Cultural Upheaval and Class Formation During the French Revolution

Was the French Revolution a social revolution? The answer obviously depends on what the word social means. But in one way or another, generally received common sense will surely answer, yes. Isn’t history “a seamless web?” Doesn’t the French Revolution, from its very complexity, have to be defined as a social, or perhaps even a “socioeconomic,” dysfunction? Our answer, informed by a driving sense of the uniqueness of the French Revolution, will be categorical. The French Revolution was not a social revolution. Its first cause was neither economic nor social, in the classical sense of either word. Its motor was