History Chronology

Notes for "Citizens" (1989) by Simon Schama.

The first section of the book is titled, "Alterations: The France of Louis XVI".

Preface [p. xiii - xix]

• "I learned to try to see the Revolution not as a march of abstractions and ideologies but as a human event of complicated and often tragic outcomes." [p. xvii]

This perspective rings true to me. I think that the word 'complicated' is critical. People seldom see the big picture when they are embroiled in the events of the time, and they certainly cannot see the implications of their actions for the future, regardless of how much they may be inspired by an image of such a future.

Prologue: Powers of Recall - Forty Years Later [p. 3 - 17]

• "What follows (I need hardly say) is not science. ... It is an exercise in animated description, a negotiation with a two-hundred year memory without any pretense of a definitive closure. And both the form of its telling and its chosen subject matter represent a deliberate turning away from analytical history towards Events and Persons, both long forbidden, or dismissed as mere froth on the great waves of history." [p. 6]
  
  
• "In their own persons, Lafayette and Tallyrand embodied the split personality of the French Revolution. ... the Revolution ... was the product of two irreconcilable interests - the creation of a potent state [Tallyrand] and the creation of a community of free citizens [Lafayette]." [p. 15]

Here are two names that I do not associate with the Revolution: Tallyrand whom I do not recognize, and Lafayette whom I associate as an early explorer in North America. Yet Schama appears to consider them as both important to the Revolution. This appears to be the central theme of the book: that the Revolution was the result of the influence of these two contradictory passions. At least the author does not reduce this to one passion, although the reality is likely much more than two. I need a way to show more of the complexity of the interaction of different themes. The (initial) Inspiration chart is nothing more than a hierarchical chart in a hidden guise. The reality should look more like a spider web. I will wait until I have made my initial notes for chapter 1 before adding items to my Inspiration chart.

Part One: Alterations - The France of Louis XVI

Chaper One New Men [p. 21 - 49]

• "For France, without any question, the Revolution began in America. ... Lafayette was shivering at Valley Forge ... There ... the twenty-year-old Marquis [Lafayette] had found his surrogate father in the imposing shape of George Washington." [p. 24]
  
  
• "... [Lafayette] a generalized preference for liberty over authority, sponteneity over calculation, candor over artifice, friendship over hierarchy, heart over head and nature over culture." [p. 27]
  
  
• "For it is at the top, rather than in any imaginary middle of French society, that the cultural roots of the Revolution should be sought." [p. 40]
  
  
• Benjamin Franklin was important in endorsing Lafayette as a supporter of the American Revolution for Independence, thus increasing Lafayette's stature in France. [p. 42 - 43]
  
  
• Turgot, "the most intelligent of all Louis XVI's ministers" "argued bitterly against active intervention in America, predicting that its costs would be so overwhelming" whereas "the immensely powerful Foreign Minister, Vergennes, "came to the not unreasonable conclusion that it was Britain that was the insatiably aggressive imperial power." [p. 48]

I now have 4 new names to add to my list of key individuals: Lafayette, Talleyrand, Turgot and Vergennes. One key idea is that of the importance of the American War of Independence on the French psyche with the idea of freedom being something worth fighting for.

Here is my revised Inspiration chart (Inspiration1).