I have previously mentioned a book given to me by a friend, The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748-1789. Click the following link to read that earlier blog posting, published on Halloween, last year. In that earlier blog posting, I called the book "scary."
Robert Darnton, who wrote The Revolutionary Temper, ends his book, really, just as the actual French Revolution begins. The last chapter of Darnton's book is on the storming of the Bastille. A lot happened after that, and most people think of the Revolution as following, not preceding, the storming of the Bastille. If you'd like to read a book that considers a more complete trajectory of the French Revolution, you can click right here. That link will take you to my blog post discussing A New World Begins, by Jeremy D. Popkin.
Darnton has a specific point in mind, as he ends his book just when others who have written about the French Revolution think that the Revolution was just beginning. Here is Darnton's point. What counts most, when revolutionary changes occur in history, is the changed "minds" of the people. The "actions" that accomplish what we come to call a "revolution" are only possible once the minds of the people have been changed. This review in The Guardian can give you a pretty good idea of Darnton's argument.
Let me also draw to your attention what Darnton says on Page 451 of his book, as he sums up his arguments in an afterword:
Most of us accept the world as it is and assume that it holds together firmly enough to constitute reality.
This is, I think, an accurate statement. Revolutions (and the actions that cause them to occur) happen when what "exists" is no longer taken to define the limits of "reality," and when what "exists" is no longer taken to be "inevitable." Revolutions happen when people begin to understand that "reality" (in the "Human World" that we create) is not something that we need to accept, just because that is the way things are. Getting our minds around that thought, the idea that we can actually build a world that reflects things the way they are "spozed to be," is what actually makes revolutionary changes possible.
Or, as some protesters put it:
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