The Making of Revolutionary Paris.

Lynn, Michael R.

The Making of Revolutionary Paris, by David Garrioch. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002. xiv, 382 pp. $34.95 US (cloth), $19.95 US (paper).

In spite of the wealth of monographs on aspects of eighteenth-century Paris, few historians have offered a synthetic treatment of that city. David Garrioch seeks to fill this noticeable gap with his book, The Making of Revolutionary Paris. He begins his analysis of Paris by describing the sounds and odours that might have flooded a group of hypothetical blind beggars making their way out from the Quinze-Vingts hospital where they lived. He wants to force his readers into taking a different perspective of Paris. Instead of a description of buildings and monuments, he introduces us to the sounds of carts, horses, and street sellers, and the smell of cheeses, fruit, and hay. This auspicious start to his book draws the reader forward into a Paris replete with a vast array of sounds and scents as well as sights. In additional to providing the reader with a sensory exploration of the city, Garrioch also gestures to how these indicators helped delineate the geography of Paris as well as the daily, weekly, seasonal, and annual rhythms of life there.

Garrioch organizes the book into three unequal sections that, broadly speaking, move the history of Paris forward in a chronological fashion within certain themes. The first section, composed of four chapters, begins with an overview of urban life before moving on to examine the social order with specific explorations into the lives of the poor, workers, middling sorts, and nobles. The reader is also presented with an interesting exposition of how Parisians governed themselves at a neighborhood or parish level. The second section, composed of two chapters, serves as something of a transition. The chapters examine such topics as riots, police, food supply, and Jansenism. Here, Garrioch focuses on the middle of the century with extended looks at the riots of 1750 and the battles between the crown and the Parlement of Paris. By separating out this section from those on either side of it, Garrioch implicitly argues for the centrality of these events in the transformation from a Paris rooted firmly in the old regime into a city rife with revolutionary potential. The third section, easily the longest with six chapters, tackles a variety of topics including politics, religion, urban development, culture, and the revolutionary period. Garrioch reveals a city full of movement and life, conflict and opportunity. Here, he offers a dynamic city transforming itself in the midst of intellectual, material, and social changes. He does not argue that this dynamism caused anything, much less the Parisian part of the French Revolution; but he does hope to explain the origins and nature of the way in which the revolution took shape in Paris. He argues that the specific form of the "Parisian Revolution," to use his term, existed as a function of the developments that occurred in Paris from about 1750 to 1789.

Overwhelmingly, this is a social history of Paris. Typical is Garrioch's chapter on politics, "Affaires du Temps." The chapter includes three subsections, "Popular Interest in Politics," "Attitudes toward the Monarchy," and "The Growth of 'Public Opinion.'" Here, Garrioch discusses the practice and perception of politics from the point of view of representative Parisians. He begins with a look at the workbook of a Parisian tailor, Jean Thomas Terrier, which includes a list of political events, such as the end of the Seven Years' War and a fireworks display held near the Place Louis XV to honor the new peace. The public sphere of political interest, according to Garrioch, included not just the educated and enlightened, but also the working-class men and women of Paris.

Just as politics is seen from an artisan-eye view, the Enlightenment, in Garrioch's account, appears only inasmuch as it relates to concrete social practices in Paris itself. Thus, enlightened ideas about religion briefly appear in chapter eight, on secularization. In addition, Garrioch discusses venues of Enlightenment sociability, especially salons, academies, and freemason lodges, in chapter ten, entitled "The Integration of the City." However, the Enlightenment as an intellectual enterprise remains quite conspicuously absent. His approach to politics, the Enlightenment, and other issues is, of course, quite tenable. Garrioch wants to present Paris as it would have been seen in the eighteenth century. He is not trying to write a national or even a regional history. Rather, his goal is to construct a local history in which the customs, opinions, and attitudes of actual Parisians provide the overall point of view. As such, he argues that the origins of the French Revolution, or at least the Parisian part of it, were specifically social.

The text is written with a light touch and an excellent eye (as well as car and nose) for precisely when to provide a concrete example. Garrioch draws heavily on the wealth of secondary scholarship available to him on this topic. However, he also dips deeply into the well of his own knowledge of the Parisian archives. The text is richly detailed with a wealth of stories and anecdotes drawn from the Archives nationales and other depositories. Garrioch has provided an entertaining and evocative look at the growth of eighteenth-century Paris.

Michael R. Lynn

Agnes Scott College