Volume 27, Number 5 · April 3, 1980
What's New About the Old Regime?
By Robert Darnton
The Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy 1598-1789: Society and State
by Roland E. Mousnier, translated by Brian Pearce
University of Chicago Press, 783 pp., $45.00
The French have been trying to come to terms with the Old Regime for nearly two hundred years, but they have never reached any agreement about its basic character. The Revolution keeps getting in their way, forcing them into ideological camps at the point where, in France at least, the 'modern' phase of history gives way to the 'contemporary': 1789.
Review, 3086 words
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