Sans-Culottes:
An Eighteenth-Century Emblem in the French Revolution
Michael Sonenscher

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ADDITIONAL ENDORSEMENTS:

"With this book, Michael Sonenscher establishes himself as one of the most significant authors in the world today writing on the French Revolution. Focusing at the outset on the apparently unpromising question of how the revolutionary sans-culottes got their name, Sonenscher takes his readers on an extraordinary journey of discovery to the heart of the French Enlightenment and revolutionary politics. A brilliant tour de force, based on a dazzling command of eighteenth-century political and economic writing and razor-sharp analytical skills, this book will be required reading for any scholar or student interested in the origins and outcomes of the revolution."--Colin Jones, Queen Mary, University of London

"A pathbreaking account of the emergence of the concept of republican citizenship in the eighteenth century, Michael Sonenscher's Sans-Culottes is also one of the most ambitious, original, and satisfying accounts of the eighteenth-century resonance of Rousseau's arguments regarding human nature, culture, and politics that I have encountered."--E. J. Hundert, professor emeritus of history, University of British Columbia

"Drawing on a dazzling array of texts--from the most well known to the totally arcane--Michael Sonenscher reveals that the sans-culottes of revolutionary France were the cultural offspring of a deep and densely argued eighteenth-century philosophical divide. The story is utterly fascinating and will come as a surprise, especially to social historians. There are few scholars working today who can rival the breadth or depth of Sonenscher's command of eighteenth-century European intellectual culture."--Carla Hesse, University of California, Berkeley

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File created: 11/19/2009

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