Volume 13, Number 12 · January 1, 1970
Looking for the Ancien Régime
By C.B.A. Behrens
Paris in the Age of Absolutism
by Orest Ranum
Wiley, 316 pp., $3.95 (paper)
French Absolutism: The Crucial Phase 1620-1629
by A.D. Lublinskaya, translated by Brian Pearce, with a Foreword by J.H. Elliott
Cambridge, 350 pp., $13.00
L'Ancien Régime Vol. 1, La Société
by Pierre Goubert
Armand Colin, 271 pp., 22 francs
At the beginning of the present century historians could speak of making a contribution to knowledge in a sense that is no longer possible. At that time, when academic history, if not in its infancy, was still, by present standards, only adolescent, the mere accumulation of facts could seem a virtue, provided the facts were set out in an orderly way. This is no longer true. As more and more researchers get to work, and more and more fields of research are brought under cultivation, teachers, not to mention students, of history are in constant danger of being overwhelmed by the facts. The need is for explanations that will give the facts a meaning.
Review, 3909 words
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