La foule révolutionnaire, l’imaginaire du complot et la violence fondatrice : aux origines de la nation française (1789)
In his Origins of Contemporary France, Hyppolyte Taine assimilates the storming of the Bastille to a descent into anarchy. The crowd is portrayed as a ‘primitive animal’, irrational and left to its instincts. The Jacobin historiography of the French Revolution has since criticized this depiction of...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | deu |
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Conserveries Mémorielles
2010-09-01
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| Series: | Conserveries Mémorielles |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/cm/725 |
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| Summary: | In his Origins of Contemporary France, Hyppolyte Taine assimilates the storming of the Bastille to a descent into anarchy. The crowd is portrayed as a ‘primitive animal’, irrational and left to its instincts. The Jacobin historiography of the French Revolution has since criticized this depiction of the crowd as animals by highlighting political, social and economic rationales behind the people’s acts of violence. The events of July 1789 actually show how violence can be complex phenomenon that is destructive and founding at the same time. This article will explain the processes by which popular violence contributed in fine to the birth of the France nation. The conspiracy imaginations actually sustained a dual link with popular violence by constituting, on one hand, an impetus for political action and, on the other hand, a ground for the justification and mythologizing of the storming. This process of legitimization would later provide the founding elements of the first French national narrative. |
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| ISSN: | 1718-5556 |