The Flour War: Gender, Class, and Community in Late Ancien Regime French Society.

With the emergence of several new works, the exhaustion that overtook the study of eighteenth-century France following the 1989 bicentennial celebrations seems to be abating. In 1989 a linguistic approach, particularly that of Francois Furet, overshadowed others, although there was significant dissonance. This new flowering comes from a number of different perspectives, and the two books reviewed here, along with others, illustrate some of these different viewpoints.

Cynthia Bouton's The Flour War basically examines the social history of groups, a la E. P. Thompson and Georges Rude, though with greater emphasis on community and gender than they ever considered. Her perspective can best be illuminated by recounting her focus and argument. Bouton's subject is a massive disturbance in 1775 that rocketed through northern France during which common people seized and distributed grain to themselves at what they believed was at or below a just price. Although many scholars have written or touched on this subject, this extremely conscientious volume provides a welcome addition to our knowledge. The mastery of both primary and secondary sources is most impressive.

Devoting relatively little time to a narrative of events through 1775, Bouton mainly concentrates upon the causes for the uproar, an event which she defines as relatively non-violent and largely apolitical, at least in terms of any hostility to formal political bodies, especially the king. These occurrences erupted in 1775 because in the aftermath of Turgot's liberalization of controls on marketing, grain prices soared. Demographic trends and capitalism had created a large, very vulnerable population that could be affected by these developments. However modem were these causes of the troubles for the small consumers, the people held a traditional view that grain was theirs by right at a "reasonable" price. Enough agreement existed on this point, even among elites, that suppression of rioting was difficult; and these upheavals continued for some time.

Although Bouton is not primarily interested in the course of the "war," she does create a typology of events - most obviously when she contrasts market riots with attacks in the countryside to prevent exports and transfers of grain. The latter approach was new and mainly involved men who had traditionally played little part in bread riots. They carried out these ambushes because, Bouton asserts, so desperate had their economic position become, that they were as marginal as women. This last point as well as her emphasis on community support for the riots add to the general interpretation of the Thompson/Rude school. By and large, however, this is an analysis that emphasizes, as would they, a social spur to action and the pre-modernness of the attitudes of the eighteenth-century "crowd."

Despite the care and caution exercised by Bouton and the long tradition that she joins, some recent perspectives might challenge her account or suggest a different approach. Some historians have thrown considerable doubt on adherence to pre-modern economic views, arguing that self-interest, though disguised in many forms, explains the behavior of the poor as well as elites. For them the just price was merely an available fiction, not a motivating force. Other scholars, without disputing Bouton's account, pay more attention to crowd dynamics at the moment of attack. These approaches evoke a more anthropological turn of mind - examining how crowds select targets on the spot and choosing to investigate the visions and understandings that created particular incidents. Specifically, they would uncover a micro-history of attitudes, located in the consciousness, in addition to the just price viewpoint. Such scholars will, however, be extremely respectful of the fine study here.

Bailey Stone too differs from the linguistic approaches on the rising in 1789, but his book requires an entirely different kind of evaluation that can only follow a review of his argument. This volume offers nothing less than a novel reinterpretation of the French Revolution. While somewhat resembling Theda Skocpol's well known hypothesis, The Genesis of the French Revolution focuses almost exclusively on the French Revolution and notes much more of the recent literature.

This densely written book, based on a very wide reading about the French Revolution, provides a complicated argument. It is exciting, interesting, well-researched and contains sections that summarize very complex and somewhat inaccessible debates. First considered is the Bourbon monarchy up to 1774. During that time, French monarchs gamely tried to follow an ambitious geopolitical agenda through wars and diplomacy but the opposition abroad was simply too much for them. Financing this overwhelming effort created other problems because the monarch elected to order the necessary taxes without consulting intermediate constituted bodies such as the Estates General. All this led to hostility and doubt in the elite and to the king raising funds by selling offices and emoluments. This strategy created a class inimical to the traditional social basis of the monarchy because to join this elite, money not birth was essential. Thus, the essence of problems lay in competition abroad and the royal decisions on how to deal with the needed taxes. Although Stone throws in additional factors as he goes from 1774 into 1789, he continues to reiterate that failed foreign adventures and their domestic consequences toppled the monarchy. In his conclusion the author extends his earlier argument by asserting that the character of the revolution owed much to its genesis. Stone views war as the center of the revolutionary period, a legacy based upon the martial part of the Old Regime tradition of international struggle.

Stone argues that one thing that distinguishes his work is his diminution of the role of reformers or revolutionaries, by focusing on royal ambitions and decisions on how to meet them. But in pointing out that policies created anger, the author implicitly notes a role for at least the elite and makes me wonder if The Genesis of the Revolution actually can push the angry individuals aside as completely as the author suggests. Second, it remains unclear that Stone has shown even relative unimportance for the revolutionaries. This book shows why the government fell, but not why there was a liberal revolution in 1789 in its place. If one considers those developments - not denied by Stone despite his emphasis on war - other individuals beside the king come to occupy the stage.

Even if reformers and later revolutionaries still took a larger role than Stone posits, his interpretation remains novel, especially the powerful teleology that implies the coming of the revolution from at least the seventeenth century. Also, this analysis challenges the general scholarly opinion that holds the seventeenth-century monarchy was not particularly autonomous and had accommodated rather than overwhelmed the elite. And it places front and center long neglected issues on geopolitical competition.

But will this interpretation generally find adherents? Perhaps it is not specific issues (though surely many debates will also erupt about these) that lead to acceptance, but whether a new paradigm can, as Thomas Kuhn suggested, suddenly explain many unanswered problems. Those presently in search of a new version of the revolution tend to be most concerned about reintegrating class, understanding the Enlightenment, and fitting in gender. The structure Stone presents here will not garner support from these quarters. Nonetheless, his emphasis on geopolitical concerns is timely, especially for many interested in public opinion. This last subject is extremely important, but scholars seldom consider the role of war and foreign affairs. Stone's emphasis along with some material he utilizes demonstrates that the eighteenth-century public cared about battles and contestations abroad. In my view, however, those scholars examining public opinion are not likely to be convinced that geopolitical considerations underlay and drove constitutional problems. So powerfully linking this interest in geopolitics to finances, with constitutional debate a relatively limited subject, flies in the face of much of these historians' solid scholarship, which reveals powerful passions over conceptions of sovereignty and rule. Nonetheless, as a significant addition to the study of opinion - simply highlighting foreign affairs - Stone's work should make an impact on the field, even though the latter's receptiveness to his comprehensive view is likely to be limited.

Jack R. Censer George Mason University