Meer E.S.

THE BOURGEOISIE OF PRE-REVOLUTIONARY AND REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE
IN THE WORKS OF THE ENGLISH HISTORIAN K. JONES

The article analyzes one of the attempts to revive the capitalist image of the French bourgeoisie in contemporary English-language historiography. Considered as at the end of XX – beginning of XXI centuries English historian Colin Jones made a similar initiative in his writings. The author identifies Colin Jones as the «new left» among contemporary specialists on the French Revolution, notes the main points of his professional career, denotes his belonging to the school of the Oxford historian with a controversial historiographic identity, Richard Cobb, draws attention to the importance of his study of French medicine in order to appeal to the revision of ideas about the bourgeoisie. The work shows that Colin Jones, criticizing the revisionists, proposed to bring the consciousness, lifestyle and fate of the professional bourgeoisie closer to bourgeois entrepreneurs in pre-revolutionary and revolutionary France. The author reveals a set of arguments that are used by the historian to substantiate his position. He demonstrates that Colin Jones is trying to prove that professionals in the conditions of commercialization and consumer revolution in France in the XVIII century can be viewed as capitalists and consumers, as an integral part of the bourgeois public sphere, as well as bearers of civic professionalism, a product of market consciousness, which found its practical expression in the organs of civic sociality in pre-revolutionary France, and that their fate in the revolution was more successful than other social groups. The author evaluates these arguments of the English historian and finds out how his positions are refracted in the revisionist and Marxist discourses.

Keywords: the French bourgeoisie, the English historiography of the French Revolution, the «new left», Colin Jones, professionals, doctors, lawyers, corporate and civic professionalism, the bourgeois public sphere, discourses.

Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University named after V.P. Astafieva (Russia)

Download (pdf)

Это произведение доступно по лицензии Creative Commons «Attribution-ShareAlike» («Атрибуция — На тех же условиях») 4.0 Всемирная