The Politics of Terror: The French Revolution

3 units

Students will explore the history of political culture in eighteenth-century France, from the final decades of the Bourbon monarchy to the rise of Napolean Bonaparte. Topics include: the erosion of the king's authority in the years leading up to 1789; the fall of the Bastille; the Constitutions of 1791 and 1793; civil war in the Vendee; the militarization of the Revolution; the dechrisitanization movement; attempts to establish a new Revolutionary calendar and civil religion; and the conspiracy theories that gripped Robespierre and his colleagues during the Terror.