Accounts of Committee meeting on March 30, '94 (when Danton's arrest was ordered)??

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

I know that there aren't any official minutes of the March 30 joint meeting of the Committees (or any meeting, really), but there are at least partial accounts of what transpired. Does anyone know of a relatively complete account, either from some primary source document (ie. someone's memoirs) or something pieced together by historians)?

Comments

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I still like Darnton, but he's touching on an interesting subject here without understanding the depths of passion - I presume he's writing from the comfort of a university chair (and with no war experience), and he's a cultural historian - more, hmm, that's interesting! rather than having the passions of a political historian: to him, European postwar politics are just another interesting phenomenon to go 'hmm!' over, in a patronising way.

I do find it odd and worrying (if comments on this site are anything to go by) that Wajda's Danton is used as a teaching aid in schools/universities. When it came out, the impression I got was that it was received as a film more about 1983 than 1794. Wajda said the same, and in the pressbook (which Darnton doesn't quote) discusses the swinging pendulum of side-taking between communist -leaning historians and the right, very conscious that his film will be located in that 'tradition'. The (Polish) Pope beatified 99 Vendee 'martyrs' not long afterwards (how's that for timing?) It reminds me of the same sort of story told about postwar europe in 'Who Paid The Piper?' - Darnton scratches the surface here but doesn't see deeper, though he was writing in 84: by 89 the concerted effort to prevent the bicentennary being a rallying point for communism was clearer.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I've liked what he's written about pre-Revolutionary France, I'll admit (The Great Cat Massacre, The Forbidden Bestsellers of Pre-Revolutionary France), but I really think he should stick to that, since he doesn't seem to understand the Revolution, its historiography, or modern France on a very profound level. (And yet it seems as if he thinks he does, which is almost worse!)

to him, European postwar politics are just another interesting phenomenon to go 'hmm!' over, in a patronising way.
You've touched on the reason I rarely trust Americans to write about France. In some parts of the article, it seems to me, the tone even veers from patronising to contemptuous.

Really, I think it's a terrible idea to try to use any film to teach history, but if you're going to do that, seriously, pick a film that is really about the period you're teaching about (and doesn't have glaring historical inaccuracies, unless the point of watching the film is to point them out). Maybe it would be a good film to show if you were teaching about Poland in the 1980s, but France in the 1790s?

And I must say I find the revisionist assumption that only Communists could possibly support the Revolution insulting--though I know it's part of their larger agenda to discredit the Revolution entirely.

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

And I must say I find the revisionist assumption that only Communists could possibly support the Revolution insulting--though I know it's part of their larger agenda to discredit the Revolution entirely.

I agree with you that this is a trend, but I don't think it is necessarily the result of intentional vindictiveness so much as the apparently dominant societal outlook on politics and history. Essentially, there seems a trend to view a focus on political abstractions or idealism with a certain degree of contempt, as though too great an interest in them is foolish, immature, or dangerous. Therefore, I think there is a tendency to right of the revolutionaries from the start as silly dreamers or dangerous radicals for what they believed and wanted to achieve rather than for what they actually ended up doing.

That said, if you want to see a true example of academic vindictiveness (and, in my opinion, dishonesty), look up a NY Times book review of Andress' The Terror and Scurr's Fatal Purity. He takes a line that in context is rather benign and quotes it out of context to imply that the whole premise of Fatal Purity is to defend and justify Robespierre--it's one thing to criticize Scurr's work by finding actual examples of her apologizing for Robespierre (and there are some), but to essentially create one's own examples implies one has an agenda beyond what should be acceptable in the study of history.

Sorry. I've digressed. I don't like seeing the honest understanding of a subject is made second to the politics of its study.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Doubtless the majority of the revisionists are not in bad faith, but many have no qualms about falsification and distortion to support their claims and seem unable to resist the tossing-around of epithets. As to their contempt of idealism on the grounds of its danger and immaturity, I continue to fail to see how complacency, corruption, and compromising of principles is at all mature or safe.

Concerning Scurr's biography, I don't think anyone short of those responsible for putting a fanged Robespierre on the cover of the National Review for the bicentennial could find it an apology for Robespierre. Scurr claims in the beginning that she tries to be Robespierre's "friend," but by the time I finished reading it, I must say my thoughts were along the lines of "with friends like that, who needs enemies?"
(The reason I object to this is of course that people will, like that reviewer, be inclined to take her book as a defense, and then think: "See even his defenders don't see him in a particularly good light"--which shifts the center of the debate far into reactionary territory.)

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

The quote that you mention--the one about being a "friend"--is actually the one to which I was alluding. I needn't elaborate very much to give you an idea of how the NY Times twisted that. But the NY Times book review is notoriously biased, so what can one expect?

What the more moderate revolutionaries found out is proving true for the more reasonable historians: being the voice of reason in the middle of a controversy is often the most dangerous position to take.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Yes, I can see how easily that might have been twisted. And then, it's really a pity the NY Times in general is so biased on such subjects, especially as it's so widely trusted.

I would agree with that, but with one caveat, which is that the position of the voice of reason needn't necessarily--as many wrongly assume--be that which is squarely in the middle of the opposing sides.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

On your first comment above, the likes of John Gray? http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/jul/07/philosophy.politics . Horrible, keeps turning up in newspapers and political weeklies slagging off Jacobinism and Utopian idealists in general, and never lets small matters like 'facts' get in the way of his pontificating.