George F. E. Rudé

Describes the historical background of the French Revolution, explains why it grew so violent, and looks at its influence on European history

The French Revolution

Studies in Popular Protest

Paris and London in the Eighteenth Century

Eric J. Hobsbawm

Captain Swing

What kinds of people were in the crowds that stormed the Bastille, marched to Versailles to bring the king and queen back to Paris, overthrew the monarchy in August 1792, or impassively witnessed the downfall of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor? Who led these crowds or mobilized them to action? What did they hope to achieve, and how far were their aims realized? Earlier historians have tended to view the revolutionary crowd as an abstraction--people or mob according to the writer's prejudice--often even as the personification of good or evil. Professor Rudé's book, published originally in 1959, makes a first attempt to bring objectively to life each of the important Parisian crowds between 1787 and 1795. Using police records and other contemporary research materials, the author identifies the social groups represented in them, contrasts the crowds with their political leaders, relates their activities to underlying economic and psychological tensions, and compares the Parisian crowd patterns to those of other popular movements in France and Britain during the 18th and early 19th centuries.

The Crowd in the French Revolution

What really motivated the food rioters who sparked off the French Revolution? Who took part in the widespread disturbances that periodically shook eighteenth-century London? How did the Captain Swing movement of agricultural labourers destroying new machinery spread from one village to another in the English countryside? How did the sans-culottes organise in revolutionary Paris?

A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730-1848

The Crowd in History

In this Pathbreaking Work Originally Published in 1980, George Rude Examines the Role Played by Ideology in a Wide Range of Popular Rebellions in Europe and the Americas from the Middle Ages to the Early Twentieth Century. Rude was a Champion of the Role

Ideology and Popular Protest

Studies in Revolution, Ideology and Popular Protest

The Face of the Crowd

Donald Robertson

Carlo M. Cipolla

Rudolph Binion

Lynn Townsend White

R. R. Palmer

John William Ward

Thomas G. Barnes

John Greville Agard Pocock

Vivian Hunter Galbraith

Joseph Richmond Levenson

Jan Vansina

Robert Brentano

Raymond K. Kent

Laurence W. Levine

Original Essays by Sixteen Historians

The Historian's Workshop

Studies in Popular Protest and Popular Ideology in Honour of George Rudé

History from Below

George F. E. Rudé

Books

Your next favorite book is out there