The Terror : the merciless war for freedom in revolutionary France / David Andress.

1st American ed.

0374273413 (alk. paper)
9780374273415 (alk. paper)

New York : Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006.

English

441 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., maps ; 24 cm.

DC183.5 .A53 2006

944.04/4

For two hundred years, the Terror has haunted the imagination of the West. The descent of the French Revolution from rapturous liberation into an orgy of apparently pointless bloodletting has been the focus of countless reflections on the often malignant nature of humanity and the folly of revolution. David Andress, a leading historian of the French Revolution, presents a radically different account of the Terror. The violence, he shows, was a result of dogmatic and fundamentalist thinking: dreadful decisions were made by groups of people who believed they were still fighting for freedom but whose survival was threatened by famine, external war, and counter-revolutionaries within the fledgling new state. Urgent questions emerge from Andress's reassessment: When is it right to arbitrarily detain those suspected of subversion? When does an earnest patriotism become the rationale for slaughter? This new interpretation draws troubling parallels with today's political an religious fundamentalism.--From publisher description.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 403-427) and index.

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