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role he sometimes took himself). Alder makes Prieur a
co-Organizer of Victory because of his direction of the
Manufacture de Paris, which turned out masses of
muskets (if of low quality) during 1793-1794.
I am not enchanted with Alder's use of the English
language. His "artifacts" are manufactures. His repeated use of "epistemology" and its derivatives is
inventive, to say the least. And why Gribeauvalists,
Vallienszs, and even [Henry] Fordists? On substantive
matters, I have doubts about the influence of Francis
Bacon on scientific thought (p. 61), the success of the
Manufacture de Paris (p. 288), the superiority of the
Soldiers of the Year II (p. 345), and a few other things.
But none of these undermine the author's thesis.
This a fine work, grounded in research in French
archives and a plethora of other sources. Alder has
forcefully demonstrated the role of engineers in fostering social change in the eighteenth-century and
revolutionary eras and has become an expert on their
weaponry and its production-from gunlocks to boring
machines. If the "New Historians" take notice, he may
well accomplish his stated purpose: "to help bridge the
gap between our current cultural-linguistic histories
and the older social-materialist histories" (p. xiv).
OWEN CONNELLY
University of South Carolina
Singing the French Revolution: Popular
Culture and Politics, 1787-1799. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1996. Pp. xi, 268. $39.95.
LAURA MASON.
Laura Mason says that, until now, historians have seen
the political culture of the French Revolution as "an
instrument forged by legislators and cultural elites to
educate and control an unruly citizenry" (p. 5). In this
study of song in Paris between 1787 and 1799, she
promises to "demonstrate that political culture was ...
a contested terrain over which countless individuals
and political factions struggled" (p. 7).
According to Mason, song during the Old Regime
was regarded as lowbrow, lowlife, and frivolous. Everybody sang, but everybody disdained song as "popular." Even when a barrage of satirical songs helped to
bring down the ministry in 1787, song was not seen as
serious. It could mock official culture, but it could
never join it.
The taking of the Bastille in July 1789 was a victory
for the common people and their "song culture,"
which, according to Mason, gave the sans-culottes
"lyrical centrality" (p. 107). From 1790 to 1792, the
sans-culottes sang <;a ira. Royalists countered with 0
Richard, {) man roi. In 1792, republicans turned to the
Marseillaise, with its evocation of Manichean clashes
between patriots and the slaves of tyranny. By 1793,
the battle of songs was over; the common people and
their "song culture" had triumphed. The revolutionary
spirit had merged into official culture. The Terror,
which was "univocal," had begun (p. 211).
Thermidor ended this univocality. After the fall of
Robespierre, revolutionary singers could not "imagine
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a polysemous anthem that meant many things to many
people" (p. 145). The Thermidorean jeunesse doree,
who sang the Revell du peuple, battled the left, who
sang the Marseillaise and (beginning in 1794) the Chant
du depart. The government tried to end this battle of
songs, first by ordering people to sing the Marseillaise
and, when that failed, by forbidding them to sing in
public. The people, who by 1795 had lost faith in the
revolution (p. 188), willingly acquiesced. They withdrew to the private spaces of their cafes to sing of wine
and war. Sometimes they mocked their government in
song, just as they had in 1788. Song culture had come
full circle "from the oppositional singing of the Old
Regime to the oppositional singing of the Directory"
(p. 183). The culture of the empire, in which a cynical
people obeyed the government, cheered its victories,
and vented their discontent in private, was already in
place by 1796 (p. 203). Years later, songs born in the
cafes and goguettes would emerge and rouse the people
to revolution in 1830, 1848, and 1871 (pp. 203-206,
219).
Mason's research on Paris is extensive and her
conclusions are suggestive. But did all revolutionary
"song culture" emerge from eighteenth-century popular culture? The Old Regime had produced popular
songs that merchants sold cheaply to market crowds,
but it had also produced a rich tradition of operas,
religious hymns, and official anthems that embodied
and transmitted the virtues of nobility, devotion, and
honor. The Marseillaise, with its stately rhythms, grand
words, and wide vocal range, came from this tradition
of high culture-it offered to the nation the same
worshipful enthusiasm that had formerly been offered
to the church. <;a ira and the Carmagnole were revolutionary songs set to simple popular tunes. But when
the people sang the Marseillaise and the Chant du
depart, they were appropriating a high culture that had
its roots in the opera, the church, and the court of the
Old Regime.
What was changed by the revolution? New men in
strange clothes were speaking new words, but cultural
structures remained surprisingly intact. French governments before, during, and after the revolution
sponsored songs that called for loyalty and virtue,
while people at all levels of society wrote sprightly
ditties that mocked the establishment. Has it ever been
otherwise, except under tyrannies like the Terror,
which cowed its opponents into silence and allowed
only half a culture to survive?
The study of song raises many questions. Does song
dissipate or arouse public feeling? (Mason gives arguments on both sides but, perhaps wisely, she remains
neutral.) Did song teach republicanism to the people,
as Michel Vovelle claims, or did people parrot songs
without understanding their meaning? Did song extend the Enlightenment by spreading reason in an
easy-to-learn form, or did it open the Romantic age by
drowning reason in a flood of passions? Mason's
opinions would have been welcome.
This learned, suggestive book demands a sequel that
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Reviews of Books
looks beyond Paris and analyzes more of the 3,000-odd
songs written between 1789 and 1800, the people who
sang them, and the ideas they represented. A broader
study could explore how many of the new words
actually described old things.
EDGAR LEON NEWMAN
New Mexico State University
MARTIN PHILLIP JOHNSON. The Paradise of Association:
Political Culture and Popular Organizations in the Paris
Commune of 1871. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press. 1996. Pp. viii, 321. $44.50.
GONZALO J. SANCHEZ. Organizing Independence: The
Artists Federation of the Paris Commune and Its Legacy,
1871-1889. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
1997. Pp. xii, 235. $47.50.
The centennial histories of the Paris Commune of 1871
were broadly cast. They analyzed the rise and fall of
the Commune, the politics of its leaders, the motives of
its political and military opponents in Versailles, its
demise during the bloody fighting with the French
army, and the place of the Commune in the history of
revolution. The histories that have appeared around
the Commune's 125th anniversary are more narrowly
focused. Those of Martin Phillip Johnson and Gonzalo
J. Sanchez are illustrative of the new approach. Neither attempts to tell the whole history of the Commune. Johnson analyzes the role of popular organizations in determining the direction of the revolution.
Sanchez examines the effect of the Commune on the
organization of Parisian artists. The connection between the two stories lies largely in the person of
Gustave Courbet, the most famous artist associated
with the Commune. His declaration in April 1871 that
"Paris is a true paradise ... all social groups have
established themselves as federations and are masters
of their own fate," provides Johnson with the title for
his book and Sanchez with his subject matter.
Johnson argues that radical political organizations
in Paris-vigilance societies and political clubsplayed a pivotal role in the creation and direction of
the revolution known as the Commune. They had
planned for revolution and, when the national government attempted to disarm the city on March 18, they
swung into action, taking control of the arrondissement mairies and the Hotel de Ville, resisting the
attempts of the Parisian mayors and National Assembly representatives to take control of the city, and
becoming the elected leaders of the Commune. Johnson's quantitative study of the membership of the clubs
and the Commune nicely makes his case. The leaders
of the clubs became the leaders of the Commune.
Without them and the revolutionary tradition in which
they deeply believed, the Commune, as we know it,
would not have existed.
What is missing from Johnson's study are the actors
on the other side of the conflict. While the Commune
would not have taken the shape it did without the
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discussions and plans of the republican and socialist
organizations, it also would not have taken that shape
without the opposition of Adolphe Thiers, the head of
the national government, and the National Assembly.
Thiers's refusal to negotiate with the men who became
the city's leaders after he abandoned it on March 18,
the army's bombardment of Paris, and the execution of
national guardsmen who were captured in battle also
determined the Commune's character. By focusing
almost exclusively on the radical organizations of
Paris, Johnson underestimates the importance of other
actors in this drama.
Johnson includes both men and women in his study,
but he overstates the Commune's potential for radical
change in their relationship. He argues that women's
participation in the armed defense of the Commune
would have resulted in an "inversion" of gender roles
if the Commune had been victorious. Female Communards did join in the city's defense, and many of them
believed in civil equality for men and women. They did
not, however, seek an inversion of gender roles that
would place women hierarchically above men. Nor
were they optimistic about the prospects for equality in
the event of victory.
Like Johnson, Sanchez is interested in political
organizations. For artists, however, the Commune was
more of a grand opportunity to organize and wrest
aesthetic and financial control from government hands
than it was a fruition of their plans. Like other
republicans, many artists had participated in earlier
French revolutions. They also had engaged in skirmishes with the Second Empire over the control of
their work. But they had made little headway with their
major concerns: government control of patronage,
entry into the salons, and the content of their work.
Sanchez examines artists' political activities and
organizations before and during the Commune with an
emphasis on the creation of the Federation des Artistes. The Federation worked to achieve both their
long-term goals for self-regulation and to protect the
city's art from the army's bombardment. (Artists also
undertook the latter during the Prussian siege of the
city in 1870.) Like Johnson, Sanchez traces the political activities of individuals across time and analyzes
the retribution exacted upon them by the conservative
Third Republic.
Sanchez's book would have profited from considerably more illustrations (both of the work discussed in
the text and of the most famous works by these artists),
since it is that work that makes the men's political
activities interesting and important. Many readers will
also regret Sanchez's decision to downplay Courbet's
activities and work, since it removes the politically
most important and culturally most famous artist from
the story.
Together, these studies remind us of the enthusiasm
with which the revolution of 1871 was greeted and the
hopes and desires that men and women invested in the
Commune. They also demonstrate the importance of
planning and organization for the achievement of
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