaucratic organization. 'With a vision of mechanical efficiency and articulation', he writes, 'systems of clock-like checks and balances such as eighteenth-century Frenchmen found everywhere, even in nature itself, the revolutionary planners hoped to prevent corruption, putting their faith in the virtues of organization to offset the vices of the individual men.'

Download or read book Travels Into Spain written by Aulnoy (Madame d', Marie-Catherine) and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Madame D'Aulnoy was one of the most widely-read and most popular authors of her time. Seeing Spain at a strange moment in her history, it is the end of a great age. The reader can judge the Spanish character from a witness who saw it.

Download or read book Eat Sleep Bagpipes Repeat written by Mirako Press and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-07-18 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This adorable music notebook is perfect for staffs, kids and musicians. The high-quality manuscript book includes 110 pages of 12 staves. Let exercise your composing skills with this well-designed music sketchbook! Enjoy!

Download or read book A Colony of Citizens written by Laurent Dubois and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of universal rights is often understood as the product of Europe, but as Laurent Dubois demonstrates, it was profoundly shaped by the struggle over slavery and citizenship in the French Caribbean. Dubois examines this Caribbean revolution by focusing on Guadeloupe, where, in the early 1790s, insurgents on the island fought for equality and freedom and formed alliances with besieged Republicans. In 1794, slavery was abolished throughout the French Empire, ushering in a new colonial order in which all people, regardless of race, were entitled to the same rights. But French administrators on the island combined emancipation with new forms of coercion and racial exclusion, even as newly freed slaves struggled for a fuller freedom. In 1802, the experiment in emancipation was reversed and slavery was brutally reestablished, though rebels in Saint-Domingue avoided the same fate by defeating the French and creating an independent Haiti. The political culture of republicanism, Dubois argues, was transformed through this transcultural and transatlantic struggle for liberty and citizenship. The slaves-turned-citizens of the French Caribbean expanded the political possibilities of the Enlightenment by giving new and radical content to the idea of universal rights.

Download or read book Old Families of Louisiana written by Stanley Clisby Arthur and published by Genealogical Publishing Com. This book was released on 2009-06 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1931, Old Families of Louisiana was compiled in response to a demand for a comprehensive series of genealogical records of the foundation families of the state--families whose ancestors settled with Bienville in New Orleans at the time the famous old city was laid out in the crescent bend of the Mississippi River. This book also answers the call for information on those who came to Louisiana when the golden lilies of France, the castellated banner of Spain, the Union Jack of Great Britain, or the flag of fifteen stars and fifteen stripes waved over the land.During the compilation of the original data it became apparent that the present book would be greatly augmented in interest and value by the addition of genealogical records of other prominent foundation families besides the French and Spanish. For this reason, information was included on the English, Scottish, and Irish lineages whose representatives now form an integral part of the present-day population of Louisiana.In the seventy years since its first publication, Old Families of Louisiana has exceeded the original scope intended. In order to set a limit to its range, it was agreed that only those families settling in Louisiana before and up to the time of the beginning of the American domination in 1803 should be included. Old Families of Louisiana traces the genealogy of such traditional Louisiana families as Fortier, Claiborne, Kenner, Percy, Wiltz, Chalmette, Landry, Derbigny, Butler, St. Martin, and Wilkinson.

Download or read book A Turbulent Time written by David Barry Gaspar and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1997-03-22 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Stimulating, incisive, insightful, sometimes revisionist, this volume is required reading for historians of comparative colonialism in an age of revolution." —Choice "[An] eminently original and intellectually exciting book." —William and Mary Quarterly This volume examines several slave societies in the Greater Caribbean to illustrate the pervasive and multi-layered impact of the revolutionary age on the region. Built precariously on the exploitation of slave labor, organized according to the doctrine of racial discrimination, the plantation colonies were particularly vulnerable to the message of the French Revolution, which proved all the more potent because it coincided with the emergence of the antislavery movement in the Atlantic world and interacted with local traditions of resistance among the region's slaves, free coloreds, and white colonists.

Download or read book Before Haiti Race and Citizenship in French Saint Domingue written by J. Garrigus and published by Springer. This book was released on 2006-06-24 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note this is a 'Palgrave to Order' title (PTO). Stock of this book requires shipment from an overseas supplier. It will be delivered to you within 12 weeks. This book details how France's most profitable plantation colony became Haiti, Latin America's first independent nation, through an uprising by slaves and the largest and wealthiest free population of people of African descent in the New World. Garrigus explains the origins of this free colored class, exposes the ways its members supported and challenged slavery, and examines how they shaped a new 'American' identity.

Download or read book The Old Regime and the Haitian Revolution written by Malick W. Ghachem and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-05 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative history of Haiti up to 1804, when Haitians became the first formerly enslaved people to overthrow a colonial slaveholding power.

Download or read book The World of the Haitian Revolution written by David Patrick Geggus and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-21 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays deepen our understanding of Haiti during the period from 1791 to 1815. They consider the colony's history and material culture as well as it 'free people of colour' and the events leading up to the revolution and its violent unfolding.

Download or read book The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle against Atlantic Slavery written by Matt D. Childs and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-01-05 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1812 a series of revolts known collectively as the Aponte Rebellion erupted across the island of Cuba, comprising one of the largest and most important slave insurrections in Caribbean history. Matt Childs provides the first in-depth analysis of the rebellion, situating it in local, colonial, imperial, and Atlantic World contexts. Childs explains how slaves and free people of color responded to the nineteenth-century "sugar boom" in the Spanish colony by planning a rebellion against racial slavery and plantation agriculture. Striking alliances among free people of color and slaves, blacks and mulattoes, Africans and Creoles, and rural and urban populations, rebels were prompted to act by a widespread belief in rumors promising that emancipation was near. Taking further inspiration from the 1791 Haitian Revolution, rebels sought to destroy slavery in Cuba and perhaps even end Spanish rule. By comparing his findings to studies of slave insurrections in Brazil, Haiti, the British Caribbean, and the United States, Childs places the rebellion within the wider story of Atlantic World revolution and political change. The book also features a biographical table, constructed by Childs, of the more than 350 people investigated for their involvement in the rebellion, 34 of whom were executed.