Paris and London in the eighteenth century: studies in popular protest

At numerous points throughout the eighteenth century, the people of Paris and London –then the two largest cities in the world– rioted and demonstrated, looted property, and marches in protest. Their grievances varied as much as their aims, but the diversity notwithstanding, historians have been quick to label these groups of honest citizens as "mob", as "inhabitants of the dangerous districts, always ready to pillage", as squalid and dangerous intruders on the historical scene. George Rudé, in his classic book The Crowd in the French Revolution, established that this view was deeply mistaken. In that book and in subsequent studies, he gave a dimension and meaning to the history of pre-revolutionary protest which it had all but wholly lacked before. Now, in this book, the outcome of nearly two decades of research in the libraries and archives of the two capitals, he explores the similarities and differences in urban protests and revolts during the eighteenth century. Professor Rudé's focus in the French case is naturally on the cataclysmic events of the Revolution itself - or rather, on the people who created the insurrections that shaped and formed it. "I began by asking (it seemed a simple enough question): who actually took the Bastille? Who marched to Versailles, stormed the Tuileries, or stood silently by while Robespierre was toppled from power? Whose, in fact, were the "faces in the crowd'? In the case of London, Professor Rudé's attention was drawn to more disparate, and less well documented, events: "Mother Gin" and the riots of 1736, the "Wilkes and Liberty" movement of the 1760s, the Gordon riots of 1780. "In order to get into the skulls of the participants," the author writes, "it was not sufficient merely to establish their identity; something also had to be done to unravel the motives and impulsions that urged them to take part in these events." This fascinating and demanding task Professor Rudé has achieved with great brilliance and insight. His presentation of popular insurrection in the eighteenth century not only alters and deepens our understanding of the political and social history of that crucial time, but throws new light on the issues of urban life today.