It used to be that historians searched for the causes of the French Revolution in the manner of detectives on the track of a master criminal. Over the years, unfortunately, they dragged such a bewildering variety of suspects into the historical station-house that one would be forgiven for thinking a posse of bumbling Inspector Lestrades had been let loose in the archives. Sometimes the suspects were individuals (most popularly, Rousseau or the Duc d'Orléans), sometimes they were collective (philosophes, freemasons and the rising bourgeoisie, the last of whom once seemed the historical equivalents of serial killers, leaving their fingerprints everywhere), and sometimes abstract (the Esprit de Système, the Idea of Freedom, Capitalism ...). Many of the accused seemed convincing culprits at the time, but such is the nature of historical inquiry that even the occasional Holmes among historians failed to make the charges stick for long. Nonetheless, each generation of specialists enthusiastically brought new techniques and methodologies to the same gigantic, confusing mass of clues.

LRB 10 June 1993 | PDF Download